‘I’m going to marry Antonio because I want the company,’ Maria insisted.
‘Why that company? Why not any other company in the entire world? You’re an incredible businesswoman. Your reputation is stellar. You’re respected, financially solvent.Cristo, if you wanted to sell your shares in Gallo Group you would have millions at your disposal.’
You’d be free, he thought internally, the words sounding like an accusation and a plea at the same time.
‘I don’t want another company. I want this one. I want the one that I should have inherited all along, without having to do some silly tap dance. I want the one that, had I been born a man, would have been mine without question. I want the one that I have worked for my entire professional life. I want,’ she said, her breathing harsh with the fury of her sense of injustice, ‘the company that I have helped grow, whose wealth I have helped increase. I want what I’ve earned, Micha. I’ve earned Gallo Group. Far more than Antonio, who hasn’t worked in it since he was twenty-one. Far more than any of the uncles that have sat on the board and done nothing but voted with their wallets.’
‘Far more than me?’ Micha asked finally when she paused to take a breath.
Maria glared at him, unable to say anything back. Because out of everyone, he was the only other person who had held a candle to what she’d given to Gallo Group. The only other person who could stand at the helm without ruining it—no matter what her family might think of him.
‘Or have you become like the rest of your family and decided that I am far from your equal?’ he said, finally ready to face the truth.
If they were burning bridges, then so be it. He would burn them all.
‘I am not like them,’ she hotly denied.
‘But you don’t think we are equals, do you?’
‘You aren’t family, Micha.’
The punch of air that fell from his lips was the only sign of the way she had cut him off at his knees. He’d always thought it, but never really wanted to believe it. But she’dneverthought he was good enough. He wasn’t like Antonio, who’d had the good graces to get himself adopted. No, no matter what he did, how hard he worked, he’d never shake the stigma of his humble origins, or the depths of what he’d been driven to do for his mother, for himself.
He looked down at her, seeing Maria in a new light. Beautiful, but cruelly removed.
She might think herself better than him, but that didn’t stop her wanting him. And it certainly didn’t stop him wanting her.
‘You might not like me, Maria. Or think me good enough. But you still desire me, don’t you?’ he bit out. ‘That mustreallysting,’ he said, satisfied by the sight of the flare in her gaze.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she tried to dismiss.
But he wasn’t letting her get away with it. Not this time. If she’d come to kick him out on his backside once she took over the company, then he was going to make her work for it. She was going to have to admit a few things and he wasn’t going to let her go until she had.
‘Oh really? That’s not what those breathy little moans you were making in my ear only moments ago suggested,’ he taunted in a cruel whisper.
He knew how much that would hurt. Because it hurt him too. To want her so much, to be driven to almost demented lengths by the memory of what had been, the knowledge of what could have been and the awareness of what never would be.
‘Go on, tell me how much you hated my kiss,’ he demanded, pressing into her personal space, forcing her back a step.
‘I—’ She searched his gaze, knowing and understanding morphing into frustration. She couldn’t lie, but she wouldn’t admit it either.
‘Tell me, Maria, how much you hated the feel of my mouth on your breast,’ he said, his gaze dropping to her mouth. ‘My touch on your skin.’
‘Micha—’
‘Tell me,’ he said dropping his lips to the shell of her ear, as she hit the wall of the office and had nowhere else to go, ‘how you hated me so much you haven’t fantasised about this foryears.’
Her breath poured in and out of her, raising her chest to his again and again, the flush on her cheeks, the pink of her lips so recently kissed, a warning, a flare.
‘I…’ She swallowed, her head leaning up to look at him, her eyes glowing and her skin flushed. ‘I can’t.’
‘Because youdidn’thate it?’ he pushed. ‘Because youhavefantasised about this? Because…’ He swallowed, daring her, daring himself to go as far as this would take them. ‘Because youdowant this?’
She nodded her head slowly, not once taking her eyes off him. As if she were as bound to this madness as he was. And in that moment, he wasn’t sure who had just won the battle, because it might have required his own surrender.
Maria stared at the man who had just bared her deepest secret to the light of day. That no matter how much she hated him, for leaving her, for walking away as if she were nothing, as if what they had shared was nothing, she still wanted him. Needed him like an addiction that wouldn’t quit.
‘Yes,’ she said, the confession wrenched from her lips. ‘Are you happy now?’ she demanded, breath heaving in her chest, lust clashing with injustice, with the near ache of misery.
