He swallowed as he nodded. ‘You know Javier and Luis built it?’
‘Yes, I knew it was theirs.’
‘Did you know I invested in it?’
‘No.’
‘They came to me seven years ago when they were buying the land. They had a cash-flow problem and asked me to go in with them on the project as a sleeping partner. I invested twenty per cent of the asking price. When I made that first investment I was told total profits would be around half a billion euros.’
She blinked. Half a billion?
‘It took four years for the building work to start—there was a lot of bureaucracy to get through—and a further three years to complete it. Have you been there?’
‘No.’
‘It is a magnificent building and a credit to the Casillas brothers’ vision. Eighty per cent of the apartments were sold off-plan and we had eleven multinational companies signed up to move into the business part before the roof had been put on.’
‘So it’s a moneymaking factory then,’ she said flatly. ‘I take it there’s a reason you’re boring me with all this?’
The piercing look he gave her sent fresh shivers racing up her spine.
‘We all knew the initial profit projections were conservative but none of us knew quite how conservative. Total profit so far is closer to one and a half billion euros.’
Freya didn’t even know how many zeros one and a half billion was. And that was their profit? Her bank account barely touched three figures.
‘Congratulations,’ she said in the same flat tone. It was a lot of money—more than she could ever comprehend—but it was nothing to do with her and she couldn’t see why he thought it relevant to discuss it with her. She assumed he was showing off and letting her know that his wealth rivalled Javier’s.
As if this chateau didn’t do a good enough job flaunting his wealth!
Did he think she would be impressed?
Money was nothing to brag about. Having an enormous bank account didn’t make you a better person than anyone else or mean you were granted automatic reverence by lesser mortals.
Freya had been raised by parents who were permanently on the breadline. They were the kindest, most loving parents a child could wish for and if she could live her childhood again she wouldn’t swap them for anyone. Money was no substitute for love.
It was only now, as that awful disease decimated her mother’s body, that she wished they’d had the means to build a nest egg for themselves. She wouldn’t have felt compelled to marry Javier if they had.
But they had never had the means. They had worked their fingers to the bone to allow their only child to follow her dreams.
‘I invested twenty per cent of the land fee,’ Benjamin continued, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘I have since invested around twenty per cent of the building costs. How much profit would you think that entitles me to?’
‘How would I know?’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m not an accountant.’
‘Take a guess.’
‘Twenty per cent?’
‘Oui. Twenty per cent. Twenty per cent investment for a twenty per cent profit. Twenty per cent of one and a half billion equals three hundred million, do you agree?’
‘I’m not an accountant,’ she repeated, looking away from him, her lips tightening mutinously.
‘You do not need to be an accountant to agree that three hundred million euros is a lot of money.’
Her slim shoulders rose but other than a flash of colour on her high cheekbones, the mutinous expression on her face didn’t change.
‘I have received all of my investment back but only seventy-five million euros of the profit. The equivalent of five per cent.’
Her eyes found his stare again. ‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?’
‘You are not expected to feel anything.’ Benjamin stifled his growing anger at her cold indifference. He hadn’t expected anything less from the woman engaged to the coldest man in Europe. ‘I am laying out the facts of the situation. Javier and Luis have ripped me off. They owe me two hundred and twenty-five million euros.’
He had earmarked that money for a charity that helped traumatised children.
The irony of why he had chosen that charity would be funny if the situation were not so damn serious. The memories of Javier and Luis’s traumatisation at the death of their mother at the hands of their father had haunted him for years.
Benjamin had almost bankrupted himself investing in the Tour Mont Blanc project. He’d spent seven years clawing his way back, going higher than he had ever climbed before, investing and expanding his fine food business across the globe until he had reached the point where he didn’t owe a cent to anyone. All his assets, his business and subsidiaries were his alone and could never be taken from him. Now he could do some good with the great wealth he had built for himself and Javier and Luis had stolen his first significant act from him, just as they had stolen his money, his trust and all the memories he’d held dear.
‘Take it up with your lawyers.’
‘I have.’ Benjamin remembered the green colour Andre had turned when he’d had to tell his most lucrative client that the Casillas brothers were correct in their assertion that he was only owed five per cent of the profits.
It had been there in black and white on the contract he’d signed seven years ago, hidden in the small print. It could have been written in the largest font available and he doubted he would have noticed it back then. He had signed the contract without getting his lawyer to read it first. That was his own fault, he accepted that. It was the only contract he’d ever signed without poring over every word first. The brothers had been given until midnight to come up with the full asking price or the land would have been sold to another interested party and they would have lost the substantial deposit they’d already paid at that point.
They had come to him for help on the same day Benjamin’s mother had been told there was nothing more the medical team could do to stave off the cancer ravaging her body. Although not a shock—she had not responded well to any of the treatment she’d been given—it had been the single biggest blow in his life.
Benjamin had signed with only a cursory glance at the document and transferred the money there and then. If it had been anyone else he would have refused to even contemplate the investment but it had been Javier and Luis asking. Men he regarded as kin. Men his mother had regarded as kin. Men he’d trusted unconditionally. At the time he hadn’t cared that it would eat into his own cash-flow and that the chateau he’d intended to buy outright for his mother to pass the last of her days in would need him to take a hefty mortgage. It was that knock-on effect that had almost bankrupted him.
‘From a legal point of view there is nothing more I can do about it.’ The words felt like needles in his throat.
He’d
