Page 9 of Marriage Bargain With Her Brazilian Boss (Billion-Dollar Fairy Tales)

“Before you...” Her throat was dry and her heart was beating away and it felt like every raw, uncertain, inch of her was exposed to his bright golden eyes. “Before things change even more. Before I...” She pressed her forehead to his bicep, trembling at his nearness.

“Before you what, Nush?” he repeated softly, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his gaze pinning her to the spot.

She looked up and he was looking down at her and Nush thought her heart might jump out of her chest and shout out her last secret if he didn’t let her go. And so she said the one thing that she knew would fracture that impenetrable armor of his. “Before I hate you, Caio. I want to leave before everything that’s good and right between us rots and dies.”

He released her so fast that she stumbled back. But in the next breath, his arm was around her waist, steadying her, letting her find her balance. Watching over her even as she made a fool of herself.

Weak and spineless as she was, Nush sought his gaze but he wasn’t looking at her. His dismissal of her was as complete as she’d wanted it to be. And something between them broke and she wondered if that was the beginning of the end of the bond they’d always shared.

Tucking her arms tight around her midriff, she ran from the room. Heads turned, conversations stopped, whispers abounded but it didn’t matter what anyone thought of her. Not when she knew in her heart of hearts that she was a coward.

Shaking her head at Mira, who’d only make her talk about it, Nush left the house.

Quitting...was the only course of action left to her.

Quitting working with him.

Quitting this first-row seat to his life.

Quitting Caio completely might be the only way she could break out of it.

CHAPTER TWO

CAIOOLIVEIRAWASa man who was rarely ever shocked by life. Because he arranged for it to be exactly how he liked it. From the people he surrounded himself with—there were maybe four people in the world he allowed to speak their minds with him, one whose loss was eating through him—to how many more moves he needed to make to achieve his goal, to what kind of distractions he allowed in his life in the name of fun and play: everything was thought out, everything was calculated.

For more than a decade, he’d worked hundreds of hours a week to turn OneTech into the tech giant it was today. He’d taken risk upon risk, alienated most of the board members, fought and won countless battles with Rao to achieve the level of success he had. He’d never lost sight of his why though.

He could have stopped at any moment in the last few years. He’d never have to work in his life again if he stopped tomorrow and could still live a life of unprecedented luxury. But luxury and yachts and penthouses or acquisition of any other kind of material wealth had never driven him.

Only the need to prove himself after he’d been robbed of everything that had mattered to him, the need to exact revenge on the man who’d cast him out of his own home and his father’s company, who’d destroyed his relationship with his mother.

And now, after years, he had what he’d wanted all these years within grasp. Almost. Another week and he’d have been able to acquire the software giant his stepfather operated out of Brazil.

Only Rao had passed away unexpectedly—before he could sell his stock to Caio—and while Caio had enough independent wealth to not need OneTech, he did need the clout he’d have as CEO of OneTech to acquire such a big company. To force his stepfather to sell it without knowing that Caio was pulling the strings meant using one of the subsidiaries that he and Rao had set up in Nush’s name.

Right now, he needed to focus all his energies on retaining the CEO position on the board of OneTech. He needed to see Peter Huntingon Sr.’s cunning strategies and counteract them. And for that, if he needed to tie himself to the man’s daughter—whom he’d been dangling in front of Caio—then so be it. He would let himself be chained to a woman even if he’d never had any intentions of marrying. At least he could tolerate Laura.

Except...for the bomb Anushka had dropped in his lap earlier. For now, he could go ahead with his plans without her standing by his side, absolutely. But...he wanted Nush on his side. By his side for this next leg of OneTech’s journey.

And the fact that he did jarred him on levels he didn’t want to examine right then.

The only thing that existed outside of this driving need to send his stepfather and his stepbrother to their knees was his relationship with Nush. The only person he’d allowed close—which was delusional in itself because it had happened without his knowledge or permission—the only person he could be someone else with other than a man driven by the need for revenge was Anushka.

Years ago, he’d stopped trying to control how their relationship evolved. Had admitted that somehow Nush had lodged herself under his skin, never to be pulled out.

From the moment he’d picked her up on that flight years ago to this evening when she’d suddenly turned on him...she’d been the one thing Caio had never been able to box into a grid in his life. Not even Rao had stitched himself up into the fabric of his life as Nush had.

A creature of habit, he was used to having her as a part of his life. Part of his inner circle—a circle of two, as Rao once had joked, when he’d found Nush and Caio laughing at something in the early hours of dawn at their respective workstations in her lab.

How dare she now change the rules on him?

He wanted to write off her sudden anger at him as her grief and loss taking over, but he hadn’t been able to let it go. Hours had passed and it stung and poked like a rusted nail scratching under his skin. It infuriated him that she had such a hold on him and yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself from seeking her out. From wanting to provide some kind of reassurance—like a codependent friend or worse a spurned lover—and demand it return that things between them would go back to as they’d been.

For months now, he’d sat back and watched as she’d distanced herself from him little by little. Had watched with more than a mild irritation and at times confused and misdirected fury, as she’d forced herself into a social life he knew she didn’t want, as she’d dated and partied and entertained men like Peter Huntington Jr. Even though he knew she despised the kind of crowd that trust fund brat represented. Had suppressed the urge to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing with her life. Had reassured himself that the burn he felt in his gut when he saw her with a man was nothing but his overtly possessive, protective nature rearing its head.

When he’d brought up her sudden party animal behavior with her grandfather, Rao had smiled an infuriatingly cryptic smile and said his little Princess was testing her wings, whatever the hell that meant.

Caio remembered being baffled as to why sensible, smart Nush would indulge in things that didn’t appeal to her in the first place. And the worst part, he’d felt a sense of disappointment in her, a strange, stinging sense of betrayal at how she’d started pulling away from him.

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