Believing that those people were somehow better than the rest of humanity was depressing.
And when she’d been sixteen, her emotions had been held captive by a boy her father considered to be lower than them. A boy who had grown into the man standing before her.
Looking at him, she felt her chest get tight, pride swelling within her. It shocked her. But she was, she realized, proud of what Lazaro had become, professionally at least.
“Showing you have the real power?” she asked softly.
“Money is the real power, Vanessa. Money is how I got into this position, how I managed to purchase Pickett’s shares.”
“Then why do you care about the rest of it? Why do you need me at all?”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Because I can have you.”
Her stomach tightened. “The proof of how far you’ve come?” she asked, voice dry.
“Perhaps. But it has very little to do with anyone else’s perception. I want every door open to me. I have earned it. Money, I have—I want the social power as well.”
Lazaro’s blood burned in his veins, adrenaline spiking through him. He wanted everything. To be at the top of absolutely everything. To sit as a social equal with the man who had had him beaten for daring to touch his precious daughter.
And to make Vanessa his. To finally to satisfy his desire for her.
“The old-money society, the American aristocracy, it’s as outdated as your father’s business model,” he said.
“And you’ll tear down centuries of it all by yourself, Lazaro?”
“I don’t want to tear it down,” he said, his voice rough, his accent taking over his words. “I want in.”
She looked away, turning her focus out her office window and onto the Boston skyline. “And it frustrates you that you can’t do it without help.”
Lazaro bit down hard, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “None of this is done out of necessity, Vanessa. It is a bonus. You wouldn’t know about the necessities in life, not when your biggest concern is staying employed in a multi-million-dollar position you’re not qualified to do. You could walk away and there would be no great tragedy to either of us.”
She just sat, frozen behind her desk, dark eyes wide, her mouth pressed into a firm line. She wouldn’t walk away. She was too married to the tradition, to the lineage of her family, just as her father had been.
What will people think?
He wondered if she’d had a share in his broken nose if, after refusing him, she had told her father all about how the low-class housekeeper’s son had made an attempt to touch her with his filthy, laborer’s hands.
He wondered if Vanessa shared culpability for putting his mother and him out on the streets.
That had been the worst part about all of it. As he’d spat blood out onto the grimy pavement in the alley after being beaten by Michael Pickett’s men, after he’d been warned never to set foot on the Pickett estate again, been warned that if he so much as looked at Vanessa again, the consequences might be fatal, the very worst part had been wondering if Vanessa had been complicit in it. If she might have wanted her father to make sure she was rid of him.
His mother had lost her job. He’d lost his job. They’d lost their home and his mother had paid the price with her health. Ultimately with her life.
But now he knew that whatever part Vanessa had played in what had happened, she had never intended it. She was thoughtless, but she wasn’t evil.
That moment, when he’d been lying in the alley, had been the lowest of his life. But it had been then, jobless, broken and bleeding, that he had vowed to ensure no one else ever held power over him like that again. He would never allow anyone but himself to hold his fate in his hands.
That goal had consumed him, had propelled him from the gutter to the boardroom, had made him millions.
That Vanessa would be the key to unlock the final door, to allow him into the last segment of society where he was still unwelcome, was poetic justice.
He didn’t hate her. He had no desire to hurt her or exact revenge on her. But he no longer cared for her. His body still ached for her, that was all.
Michael Pickett, on the other hand, deserved hell on earth and in the hereafter. Taking Vanessa, making her his own, wrenching her from her father’s control … the satisfaction in that was endless. The man had been willing to commit murder if necessary to keep Lazaro away from his daughter, and now there would be nothing he could do to prevent him from claiming Vanessa.
“You know I can’t walk away. You might not see it as a necessity, Lazaro. But this is my whole life.” She met his gaze, her dark eyes glittering. “And I don’t think you’ll walk away either. You need me, too.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
His gut burned. “You or any other society princess.”
“We both know this is about more than that.”
Why bother to deny it? “True. It is rather satisfying, the idea of marrying into the family whose floors my mother wasn’t good enough to clean.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked, well-groomed eyebrows drawn together.
“I mean, your father fired my mother. We ended up on the streets. So yes, I suppose there is something especially satisfying about it being you.”
There was no triumph in her eyes, only shock, sadness. For him? For his mother? It was far too late for that.
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you think we went on an extended holiday?”
“I didn’t know,” she repeated, her voice low.
He shrugged. “We’ll start with dating, of course.”
“What?”
“We need to be seen together, prior to the actual engagement.”
Vanessa tried to ignore the knot in her stomach. She didn’t know his mother had been fired. She wondered if that had been when he’d disappeared. If that was why he’d never come back after their disastrous almost night together.
She didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to let him know she still thought about it. That it still mattered.
She cleared her throat. “And you want us to … date?”
“Of course. I intend to seduce my fiancée with all of the skill that I possess.”
He took her hand in his and bent over it, pressing firm, hot lips to her skin. The gesture was light, gentlemanly even. Not even a little bit erotic. At least it shouldn’t have been. But it was. It pushed all of her thoughts and concerns right out of her head and caused a riot of sensation through her system, made
