without making him realize what he’s done to me.”
Disbelief shone in his eyes. “Earlier, you wouldn’t believe a word I said. How do I know you won’t go running back to him the minute he starts whispering words of love again?”
“Earlier, I was a fool who’d have done anything for the man I loved. Now...I feel nothing but disgust and pity for that woman. My skin crawls when I think that I stayed all these years... Does that satisfy you? Or do you want me to prostrate myself before you’re ready to believe me?”
His gaze encompassed her from top to toe as though he was enjoying the idea of her prostrating herself. By sheer will, she stood still under that assessing gaze.
“You’re angry and emotional right now. Tomorrow, you’ll forgive him and crawl back to him—”
“Listen to my proposal first. Then make your decision.”
She was so tired of men playing their games with her, controlling her, defining her, owning her joys and her sorrows.
First her father and then Jackson...
So tired of losing herself, again and again. The irony of appealing to another man for help, of letting him see her darkest fears, a man who was a hundred times more powerful and ruthless than Jackson or her father, wasn’t lost on her.
But Jackson had been wrong. She still had one avenue left and she was going to throw herself into it.
“Do you want to expose Jackson’s reality to the world?”
Something shifted in his expression, a watchful uncoiling of his rigid stance. He was hooked. For the first time in months, Clio felt a surge of positivity fill her.
“Throwing a million dollars at you is easy. What you’re suggesting is far more elaborate and requires a great deal of my actual involvement.”
“But you’ll do it,” she said, forcing confidence into her tone.
Heat flared in his gaze at the vehemence of her statement. She braced herself, expecting him to cut her down.
“Why?”
“Because I saw it in your face tonight just as you saw whatever you did in mine.
“When I said he was my fiancé, there was such anger, such distaste in your gaze. I don’t know how or what he did to you, but I know that you won’t forgive and forget.”
His gaze swept over her face with a thoroughly cold appraisal. “I see that there’s still a bit of the old Clio in you, bella.”
“You have found the weak link in Jackson’s life. It’s me.” Her voice wobbled on the last bit, the very venom that Jackson’s words caused in her coating her throat.
“I will bring that man down if we start on this path. There will be no half measures, no backing out. No going back to him. Ever.”
“I’m not weak, Stefan, not in this. I swallowed the disgust that was roiling through me today, and came to you without his knowledge.”
“Tell me what happened.”
For a second, Clio could only stare at the authority with which he demanded an answer.
“Does it matter what happened? If I have to face myself in the mirror, if I have to...I’ll bring you anything you need about Jackson’s business and his hedge fund company. But only if you agree to my proposal.”
“What is your proposal, Clio?”
Clio stared at Stefan and willed the words to come, willed herself to put the last part of her plan into words. It had been gathering in the back of her mind like a tsunami, shaking everything in its path, laughing at her weak will, her fears.
She couldn’t back out now, as scary as it was to tie her fate to this man even temporarily.
Stefan Bianco, once a cherished friend and now a ruthless stranger, would be the fire through which she would have to walk. And once she emerged from that fire, no man would ever have the power to hurt her again.
No man would even come close.
“I want you to profess undying love to me. In a gesture that captures media attention. I want you to get engaged to me, turn all that brooding arrogance into possessive, fiery love for me. I want you to lend me the might of your status as the ruthless playboy who wouldn’t look twice at the same woman much less have a relationship with her.
“And I want all this done in a way that Jackson can’t turn his head, can’t even blink without our engagement splashed in his face.
“Then, I’ll bring you everything you need to expose him.”
“NO.”
The word fell from his mouth and boomeranged in the cavernous lounge even before Stefan processed Clio’s outrageous proposition. The very thought of tying himself to a woman, any woman, filled his veins with ice.
And to someone like Clio, whom he had liked once...it was unbearable even in thought.
Rubbing his hand over his jaw, he looked up at her.
Desperation and something else danced beneath the steady look she cast him. Her fingers as she settled them over her forearms left pink marks revealing how tightly she was holding on.
Her hair was beginning to fall away from the tight knot at the back of her head. Still dressed in the black sleeveless dress that somehow leached all the color from her face, he knew she had come to him directly from the party.
Had somehow found the strength to come to him.
He shoved away the protectiveness that rose like a storm within him, to be discerned later.
It had been a while since a woman had surprised him with her words or actions.
The fact that it was Clio, a woman he had written off as a lost cause, intensified the surprise.
“As tempting as your proposal is, I have no intention of associating myself with a woman romantically, bella. Even for a pretense. Even for a few months. Even for saving a friend. I will never be good to the woman who occupies that role in my life, Clio.”
Her chin tilted down, but there was determination in her gaze. “It’s just a pretense, Stefan. I won’t ask anything of you.”
“No.”
“Then you get nothing from me about Jackson.” Her gaze flashed with determination. “And just so you know what you’re saying no to, I’m a board member on his company.
“Of course, I have been nothing but a figurehead all these years but at least it’s unrestricted access. To his company’s finances, his bank accounts, even his offshore investments.”
“Anything
