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How was she to survive now?
She sank to one of the divans, her legs refusing to hold her up, a hollow emerging in her chest.
When Stefan joined her on the divan, she flinched. “Just spell it out for me, Stefan,” she managed somehow.
“Look at me, bella.”
“No.” She clutched her eyes closed, desperate to keep herself together. From the beginning, he had seen her at her lowest, her weakest. Now, she couldn’t bear to betray herself, couldn’t bear to have him look at her with pity.
Couldn’t bear for him to know how irrevocably lost her heart was.
When his fingers landed on her chin, she swatted him away. “Tell me where you want me to sign, Stefan.”
But he didn’t let her leave. Locking her arms, he knelt on the rug before her. “Look at me, Clio. It’s not what you think.”
Shock pinging across every inch of her, Clio looked down at him. His face was so gorgeous that it hurt to look at him. His gaze touched her with such naked, honest desire that her heart ached.
It hurt to look at him, to touch him, to feel his heart and to know that he would never be hers.
“What do you mean?”
“I want us to start fresh, bella. I want to try this marriage for real.”
Her heart thudded so fast that it was a wonder she didn’t have a heart attack. Throat aching, she forced the words to form. “What’s the catch? What are those documents?” she said, so terrified of the answer, and yet so hopeful that he would say there wasn’t one.
That all he needed was her acceptance.
That all they needed was time with each other.
Her hope would cripple her if not kill her.
And Stefan crushed it under his Italian loafer when he said, “You get five hundred million dollars when you sign it.”
“Five hundred million dollars? I don’t understand.”
“No matter what happens in the future, I want you to have security. I want you to—”
“So you don’t expect us to last, then?”
“Nothing in life has guarantees, bella.”
Nausea bubbling up her throat, Clio searched his face, wondering if he was joking. Praying that it was a nightmare she would wake up from. Hoping it was one of her migraines playing a trick on her.
Because this couldn’t be happening, could it? Another man wasn’t measuring her worth, equating her love with money, was he?
“I don’t get it, Stefan. You’re paying me so that you can buy the trust you apparently can’t show in me? Like all the celebrity couples who first draw prenups to protect their assets from each other?”
“You do not have any assets.”
“Exactly. So are you protecting yourself?”
He cursed so long and loud that Clio had goose bumps on her skin. “You’re completely misunderstanding this. I tore up the old contract. I hate how Jackson cheated you. I want you to never have to worry about...”
“Really? After a decade of knowing me, you think all I want is a free ride through life?”
“No. This is something I want you to have, something for my own peace of mind.”
Clio shook her head, understanding dawning. She shot up from the divan, furious energy burning through her, looking for an outlet, even as a deluge of pain broke her within.
It was so easy to think it was her fault, so easy to think he was doing this because she didn’t have any money, to think it was because he lacked trust in her motives, in her.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t about her at all.
Stefan knew her better than any other person in the entire world. But the freeing thought only gave way to another gut-wrenching truth.
“Five hundred million dollars—is that my price tag, Bianco?” she said gasping for breath. “Because I’m sure if you have a chat with your buddy Jackson, he will tell you that I should come in a lot cheaper.”
The most unholy fury dawned in his gaze. He grabbed her arms in a viselike grip, a vein throbbing in his temple. “Don’t you dare talk as if Jackson and I are the same kind of man, bella. Don’t you dare cheapen yourself.”
“So the man does bleed,” Clio threw at him, agonizing fury coming to her rescue.
“Stop twisting my words.”
She grabbed the contract and threw it on the ground, tears falling over her cheeks. “God, you still don’t get it, do you, Stefan?
“This is the price for everything we share, Stefan. This is the price for our happiness, our life together that you’re talking about. You’re buying me, my affection, tainting every word I would say to you, attaching a price tag to even the sex we have.”
