He dragged a hand through his hair, absently noting its tremor, and the spine-cracking tension it took to hold himself together.
The greatest professional achievement of his life had arrived with a side serving of a pile of ashes in his mouth.
How he’d managed to conduct a sane conversation with Lavinia at the formal press conference yesterday, he would never know.
He’d made the right noises and confirmed he would safeguard her legacy.
And all the while, the colossal mistake he’d made regarding his own legacy mocked him mercilessly.
All the while, the woman who it turned out knew him more than he knew himself had taken herself out of his life with such ruthless efficiency, he almost admired it.
A remote private Caribbean island accessible only by invitation and not a single dime of her existence came via him. She’d rejected the Amalfi villa, returned all his jewellery and refused every single one of his calls.
His only glimpse of her so far was via a grainy picture of her on the beach, her hand cradling the sweet curve of her stomach where his children continued to blossom.
His children.
The ones his last encounter with his father had driven him to claim on a visceral but totally misguided level. His toxic encounter with Pueblo had fuelled a savage need for history not to repeat itself. Except he’d come at it from totally the wrong angle.
A deep shudder racked his frame, infusing every fibre of his being with the misery he hadn’t been able to shake since Saffie’s departure. Did he even have the right to call them his after what he’d done?
After brazenly believing he could fight this fate worse than death and plough on as if nothing had happened, only to compound his woes?
His staff cowered when he approached. The new assistant he’d hired irritated him with the simple, fatal flaw that he wasn’t Saffie.
When midnight rolled around and the silence of whichever office he happened to be in oppressed him, none of his residences felt remotely like home.
Not without Saffie.
His fists balled, the anguish that even thinking of her name brought ravaging his insides.
She’d opened her heart to him, laid bare her most precious wish. A wish that ran parallel to one he’d been unwilling to admit to.
To be better versions of the lives imprinted on them.
Instead he’d taken it and soiled it.
Now it was too late.
/> He heard footsteps approach but didn’t turn around. ‘Monsieur Oliviera? Your guests are waiting for you on the terrace so the fireworks can begin.’
His fist tightened so hard he felt a bite of pain. But this pain would never come close to the one in his heart. And he couldn’t live with it. Not any more. ‘Tell them I have better things to do. They can all entertain themselves.’
‘Monsieur?’
‘Call my pilot. Tell him to get my plane ready.’
It might be too late but he needed to hear her say it to his face.
* * *
The richest man in the world had, with the Archer acquisition, solidified his position once and for all, leaving his nearest competition in the dust.
Saffie set aside the newspaper screaming Joao’s success, his sheer brilliance and a dozen more superlatives. She shouldn’t have opened the paper. Shouldn’t have given into the temptation for just one more glimpse of him.
Even thousands of miles away, the man could so very easily devastate her.
She struggled to calm the agonised roaring within, then realised the rush of sound wasn’t in her head.