Page 38 of The Tycoon's Diamond Demand

‘Hold on! Are saying Håkon forced you to leave me?’ Jens demanded. Was that shock in his voice? It was hard to tell.

‘Yes, he’s why I left.’

‘Explain, Maja.’

Maja decided not to call him on his bossiness. There were too many misunderstandings between them, and they needed to clear the air. They didn’t need to fight about his high-handed attitude as well.

But she couldn’t help her ‘don’t test me’ glare. ‘Håkon insisted I stop all contact with you.’

‘Why? Because you were his princess?’

Maja snorted. ‘I wasn’t. What Håkon wanted was a son.’ Was that really her voice? It held all the weariness of an old, out-of-tune piano. ‘My mum nearly died when she had me and the doctors said it was dangerous for her to have more. Håkon pushed, determined to have his son. She resisted for a decade then, worn out by his persistent nagging, she fell pregnant again. She lost that baby, another girl.’

‘You never told me that.’

They’d both kept parts of themselves hidden. ‘I became a symbol of his failure, the unwanted girl child,’ she added. ‘Håkon disliked me but he needed control over me and what I did. I was, after all, a Hagen.’

He didn’t speak so she carried on with her explanation. ‘Anyway, after he found out about us, he told me that if I didn’t cut off all contact with you, he’d sink your business, and make sure you never worked in the industry again. I didn’t want that happening to you, so I ran.’

He stared at her. ‘Maja, he did that anyway.’

What? She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Why do you think we’ve been feuding for the past twelve years?’ Jens half shouted. ‘He made it his mission to destroy me. Did you think our feud came out of nowhere?’

Her mind was a tumbleweed racing across a desert. ‘He started it?’ Of course, he did, it was vintage Håkon. Maja stood up, walked around to stand behind her chair and gripped its back. ‘He said that if I went back to you, he’d buy out the leases on your boats, your fishing quotas, buy the building Jane lived in and evict her. But he did that anyway, didn’t he?’

‘He tried, but we came through it okay.’

She looked at him, thinking that he’d done better than okay. He’d become the only man who could match Håkon dollar for dollar, ruthlessness for ruthlessness.

‘Why didn’t you come to me?’ Jens asked.

‘I couldn’t. He insisted on the video and watched as I sent it to you. I didn’t feel like I had any other option than to do what he wanted.’ Maja linked her fingers together and squeezed. ‘I knew how powerful he was, Jens, and I wanted to protect you.’

Did he understand that? Was she getting her point across?

‘Protecting me wasn’t your job,’ he snapped. He stood up and leaned his shoulder against the wall and looked out onto the landscape gardens beyond his window. It was such a stunning day and they were inside, arguing.

Then Jens, very deliberately, started to clap. Maja stared at him, and spread her hands, confused.

‘Oh, kudos to Håkon,’ Jens stated, his eyes now a bitter blue. He dropped his hands and shook his head. ‘He outplayed, out-manipulated and outmanoeuvred me, the cantankerous bastard. I wasted twelve years because he wanted to play God. Well played, the son of a bitch.’

Jens had thought he knew what anger was, but the rage swirling through his system was more powerful than anything he’d experienced before. He fought the urge to plough his hand into the wall, to overturn his desk. He wouldn’t, he was still in control. Just. But he did take a few moments to indulge in imagining how good it would feel to lose his temper, how satisfying it would be to throw his art deco lamp into the far wall, to launch his chair through the window.

But instead of losing his temper, he bunched his fists, his short fingernails digging into the skin on his palms. His jaw was tense enough to crack teeth and white-hot rage threatened to blister his skin.

Twelve years, wasted. He’d spent so much energy, and lost sleep cursing her. He was furious with Håkon, with Maja, with himself...

He also felt like an idiot, and that added another layer of rage.

It was so much to take in, too much to work through. A part of Jens wished Maja had kept this to herself, the rest of him struggled to make sense of the fact that Maja never, really, betrayed him. She’d left him, misguided as it was, to protect him. And in telling him that, she upended his world and turned it inside out.

This was the emotional equivalent of standing under a shower of boiling water, each droplet stripping a few millimetres of skin.

Jens couldn’t look at her, not yet. He needed time to make sense of what she’d said, the past. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Maja rock on her heels, looking unsure as to what came next. He was too, although he’d never admit that. He’d learned that when he felt off balance and weakened, it was best to say nothing.

He heard Maja murmur, ‘Jens, please talk to me.’

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