Page 35 of A Diamond Deal
‘I found them in Maël Bijoux.’
She gasped. The famous French jeweller only specialised in unique antique jewellery. She hadnotsold them tothatjeweller. She’d known it would be a risk to do so.
‘How?’ she breathed. ‘How do you have them?’
He slipped them on. ‘Jewellery of this calibre is sold to those who know its worth, not—’ he released her hand and stepped back ‘—to common street traders who lend money to the poor at inflated prices for their television sets.’
She flushed. She’d chosen a common brand of French pawn brokers and taken a much lower price than their value, she knew, but…
‘I needed the money,’ she confessed huskily.
‘You would have needed nothing if you’d taken your purse,’ he answered coldly. ‘My team tracked the rings when they came up for auction. I bought them back. But after the rings, the trail was dead.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘I bought this place and waited for the trail to be resurrected. Little did I know you were so close all along.’
She spread her fingers. Looked down at the rings. Her hand felt…balanced.
She looked at him. Took in his perfectly styled hair, combed back from his face. The clean-shaven jaw. He hadn’t looked like this in the photos. A too long beard had hidden his face. He’d looked like someone else. And the press…the speculation… They’d questioned everything. His business decisions.Theirmarriage.Herrole in his dishevelled appearance—his mental health.
They’d ripped into every aspect of his life. What had beentheirlife… They’d used the photo of her again on the cliff, and concluded Konstantinos was either a madman who’d locked his wife up to keep her away from the public, or he’d lost her with his son and was keeping the news out of the press that she’d taken her own life. The death of his father, they’d called the ‘final blow’.
He’d built an empire on the foundations of protectinghispeople.Thisnarrative would have destroyed him. To be accused of covering up her death. To be compared to his father. He hated his father. Everything he represented.Brutality.
She’d asked Léon not to tell or show her anything. No newspapers, no internet. She’d barricaded herself inside with nothing but her flowers and talk shows discussing other people’s problems, and she’d ignored her own. Ignored how her disappearance had affectedhim.But seeing Konstantinos likethat…almost…sad…
She’d never seen him sad. Never seen him cry, not with a sleeping Isaak in his arms, not at the funeral when she hadn’t stopped crying. Not when she’d fallen to her knees from the weight of grief in her chest at the funeral.
But inthesephotos…he was visibly…distraught.
Emotion threatened to choke her.
She sidestepped him and hurried to the lift. She cradled her clutch to her chest as he took his place beside her. As the door opened and they stepped inside. Stood side by side, so close, but so far apart.
The lift doors opened. She stepped out into the marble foyer of twisted columns, and she kept walking under the stained-glass-roofed reception area. The click of her heels echoed behind her as they made their way to the waiting limousine. Doormen with dipped heads opened the doors. They climbed into their opposite sides.
The doors closed them in.
The car moved.
Paris, it blurred in front of her like a too fast fairground ride. Bright.Vivid.
Colour. She’d dotted her life with it. With flowers. With scents of hope after Isaak died. But she had been nothing but a shadow these last months. Living a monochromatic existence. And now he was taking her into the light. Taking her off life support and demanding she…live.
Konstantinos rattled something off in French to the driver.
The divider closed. And it was too small—the back of the car—it was too claustrophobic. Too full ofhim.Too full of the past.
She closed her eyes briefly.
The images and articles she’d scoured swirled in front of her eyes.
She resisted the urge to cover her mouth with her hand, and hold in her muffled cry of thick guilt in her throat.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong, Poppy?’
‘I looked at the articles about you. About me.About us.’
‘And?’
‘They were…’ She turned from the window.
