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Sakis couldn’t breathe. His whole body had gone numb. He’d been betrayed again. And this time by a woman he loved. And, yes, he could finally admit that the feeling was love because nothing else came close to describing his emotions.
He tried to move towards her and absently noted that his feet were carrying him in the other direction. Numbness spread until his whole body felt frozen to the core.
‘You lied to me,’ he rasped around the pain gripping his throat.
Slowly, she nodded. Then she cleared her throat. ‘Yes.’
‘You colluded with a criminal to defraud and then you wormed your way into my company and my bed to do it all over again. You were helping him to topple my company, risking the livelihood of thousands of people.’ His voice shook, his insides raw with agony.
‘No! Please listen—I didn’t. I’d never do that to you.’
‘How long have you and Landers been involved in your little scheme?’ he snarled, his senses reeling.
Her arms stretched out towards him, palms open wide in false supplication. ‘There’s no scheme, Sakis. Please believe me.’
His frozen heart twisted painfully. ‘Believe you? That’s a joke, right? How long, Brianna?’
Guilt, raw and gl
aring, slashed across her whitened features. In that moment, Sakis felt as if he’d been turned to stone then smashed into a million pieces.
‘I...I’ve known about it since that last night at Point Noire.’
‘And this abrupt confession? You knew it was only a matter of time before the investigators sniffed you both out, didn’t you?’
Brianna couldn’t stop the distressed cry that ripped from her throat. ‘I wanted to tell you. But I...I didn’t want to lose you.’
His devilish laugh sliced through her chest, shredding her already bleeding heart. ‘You didn’t want to lose me, so you thought you’d do the one thing guaranteed to make that happen? For a woman whose intelligence I once valued, that’s shockingly stupid.’
She flinched.
He barely blinked at her pain. ‘So, what was the plan? I want to hear it. In detail.’
‘Greg wanted information to help him in a new takeover bid: shareholding percentages, personal information about board members to give him an edge.’
His grip on the corner of his desk tightened until his knuckles whitened. ‘And you fed him this information? Come clean now because I will find out.’
‘No! I wouldn’t... I’d never...’ She stopped and swallowed down the sob that threatened to choke her. ‘I know it’s too late for me to make you believe me but—’
‘What did you expect to receive in return?’ he ground out chillingly.
‘Nothing! I wanted no part of it. Greg was blackmailing me. He found out I’d changed my name and threatened to expose me.’
‘Right; next you’ll be telling me you were framed the first time round too.’
‘I was!’
‘You mean a jury didn’t find you guilty and a judge didn’t sentence you?’ Sakis’s numbness was receding and pure rage was taking its place. He welcomed the painful sting in his legs and arms, welcomed the surge of power it brought.
‘They did, but Greg had engineered it and made sure I took the fall.’
‘How?’
Her tongue darted out to lick her lips. Sakis felt the lash of desire and crushed it dead. ‘I signed some papers he asked me to and—’
‘Did he force you to?’
‘What?’
