On the one hand, yeah, it did, and that in itself was infuriating. How dare she try to get the upper hand on me. Maybe I couldn’t make her bow to my whims, but forherto think that she could one-up me?
On the other hand… so it turned out my sparring partner could hit a little harder than I expected. It turned out the woman I thought I could bring into my grasp might actually have a trick or two up her sleeve that would put me, very temporarily, in her grasp. Clever, clever girl.
“I always choose my words carefully, Adrian,” she said cooly. “Do you?”
I chuckled darkly.
“Delilah,” I said. “You want to know a better answer?”
“I want to know the real answer.”
“It’s like I told you on the call the other day. Diamonds are made under intense pressure and very high heat. Do you know how I operate as a man? Under intense pressure and high heat. Put that in your article. And if you dare ask a follow-up, you’d better word it carefully.”
Delilah nodded. She knew she’d gotten a good quote—frankly, a better response than she could have even asked for. A more personal one at that.
But she was greedy. I could see it. She wasn’t greedy for money, but she was greedy for knowledge. She was hungry to learn as much as she could about me, maybe even more than I wanted to know about myself.
“Tell me about the diamond cufflinks, Adrian,” she said. “And how they relate to the man who loves pressure and heat.”
CHAPTER 8
Delilah
This wasn’t swimming with the sharks.
This was swimming with the alpha of the great white sharks—no, not just that. The alpha who had targeted me as the meat that he wanted for himself, that no other shark could even dare look at, let alone take a bite out of.
But the answer Adrian gave told me as much about myself as it did him.
Because in my work, the hotter a situation got, the more pressure that came with a situation, the more I thrived.
The harder the questions I asked.
And the deeper I dug.
Nothing was worse than a boring story with no layers to it. That required no skill at all, just the ability to write coherent sentences. AI could do it.
But what no machine and few other journalists could do was find a hot situation, dig deep to the core, and tell a story.
Adrian and I shared that same trait—the only difference lay in the outcome. He sought money, I sought the truth.
Realizing how similar we were made my interest in him rise uncomfortably high, to the point that I was beginning to genuinely doubt if I should even be in that room. But like ashark who had caught a whiff of blood, I had caught a whiff of vulnerability in Adrian Vale, the man. I could not, would not stop until I learned more.
Even if it meant getting bitten in the process.
“The cufflinks?” Adrian said, repeating the question in what was an obvious ploy to buy more time to think of a good answer. It was so common a tactic, even untrained people used it to their own benefit. “They’re just another example of why I’m the King of Diamonds.”
“They’re what people always refer to when they give an example of your nickname,” I pressed. “That tells me it’s something you highlight when you do interviews or videos. What is it about you, the man?”
“Are you my therapist or a journalist?”
I wanted to laugh, except the look on Adrian’s face was deadly serious. I could press, but I had to be careful not to let the recoil hit me in the face.
“You can answer what I asked however you wish.”
Adrian gave no reaction, looked out the window of his office, nodded, and then turned back to me.
“It was the first thing I ever bought when I had more money than I knew what to do with,” he said. “Growing up, we were affluent, but we were never stupidly wealthy. I’d see people with jewelry that I knew even for our family would be a stupid purchase. I wanted something reasonable, something that said wealth and power but not something that would be an unreasonable purchase. The cufflinks seemed like a good compromise, given how often I wear button-down shirts.”
