Page 28 of One Week To Claim It All
“Esmeralda.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say. He needed to say it. “I love you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut like she couldn’t bear to hear the words at all. “Don’t say that. Don’t tell me that when you hid the truth from me. When you don’t treat me as your equal. Love is not just desire and lust, it’s trust, it’s a partnership, Rodrigo. My father spent years telling my mother he loved her and when it came down to it, he let her find out he married someone else on the news. Turned his back on her without even so much as an explanation.” She swiped at her cheeks where tears were streaming down. “You say you love me, and yet in the past twenty-four hours you let me stay in the dark about a situation that had everything to do with me. That could determine my future.” The raw pain in her voice, knowing he was responsible for putting it there, felt like someone was twisting a knife in his chest.
“I didn’t want to worry you. Carmelina’s a viper and she has no scruples. I wanted to spare you having to deal with her.”
She laughed bitterly. “You think I don’t know who Carmelina is, Rodrigo? That woman refused to let me come see my father when he was dying in the hospital. If you hadn’t made sure my mother heard about it when he passed away, I would’ve found out he died from an obituary.” She looked and sounded exhausted, bone tired.
“I’m not a child, Rodrigo. Do you know why I decided to claim the CEO position?” she asked, and he straightened, dread sitting in his stomach like lead. “It’s true that I wanted to claim my place. That I wanted a chance to create my vision. But I also wanted to take something from you.”
It hurt to hear it, but in a way he understood. Her face was streaked with tears, misery rolling off her in waves. “I was so hurt. The two men in my life always choosing their damned corner offices over me. So, yeah, I wanted to take it from you.”
She sounded small and wounded, and even as her words poked holes in his chest, he ached for her. “My father and his dysfunction, his games, turned everyone in his life into pawns. All of us wondering how we were lacking. Trying to blindly fix ourselves to deserve his love and his regard.” Her words almost knocked him to the ground. Because she was right. “But now I realize that he had nothing to give. My father’s only love was Sambrano. The thing he built, which in the end he couldn’t care for, either. And I’m done thinking there was something in me that wasn’t enough. I’m more than enough, and I deserve someone who sees that,” she said, pressing a palm to her chest. “I deserve someone who sees me as an equal and continuing to expect it from people who can’t give it to me is going to destroy me.”
“This job is all I have, Esmeralda,” he ground out, even as he saw the last bit of light go out of her eyes.
“Someday you’ll figure out that’s a lie you’ve been telling yourself. Too bad that when you do, you’ll have pushed everyone who loves you away.” And with that she walked out on him without a backward glance.
Eighteen
“Did you really think I was just going to let you get away with ignoring my calls?” Marquito asked as he pushed into Rodrigo’s office. He’d gone home after the fallout with Esmeralda and had ignored everyone who’d tried to reach out to him. He was wrecked and at a loss of what to do, because she was right about everything.
He’d hoped to figure out how to talk to her, but tell her what? That they could make it work, even as he intended to take the job she was fighting for? He had no clue, but he could not deny the unbearable hollowness he’d been feeling since the moment she’d walked away from him.
And now here he was two days later, still at a loss on how to fix any of it.
“I’m not in the mood, little brother. The meeting with the board is in two hours and I still have no idea what’s going to happen. And no matter what, there’s no winning. Either I keep the job and she hates me or she gets it and I have to start over.”
Marquito made a dismissive sound, which only made Rodrigo’s mood darken further. “Starting over owning twenty-five percent of Sambrano is not exactly a bad place, and the board will never let you go. You know that. You own a quarter of this company now, Rodrigo,” Marquito said, spreading his arms in the air. “Let that sink in. You had the means and the resources to come up with two hundred million dollars ina day. You have a stake in this place. You’re no longer an employee, you’re part owner of this studio.”
He heard the words and still he felt nothing. He’d finally found a way to push out Carmelina, to defuse her power over the future of Sambrano, but he couldn’t even enjoy it. Because in the process he’d ruined everything with the woman he loved. He could say that now. He would not hide from the truth now, and his love for Esmeralda was the greatest truth of his life. Just because he’d forced himself to ignore it for ten years didn’t make it less of an undeniable fact.
“Esme knows about what went down with her mom ten years ago.” Rodrigo knew he sounded wrung out, but there was no helping it. He was really at his wit’s end.
“Shit.” Marquito whistled. He’d been away at college when all that went down, but over the years his mom had talked about it. “I assume she didn’t take it well.”
He laughed bitterly at his little brother’s understatement and he got up to get a bottle of water from the mini fridge in his office. “You could say that. She accused me of not trusting her, then when I told her I loved her she yelled at me some more.Thenshe told me I didn’t treat her as an equal and was going to die alone.”
He knew he was being unfair, that it was a hell of a lot more than that, but he was hurt. He felt once again that trying to do the right thing had cost him everything.
“She told me I had a martyr complex,” he muttered, then snapped his head up when Marquito choked on the coffee he was drinking.
“You agree with that?” His little brother’s cheeks flushed red at the question.
“I mean, she’s nottotallywrong.” Marquito at least had the decency of sounding contrite.
“Of course she’s not. Whatsheare we talking about again?” Jimena’s voice resounded in the office as she strode in. Figured that he would have everyone in Manhattan still talking to him here to hand him his ass at his lowest moment.
His brother, the traitor, grinned at his friend’s arrival and lifted his coffee cup in Rodrigo’s direction. “Esmeralda seems to have regaled my brother with some hard truths before telling him to get his shit together.”
“Ah,” Jimena responded in a tone that sounded very much likeit was about damn time someone did.
He ought to throw them both out of his office, but they were theonlytwo people left in his corner. “Are you two here to help me or pour salt on my wounds?”
“Did you hear the same thing I heard, Marquito?” Jimena asked, clutching her chest dramatically. “Did Mr. Lobo Solitario just utter theH-word?” She actually stage whispered, but he didn’t think either of them were funny.
“I ask for help, dammit,” Rodrigo said through clenched teeth. “You two think this is a joke? The woman I love thinks I would choose a job over her. Everyone in my life thinks I’m some kind of selfish, power-hungry drone. And I don’t even know what all of this has been for,” he said, looking out the window that gave him a clear view of Central Park and beyond. One of the most coveted views on earth, and looking at it right now, he felt empty.
“Maybe Carmelina was right, and I did sell my soul for this.” He thought of the renovated brownstone that had costs millions, the ranch in Santa Fe with acres of land he’d never even been to, the villa in Punta Cana he rarely ever got to anymore. Money and properties that at one time seemed unattainable. He had so much now. But did he really enjoy any of it? He knew he wouldn’t like the answer if he asked it out loud.
