Page 5 of A Diamond for My Forbidden Bride

I’d never got to say goodbye. I’d been upset about it, but not worried. Because he’d had my mobile number and we could have texted each other and called.

Except he hadn’t called. And he hadn’t texted. And he hadn’t emailed.

I’d never heard from him again.

Six months later, he was dead.

I’d only been fifteen and full of the desperate, dramatic emotions that often fill teenage girls. He’d been my first love, my first heartbreak.

But I was a woman now, not a child, and I’d left all of that behind me. I was stronger, harder and colder, as I’d needed to be to manage my company. So I had no idea why I was suddenly full of emotion, full of a blistering rage that left me shaking.

Because how dared he?

How dared he have left me without saying goodbye? Without a text, a call or even an email? How dared he break my heart like that, knowing how much I’d loved him? How dared he tell me he loved me, only to leave?

And, more than anything else, how dared he pretend to die?

I opened my mouth to tell him where he could stick his, ‘Come, Olivia’.

Then all the lights went out and the ballroom was plunged into darkness.

For an instant, there was only silence.

Then the entire place erupted into chaos, people shouting and screaming.

I stayed where I was, rage and shock still coiling through me, making it difficult to think. Someone called my name, but I couldn’t tell who it was or in what direction it had come from. Then I felt someone grab my hand, their grip large, warm and strong.

Constantine.

Strange that I should feel better with his hand holding mine, since I’d never needed reassurance from him before. Nevertheless, I did now, so I held tightly to him as he gently pulled me along through the blackness.

Light was coming through a doorway, his tall, broad figure momentarily blocking it out as he approached it. Behind me, I could still hear people shouting in confusion and the sound of smashing glass.

My heart was still beating far too fast, though my fear was receding.

What on earth had happened? Had there been a power failure or something? Yet, even as I thought it, I knew the idea was ludicrous.

The lights had gone out with perfect timing, just before Constantine had been about to take charge. Which meant it was no power failure.

Valentin had engineered it, I was sure, but why? To what end?

Constantine drew me through the doorway and I stood for a second, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light. And, as they did, he turned around.

And my heart dropped all the way down into my uncomfortably high stilettos.

Because it wasn’t Constantine.

It was Valentin.

CHAPTER TWO

Valentin

FINALLY. FINALLY,AFTERALLthose months of planning, Olivia Wintergreen was mine.

But then, she always had been.

Her clear, light grey eyes had widened and I had been able to see the shock rippling over her pale, delicately featured face.

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