Page 130 of Worth Every Moment

“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 knowseverything. 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.Whoyou 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.