Page 2 of A Diamond for My Forbidden Bride

Wintergreen was a family company, and if I wanted it to remain so I would need heirs, just as Constantine would. My father had always said that I could be CEO of Wintergreen or be a mother but I couldn’t be both, and that when I had children I would have to step down.

He had generally been right about most things when it had come to running Wintergreen but, given his financial mismanagement, I’d begun to question a few things.

I didn’t see why I should have to have to step down from being CEO, for example. I wanted a child, I wanted to be head of Wintergreen and Constantine could definitely give me that.

I’d been told by my doctor that I had a limited window in which to get pregnant, and if I wanted children I had to start now, so it was that in the end that swayed me.

Also, there were worse things than having children with a physically perfect specimen of manhood who also just happened to be one of the most powerful men in Europe. His family history, of course, left a lot to be desired, which might not have made him the best choice to be the father of my children, but I could make it work. The child would have me, after all.

So I hadn’t refused, I’d accepted, and here I was—his fiancée.

‘Something the matter, Olivia?’ Constantine’s deep, cold voice tinged with the soft, musical Spanish accent he hadn’t quite been able to get rid of jolted me. ‘You seem disturbed.’

So, it seemed hehadnoticed my discomfort after all. How irritating.

I was excellent at projecting the kind of cool strength required of a CEO, but the fact that Constantine had noticed my discomfort meant my usual veneer was slipping.

I didn’t like that. He wasn’t a man who invited deep confidences—not that I’d have felt comfortable sharing them with him even if he had been—and had given me nothing but chilly courtesy for the past three months of our engagement.

I didn’t trust him. He was pure predator, just like his father had been, and if there was one thing I’d learned in the last eighteen months in the boardroom it was that showing weakness of any kind in front of a man like him was a mistake.

‘I’m fine,’ I said coolly, trying not to glance at the dark figure in the doorway yet again. ‘Only wondering when you were going to start the speeches.’

‘In a minute.’

I looked up at him. He sounded distracted, which was unusual. Normally he was all razor-sharp focus, like a shark sniffing blood in the water. When he had a target or a goal, he pursued it relentlessly.

Now, though, with his black eyes sweeping over the crowds like a searchlight, it seemed the target wasn’t his speech but something else.

Strange. Was he looking for someone? Perhaps it was Jenny, his stepsister, who’d promised to be there for the funeral yet hadn’t turned up so far. Or perhaps he’d sensed the guy in the doorway too.

Whatever, he didn’t seem to be bothered by it the way I was. Then again, Constantine had always seemed impervious to any feeling whatsoever. He was like a glacier—cold, glittering and perfect.

I’d known Constantine since I’d been seven years old, but we’d never been close, despite him only being a few years older than me. He’d been cold even then, more interested in his studies and doing whatever Domingo asked him to than playing games with Valentin and I...

Valentin.

An old, worn grief twisted inside me, a grief I thought I’d left behind a long time ago; the edges were somehow still sharp even after all these years.

How ridiculous. I shouldn’t be thinking of him.

I forced my gaze away from the man I was going to marry, the man who was the mirror image of the boy I’d once loved with all of my poor, silly teenaged heart.

The boy who’d died in a car accident fifteen years ago.

He and Constantine were identical twins, and many people had been unable to tell them apart, but never me. I’d always known who was who.

How can you marry him? When all you’ll ever see is everything he’s not? Everything you lost...

I ignored the thought. Really, I should stop listening to the ghost of my fifteen-year-old, overly dramatic self. I’d buried that weepy, hysterical child after Valentin had died and I’d moved on. I was nothing like her now and I didn’t want to be.

Abruptly, Constantine stopping searching and nodded to one of his aides, who immediately called for everyone’s attention.

The buzz of conversation died and I shoved away the echo of a long-ago grief, composing myself, turning myself back into the diamond heiress and Constantine Silvera’s cool and poised fiancée.

‘Friends,’ Constantine began, the ice in his voice searing all the warmth from the word. ‘Thank you all for coming. We are here today to celebrate the life of Domingo Silvera, my father—’

‘That sounds like my cue.’ The words were deep, gravelly, cutting through Constantine’s speech like a hot knife through frozen butter.

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