stole from me? God, Nicholas.” She threw her hands up, laughing without humor. “You made me your accomplice in stealing from me. You conned me into helping you.”
“I never meant for it to go like this. I never sought you out. You just…just appeared like an opportunity I couldn’t turn away from.”
“An opportunity?” she screeched. “I’m a real person. Not some pawn.”
“I know that. But Verana, I never expected you. You asked me why I never settled down, and I told you the truth. I gave every ounce of myself to my work because building my company was my revenge. For over a decade, all I did was focus on getting retribution for my family.”
“So, you took my legacy to avenge yours?”
“Lorenzo was running your legacy into the ground,” I shouted, losing my patience. Yes, I had planned to dismantle Mariano Shipping, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t already going down. “A company that had been running for generations shouldn’t have taken only a few years to take over. If you hadn’t come along, I would have still succeeded within the next five years. All because Mariano Shipping was a sinking ship.”
“No.” She exhaled the word like the truth knocked the wind from her. “No. That’s not true.”
“Why do you think your father was pushing you onto Camden? Because he needed his father’s money to keep the company going. And the contract your grandparents wrote stated that the company needed to be passed down to a man carrying the Mariano name. That’s why your father changed his name when he married your mother. He promised Camden’s father that if he bought into the company, Camden could marry you, and they’d hyphenate the name.”
She shook her head, her beautiful lips pulling down. I wanted to pull her into my arms and soothe her. I hated that she hurt.
“I may have taken the opportunity you gave me, but at least I had something to offer in return. With your father, you would have been trapped with a foul man like Camden. I would have given you freedom.”
“This is not freedom. I’m just another pawn stolen for someone else’s side.”
“Are you saying you would have rather stayed with Camden?”
“I’m saying I would have rather made my own choices.”
“You did make your own choices.”
“Yeah, at what cost? Five years of my life earning it?” She tipped her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Tell me, Nico. Why five when you only needed a month? Did you want to keep me as a trophy until you were done with me? One up my father’s bad deed by rubbing me in his face?”
“No one forced you to sign,” I growled. I wanted to cover her mouth and tell her she was anything but a simple trophy.
“I signed based on lies. You lied to get what you wanted. Just like my father.”
“Don’t compare me to him,” I warned.
“Why? You used me to get what you wanted. You stole a company from my family because he took yours.”
“He took everything from me,” I bellowed.
She jerked back, and I immediately regretted my loss of control. Taking a deep breath, I shoved past the flare of anger of being compared to Lorenzo. “He didn’t just take my company. He took all my grandpa had left of his family—of his wife. And he did it because he’s a lying, greedy snake. He did it because he played dirty and enjoyed winning for no other reason than he could.”
“And why did you?”
“Because he didn’t deserve Mariano Shipping,” I said without remorse. “I hate that I lied to you, but I have no regrets about taking Mariano Shipping from him.”
“It’s not just that you lied to me, Nicholas. You used me. You used me to take my legacy—to take my last connection to my mother. You knew how much I cherished that, and you stole it.” Her voice cracked, and she looked on the verge of collapsing—the anger fading and leaving her pain behind. Watching her try to look strong, when I knew how much she hurt, gutted me. “Even worse, you made me feel different. For the first time, I thought someone saw me for more than a way to get what they wanted—who saw me for all I had to offer. And I guess you did,” she said with a laugh. “Just not what I was offering willingly. You made me think you wanted me for me. You made me lo—” She cut her words off like if she