Page 67 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

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A rough shake to my shoulder wakes me, the pounding in my head crashing into my awareness. Sand on my face; grains of it in my mouth.

What the fuck? Where am I?

I spit out the sand, wiping my lips with the back of my hand.

“Hey, Seb,” comes a soft voice.

I roll onto my back to find Diana Marchetti staring down at me, eyes creased with concern, Erica’s shoes dangling in one hand.

Erica .

I scramble to sitting, twisting to face our cabin. The door is ajar. I’m about to push to my feet when Diana says, “She’s gone. I already checked.”

The world tilts. “Erica’s gone?”

“Yeah. Apparently Amy Moritz took her back to the mainland. They’re probably on a plane back to London already.”

She’s gone . My body hollows, the space filling with a hopeless panic that roars as loud as the ringing in my head.

I grapple with the sand, half dizzy as I run to the cabin and fling open the door, needing to verify for myself. I stumble from room to room, but it’s empty of her belongings. Her clothes, her shoes, her makeup; all gone.

How did I miss her leaving? I waited out here for hours. I must have fallen asleep. Or passed out? Amy and Erica must have walked right over me.

My legs weaken, and I clutch at the wall, wanting to sink to the floor. I’ve lost everything.

Given Diana is waiting outside, I can’t lie on the bed and weep, which is all I want to do. I step back outside, but as soon as I do, I start sprinting towards the jetty.

“Unless you’re planning on sprouting wings and taking off at three hundred miles an hour, you’re not going to catch her,” Diana yells. “She’s probably halfway across the Atlantic already.”

I stop, tilting my head back to the sky and raking both hands through my hair. This is a fucking nightmare .

Diana walks towards me, and when she reaches me, she sits in the sand, then taps the space next to her as though she expects me to sit too. Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to face my family, I drop down next to her, Erica’s shoes between us.

“I found them on the beach,” she says, nodding at them. “She really is like Cinderella, running away without her shoes.”

I give the slightest rumbling hum in response.

“You look like shit,” Diana murmurs. “You should get someone to clean you up. You might need stitches for your eyebrow.”

Stitches ? I run a finger over it. It’s crusty, gritty with sand, and still weeping blood.

Maybe I did pass out. Or maybe I drifted off and Erica knocked me out with another whack to the head with her shoe before she left. I wouldn’t put it past her.

Guilt churns. I missed the whole wedding. Dad will be furious, and Nico… fuck . Weddings are supposed to be a time of joy and celebration, and I spent my brother’s lying in the sand with a minor head injury.

No one came to find me except Diana. Did anyone give a shit? Judging by the low morning light that speckles the sea, it’s after dawn now, so no one did.

“You really love her, don’t you?” Diana’s voice interrupts my thoughts.

My heart twinges at the question. This is too raw. “Who?”

Diana sighs. “Erica, of course. You don’t have to pretend. I know you do.”

I catch her gaze and hold it. How much can this young woman take?

She seems robust, sitting here next to me, looking completely unaffected by the fact she found me passed out in the sand outside another woman’s room the morning after our engagement was announced.

She must be robust to be the daughter of Antonio Marchetti.

Yet at the same time, there’s an innocence to her.

Perhaps it’s because she’s only twenty, and it’s more youth than innocence.

Maybe her bright eyes and flawless skin are confusing me, but to agree to an engagement to a man who’s in love with someone else, signing your life away to please your father…

that’s a terrible burden. I’d pity her if I weren’t in the exact same situation.

“Arthur Knatchbull said you brought him a photo of Erica in a high street catalogue seven years ago, and that you told him you’d found the woman you were going to marry.”

I press my palms over my eyes. “I did say that.”

“If I fell as hard for someone as you fell for Erica, I’d never let them go. I’d fight for them.”

“You sound very idealistic.”

“And you sound like a condescending dickwad.” A laugh escapes me, but Diana plunges on. “How did he threaten you?”

An eerie awareness prickles my skin. “Huh?”

“Your father. I assume you didn’t agree to marry me willingly, seeing as you’re completely besotted with another woman.”

I grimace, clenching my teeth so hard that my jaw aches. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Do you think you were the only person threatened into this engagement?”

She was threatened too? It’s obvious, I suppose, but I never thought about it.

Diana Marchetti and I have more in common than I realised.

We’re both here, manipulated and coerced into doing something we don’t want to do.

I wasn’t aware she had a boyfriend or a partner, so I can’t imagine what her father held over her head. “What did you stand to lose?”

“My social media accounts.”

A surprised laugh escapes me and I conceal it with a cough. “You’d get married to save your social media accounts?”

She leans away from me, kicking her feet out into the sand.

“Who are you to judge what’s worth saving to me?

I run everything through those accounts.

It’s my business. I built them up from scratch.

It’s my income. My money. My freedom from both my father and you.

He also threatened my mailing list, and I have 75,000 people on that. He was going to close it all down.”

“He could do that?”

“Yeah. He has access to all of my content. He’s super paranoid.

He watches everything. There’s nothing that happens in any of his homes, his businesses, without him knowing about it.

Controlling it. He knows what my accounts are worth and how I run them.

He knows everything . He could have taken me down in seconds.

” She inhales. “So yes, I would marry you to save my livelihood. And everything I earn, I’ll spend on divorce lawyers to get rid of you. ”

I frown. “That makes no sense.”

“It does to me.”

I blow out a breath. “My father threatened to release photos of me with underage women.” Alarm spreads in her gaze and I’m quick to add, “Deep fakes. Not real. AI images. But— fuck —those things look real. He had a girl lined up to testify it was her. He was going to have me sent to prison. Probably for the rest of my life, which wouldn’t have been long because someone would have come and strung me up in my cell, and that would have been the end of it. ”

She touches two fingers to her lips, a furrow forming between her brows. “So you gave in? Just like that?”

My eyes pop. “Just like that? I’d like to at least see my fortieth birthday.”

“Forty is old.”

The randomness of her comment makes me chuckle.

“Not that old. Anyway, I didn’t give in.

I told my father he could release whatever he wanted.

Told him I didn’t give a fuck because Erica was the most important thing.

But then he threatened her career. I refuse to be the reason her life falls apart. ”

“So you let her go?”

I trace a small infinity symbol in the sand before I wipe it away. “Well, she’s gone, so I suppose so.”

We sit in silence, but it doesn’t feel awkward.

“I deserve to be loved,” Diana says eventually.

“I’m sure you do.”

She shuffles to face me, waiting until I give her my full attention. “You don’t believe you’re worthy of it, do you?”

Her words crackle like a fire that singes my skin. “Where did that come from?”

“You’d rather marry me and flay yourself for the rest of your life than go after what you want. Who you want. To bind yourself to me might actually be easier for you, in some fucked up, twisted way.”

“You don’t know me well enough to say something like that.”

She shrugs, the fingers of one hand diving deep into the sand. “I’m right.”

I snort. “Okay, then.”

But her words linger. Is that my issue? I don’t feel worthy of Erica?

Fuck it, I know in my bones that’s true, but am I letting her go too easily?

Would she ever take me back after this? Is it too late?

Anything I do will result in Dad destroying her career, so if I were to make a move, I’d have to move with stealth.

How the fuck would I do that?

I flop back on the sand, staring up at the sky, my mind sifting through everything that’s happened. Dad, the threats, the bribery… I can recall that meeting in the restaurant with a clarity I’d rather forget.

The restaurant. Holy fuck . Diana’s father’s restaurant.

I jerk upright, causing Diana to jump.

“What did you mean when you said your father watches everything? What does he watch?”

She blinks, tilting away from my overzealous questioning.

“I meant everything . He has cameras everywhere. Recording devices. He stores them in the basement at home. It’s full of recordings of all the famous people who have ever stepped inside one of his restaurants. There are devices in the booths—”

“In the booths?”

“Yeah. Like I said, he’s extremely paranoid, and when I did the interior design, I had to take all of it into account. There’s not an inch of that place that isn’t covered. He stores all the recordings in case he needs them to… you know…” She does a little head shuffle.

“Bribe people?”

“Yeah.”

“So, when we came to meet you at lunch—”

“All recorded. Definitely. I don’t think he trusts your father.”

“That’s totally illegal.”

She turns her palms upward, sand trickling through her fingers. “I don’t know how often he uses any of it.”

My heart thumps. “Could we get hold of it?”

“What for?”

“I have an idea, but I don’t know if it will work. In theory, could you get hold of the footage and recordings from that lunch?”

“Yeah. Easy.” She gives a coy smile. “I’m very friendly with one of my dad’s bodyguards.”

I arch an eyebrow. “ Very friendly?”

“Yeah.” She wafts the back of her hand in my direction. “We had a thing. It’s over, but he’ll do whatever I ask him to do. He manages Dad’s digital stuff. He’ll know where it is.”

“Brilliant. When we get back to London, let’s work out how to use it to get the fuck out of this engagement.”

She dusts the sand off her hands. “I’ll do anything to make that happen. I don’t want to spend my life shackled to a lovesick puppy like you. I deserve to be with someone who loves me. And so do you.”

I don’t believe it, but I hope to God she’s right.

She gives me a half smile, mischief twinkling in her eyes. “So tell me, is it true your dick is pierced?”