Marriage Made In Blackmail. Michelle Smart

way of dealing with you, bonita, but as for your brother, I will not say this again—we did not rip him off. I was going to get the gala out of the way and then call him but, instead, Benjamin stole Freya and tried to blackmail us. All my sympathy left me then. As far as I’m concerned, your brother can go to hell. The press speculation his actions have wrought are untenable. My assistant found comments on a newspaper website querying whether Freya ran off with Benjamin because she feared she would end up like my mother.’

      Chloe winced. She had many issues with Luis and Javier but they could no more help their parentage than she could help hers. ‘That’s disgusting.’

      ‘I’m glad you think so because you are going to help put things right. If you hadn’t called with your tale of terror I would have been at the gala before Benjamin stepped foot inside it. None of this would have happened.’

      ‘He believed you owed him two hundred and twenty-five million euros,’ she spat, her fleeting compassion overridden by anger. ‘Did you expect him to roll over and accept that? Did you expect me to? I was there with him at the hospital when you made that call begging for his help and his money.’

      She’d been there, at the first turn of the wheel of the whole mess.

      Chloe had been sitting on a bench in the hospital garden with her big brother, both of them dazed; her crying, he ashen, both struggling to comprehend the mother they loved so much was going to die. That was when Benjamin had received the call from Luis asking for his financial help.

      ‘If you felt Javier had been cheated would you sit there meekly and allow it to go unchallenged when there was something practical you could do to help?’

      ‘Probably not.’ He shrugged. ‘But would I have conspired to kidnap a woman and hold her to ransom...? No, I would not have gone that far if the first throw of the dice had not already been rolled.’

      ‘I did not conspire to kidnap Freya! I helped whisk her away from a potential marriage made in hell and...’

      ‘Is that how you justify it to yourself? I must remember to dress my actions up in a similar fashion when I tell you that you won’t be returning to port until you have married me.’