Freya pushed her fears and schemes aside and concentrated. Maybe Benjamin really had gone to all this trouble to bring her here only to talk. Maybe, come the morning, his driver would take her to the airport without any fuss.
And maybe pigs could fly.
If Benjamin wanted nothing more than to talk he would have conducted this chat in Madrid.
Either way, she needed to pay attention and listen hard.
‘Like cousins,’ she clarified. ‘A modern-day tale like The Three Musketeers, always there for each other.’
‘Exactemente. Do you know the Tour Mont Blanc building in Paris?’ He took a bite of creamy cheese.
‘The skyscraper?’ she asked uncertainly. World news was not her forte. Actually, any form of news that wasn’t related to the arts passed her by. She had no interest in any of it. She only knew of Tour Mont Blanc because Sophie had been fascinated with it, saying more than once that she would love to live in one of its exclusive apartments and dine in one of its many restaurants run by Michelin-starred chefs and shop in the exclusive shopping arcade.
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
