Chapter Ten #3
Caio stared at her as if she’d suddenly grown two horns, his sensuous mouth twisting into a distasteful slant. “No.”
“What do you mean no?” she said, any semblance of remaining the steady, sensible one in this difficult conversation shattering at the resolute will of that single word.
“There’s nothing of my father or his legacy left in that company, Nush.”
Nush got to her feet, startled by the vehemence of his words. “You bought it to destroy it?” Clarity came like a veil being lifted permanently. “You set your stepfather up to fall, to lose everything, didn’t you?”
“Carlos already destroyed everything good about it, Princesa.” By the way he spat that name, Nush knew it was his stepfather.
“Lured by the idea of more and more profits, he made one bad deal after the other when he had no resources to deliver. His son Enzo embezzled the pension funds of the employees. Carlos is in crippling debt, all the livelihoods under his care ruined, and he was still looking for a payout. All that’s left to do is to pull out its very rotten foundation and grind it to nothing, to reduce the rubble to ashes. ”
Emotions thrashing in her chest, Nush stared at him.
She’d always known there was a well of anger and pain under Caio’s smooth facade.
Had realized, even as a teenager, that something dark fueled his every move.
But to know it as vague speculation and to see it were different.
To stand in its direct path was terrifying at a soul-deep level.
“And you’ve been planning this for how long? ”
“More than a decade.”
“That’s...horrible.” Agitation pushed her words out.
This was why her grandfather had been against Caio going ahead with this.
Because if he did this, he was permanently shutting down any connection left to his past. With the bad, he was burning down the good too.
“To work toward that kind of destruction for years...you’d have to be. ..empty of all good things.”
“Are you already regretting your promises, Nush?” he said, taking in her defensive posture with her arms around her waist. The distance she’d imposed between them.
She pressed a hand to her forehead, refusing to let him make this about her.
“I’m just sad that all of his good name, everything your father stood for, it has to come to dust and ashes like this.
That everything you...” She plunged her fingers into his hair, feeling as if her own heart suddenly had a crack in it.
“This can’t be it, Caio. Tell me the truth.
Tell me that’s what has been hounding you for the past week. Tell me it feels like a defeat.”
He pushed away from her touch. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted—OneTech, you, this house, the whole bloody island—while Carlos will be left with nothing.”
Nush didn’t point out that his reassurance sounded painfully hollow and empty.
“You’ve clearly thought this through,” she said, forcing a semblance of acceptance into her words.
Into her heart. For now, at least. This wasn’t a wound that would heal immediately, or pain that would wash away from one conversation with her, however much she wanted that for him.
“Don’t waste your bleeding heart on this, Nush.”
And that felt like a premonition more than a warning.
Nush took her another step back, knowing that both of them needed space to process this. That the threads binding them were still too fragile to bear the heavy weight of her dissent right now, as much as she wanted to scream it at him.
“I’m going to bed.”
He didn’t look at her then and it felt like this was a defeat too. Like the bridge they were building to each other was already wobbling. “Don’t forget your pills, Princesa.”
Nush walked away. But she stopped when she reached the massive living room because she couldn’t bear to leave him like that. As if he were all alone in the world, even if he didn’t say it.
And where it mattered, in the vulnerable places that lived in all of them, that some of them covered up better than others by hiding and shying away in the margins of life, drenched in fear of loss, that some of them replaced with ambition and success and material possessions they didn’t even want, Nush knew Caio was less for the loss of his family.
Less for not knowing his brothers. Less for shutting down parts of himself.
Less than the great man his father had been.
Which meant he had less of himself to give this thing between them, to give her, whereas she’d already given more than she could afford, all that she had.
All in, as always, Nushie-kins? she could almost hear Yana say in her admonishing voice. Tsk-tsk...learn how to play the game.
But it wasn’t over. Neither Yana nor Caio understood that part. As afraid she was of who Caio was becoming and what was in thefuture for them, she couldn’t simply abandon him when he needed her. It wasn’t in her.
Only what if he didn’t even admit that he needed her? What if he pushed her away like he’d done with the memories of his mother or the future he could have had with his half-brothers? What if she didn’t agree with him and he decided he’d had enough of her too?
Could she walk away from him tonight knowing how closed off he was? Knowing he was choosing destruction and more pain when he could have something else?
No.
But it couldn’t be finished as easily as that. Not when their story was just beginning. Not when he’d stood by her side through all her hard times.
“Caio?”
Her breath came easy when he turned and met her eyes.
“Was that our first big fight?” she said, half laughing, half crying, throwing him a rope and asking him to grab it with both hands.
His head dipped, his forearms braced on his knees, his wineglass dangling precariously between his fingers.
“I don’t know.” Looking up, his gaze pinned her where she stood.
Hunger and heat arced into life between them with a snap like an electric whip.
“But you got what you wanted, Princesa,” he said with a soft growl.
“You know now what I’m made of. If you want to break your word, Nush, now’s the time. Before I—”
“I think it was a fight,” she said, shutting down his line of thinking. She smiled then, through the tears in her eyes, and the furrow between his brows cleared. “When you’re ready to make up, you know where to find me.”
His golden eyes gleamed again, that faraway look dissipating instantly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I want to make up the fun way. I hear that’s the only good thing about fighting as a couple. And Caio?”
“Yes, Princesa?”
“I want to be your wife. Tonight, in every way that matters.” Finally, she was beginning to understand him.
Was beginning to know the real him—hard, cutting edges and all.
And if he wanted her in his life, then he’d have to know her as her too.
And that was someone who wouldn’t let him make a wrong decision, someone who hated seeing him in pain. “Don’t make me wait.”
“Is that a threat?” he said, back to playing that wicked game of his.
“Yes,” Nush said throwing herself all the way in. “But it’s also an entreaty.”
She didn’t wait to see his reaction but she heard his pithy curse and she wondered that for all the games Yana had played all her life, her sister had never managed to understand the subtle tactic that sometimes to win, one had to surrender completely first.