his place behind his desk. ‘Señor Fernandez has prepared a document for you to read.’
The chill in his voice sent an ice cube slithering down Elin’s spine. She picked up the piece of paper Cortez pushed across the desk and as she read down the printed page her heart thudded painfully fast in her chest.
‘What the hell is this?’ she said thickly when she had finished reading.
His dark brows lifted. ‘I believe it is self-explanatory. I am offering to give you Cuckmere Hall: the house and entire estate, including the vineyards and winery. The current value of the Cuckmere estate is twenty-five million pounds, and I am prepared to offer you an additional ten million pounds which you could invest and use the interest to pay for the running costs of the house and estate. Alternatively, if you decide to sell Cuckmere for its market value, you will still receive the additional ten million pounds, which will be transferred directly into your bank account.
‘In return,’ he continued smoothly, ‘you will sign sole custody of Harry over to me with a legally binding guarantee that you will not seek to change or reverse this decision at any future date.’ He ignored her sharply indrawn breath. ‘The agreement will take effect immediately when you have signed the document that you have in your hand. My private jet will be available to take you to England, and you will leave here with the deeds of the Cuckmere estate in your possession.’
‘This is a joke, right?’ Elin moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and saw Cortez’s eyes narrow on her mouth. He couldn’t be serious, she assured herself. Obviously he had a warped sense of humour. ‘You can’t really think I would agree to your disgusting offer.’
The lawyer spoke. ‘Señor Ramos’s offer is extremely generous. I am certain that you would not receive any more from a court judgement.’
Cortez leaned back in his chair and gave her a hard stare. ‘Is there something more that you want?’
‘Yes, there is.’ She was proud that her voice sounded calm while inside she was a seething cauldron of emotions ranging from anger through to a deep sense of hurt that was inexplicable. Why should she care that Cortez believed she would sell her son in a deal that would shame the devil? ‘I want you to rot in hell.’
Her control was hanging by a thread. Tears stung her eyes but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Carefully she tore the piece of paper she was holding in half and then tore the two halves into quarters and then eighths, her movements jerky with suppressed violence.
‘There is nothing you could offer me. All the riches in the world would not tempt me for a nanosecond to give my son away. And especially—especially—’ her voice rose, sharp with revulsion ‘—to a man such as you, who treats women like objects, like dirt. If Ralph had not made you his heir you would not have gone to Cuckmere Hall and discovered that you have a son. Harry would have grown up never knowing who his father was.’
She stood up and dragged in a ragged breath. ‘You left after you’d had sex with me because I was nothing, just a means of sexual gratification. You treated me like a whore, but what does that make you? How can you be a good and decent father when you did not even bother to find out if I had conceived your child?’
‘Bastante! Enough.’ Cortez jumped to his feet and glared at her across the desk. He turned his head and spoke in Spanish to the lawyer, who immediately got up and hurried out of the room.
‘How can you have the audacity to question my suitability to be a father when you are patently unsuitable to be Harry’s mother?’ Disgust was stamped on Cortez’s patrician features. ‘If you refuse my offer, which I believe is a fair one, I will seek to be granted custody of my son through legal channels.’
‘No court would take a three-month-old baby away from his mother,’ Elin said vehemently, but her heart was thumping with fear. Cortez was a rich man and could hire the best lawyers, but she had nothing to her name, apart from a rundown cottage that she could not afford to have repaired.
‘A court would not leave a baby with a known drug-user.’ He took no notice when she gasped. ‘Perhaps you are an addict, or maybe you are in control of your drug habit—for now. But the risk of addiction is high and I do not believe any judge would risk leaving Harry in your care. I certainly will not.’
‘I’m not a drug addict.’ Elin heard the hysteria in her voice and fought to bring herself under control, aware that Cortez was likely to suggest she was emotionally unbalanced. But she was astounded by his accusation. ‘I have never taken any kind of substance, legal or illegal, in my life, apart from the one time that my drink was spiked at my birthday party.’
‘I was led to understand from a reliable source that you are a drug-user,’ he said coldly. ‘Stories of your wild lifestyle have often been reported by the press.’
‘Stories is right. Half the things the tabloids print are made up.’
He gave her a cynical look. ‘Are you saying that photographs of you staggering out of nightclubs on numerous occasions when you were clearly either drunk or high were fake?’
‘No, but...’
‘If the reports of your affairs with football stars and other minor celebrities weren’t true, why did you not demand that the newspapers retracted the stories?’
‘I...’ Elin trailed to a halt and bit her lip. She couldn’t admit that she had deliberately played up for the paparazzi to keep the media’s interest away from her brother. Jarek’s addiction to vodka, gambling and women—so many women—made her supposed wild lifestyle seem tame in comparison. If Cortez learned that Jarek had been going off the rails since Lorna Saunderson’s death, he might sack him from Saunderson’s Bank.
‘Presumably you could not threaten to take legal action against the tabloids because the stories they printed about you were true,’ Cortez said grimly. His eyes were chips of obsidian. ‘I have been advised by a child psychologist that Harry is too young to have formed a meaningful bond with you, and he will not be adversely affected by a clean break from you when he is only a few months old.’
‘Of course he has formed a bond with me,’ she choked. ‘I am his mother. For God’s sake, I carried him inside me for nine months, but where were you, his father, then?’ Elin’s anger turned to despair and she struggled to swallow past the lump that had formed in her throat.
‘I was shocked when I realised that my night of shame had resulted in pregnancy,’ she admitted. ‘And terrified that I had to face my pregnancy alone. All the other women at the childbirth classes had their husbands or partners with them, and I pretended that my baby’s father was working abroad because I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t even know his identity.
‘I never knew my parents,’ she told Cortez huskily. ‘They died when I was a baby and my brother was six, and we were placed in an orphanage. I was luckier than other children in the orphanage because at least I had my brother, who took care of me as well as he was able to. My earliest memories are of feeling fear and confusion. I am Bosnian by birth, and the orphanage was in Sarajevo. When the city was bombed during the Bosnian war, many of the orphanage staff were killed or ran away and abandoned the children.’
She was breathing hard, as if she had run a marathon. ‘I know what it is like to be abandoned. I will never, ever leave my son. Your vile accusations—especially that I use drugs—are untrue. I love Harry more than life and I would never do anything that might harm him or put him at risk.’
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