The Third Sin Read Online Free Page A

difference.”
    â€œDon’t be crazy. Everyone will know it was sold, especially when some other woman turns up wearing it. Mother came from a family of jewelers and taught me that wearing a genuine stone gives a woman confidence. I’m telling you once and forever, I won’t wear a fake.”
    â€œWhat do you expect me to do? Call Wade and tell him he’s making a mistake in selling it?”
    She strained to control her temper. “Why would Wade listen to you? I promise you, Max, you’re the one who will be making a mistake if you don’t buy it for me. I know you have the money. You’re worth close to a billion. Buy the stone. Mother would have wanted you to do this for me.”
    â€œIrina.” Max’s voice softened with the weariness of age. “I can’t afford to buy that diamond and neither can you. It could bring thirty or forty million or more. The damn Arab oil people and the Russians have big money now.”
    â€œYou have big money too.”
    â€œYou have an over-the-top impression of my money … always have. I’ve got partners, obligations … problems.”
    She interrupted him. “Stop. I’m sick of you crying poor. What you did to my mother ruined my life. How can you deny me what I want?”
    When he spoke, she heard the tinge of fear in his voice.
    â€œI’m not promising anything, but I’ll give it some thought.” That was the concession she had been waiting for.
    â€œI’m sure you’ll find a way. Good-bye.” She smiled as she hung up. The Braganza would be hers.
    She stayed at the window, looking down at the golden leaves below. In the end, Max would buy the stone for her.
    But if he didn’t, what would she do?

 
    Chapter 4
    W EDNESDAY, 12:30 P.M.
    Guarulhos International Airport, São Paulo, Brazil Private plane lounge
    Jorge Dias felt a jab of pain in his chest and stiffened. The surgeon had warned him that he would feel pain after the bypass operation, but this was sharper than he expected. His wife, Elenora, was right. He had to look after himself—he knew that he wasn’t well, yet, and worse, he knew that he looked it. The strain of his illness showed. He knew by the way friends glanced at him, and then looked quickly away.
    A few more days of rest would have helped, but there was no time for that. This trip to New York might be his last chance to buy the diamond back from his nephew, Wade.
    He walked slowly across the lounge and settled in a chair away from the crowd at the bar, who were sipping drinks and chattering, perhaps getting up the nerve to actually fly in their small, private planes. Jorge reached for the newspaper on the table beside him and opened it to hide his face.
    His plane would take off in a few minutes, and in nine and a half hours he would land at JFK International Airport in New York. Then he would call Wade and they would meet, and Jorge would struggle, as always, with his feelings for his nephew.
    From the terrible day his sister Esperanza was killed, he had felt an inseparable mix of love and pity for her son, and too often, that overwhelmed his good sense. Whatever Wade wanted, Jorge gave him, and the grief-stricken boy had grown into a greedy man. But the Braganza was the one thing Jorge could not give him.
    Jorge’s father, Fernando Dias, had always intended that the Braganza would remain in Brazil and eventually be displayed as a treasure in the national museum. Though Fernando’s will had not specified the stone’s fate, the whole family knew what he had wanted. A Brazilian aristocrat, bound by honor, Jorge now had to make good on his father’s promises.
    Fernando had worshipped his daughter Esperanza. On her eighteenth birthday, he had given her the Braganza. She loved wearing the stone, so Fernando had raised no objection when, after her marriage, she took it to New York.
    It had been different when Esperanza’s son, Wade,