Pursued (The Diamond Tycoons 2) by Tracy Wolff

diamonds and—”
    “Clean diamonds?” she asked, trying to wrap her head around the term. “Meaning not stolen?”
    “
Clean
meaning responsibly sourced.”
    “Oh, of course. We’re talking about conflict diamonds. Blood diamonds.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Bijoux.” The name came to her easily, thanks to her time in the society pages. Much of San Diego’s elite had been buzzing for the past few months about the fact that Marc Durand and his brother had come to town. They were big philanthropists and everyone wanted some of their money to support their pet charities—or themselves, for that matter.
    She hadn’t met either of the brothers yet. They’d been too busy setting up their business and their foundation to come to any of the galas she’d worked. Or if they had, she’d certainly never run into them. Which might be a good thing considering she was now going to be investigating them.
    “Good,” Malcolm told her with a satisfied nod.
    “They’re one of the biggest diamond corporations in the world right now, and you think they’ve been lying about where they get their diamonds.”
    “I don’t know if they’re lying or not, but your job is to figure out if they are. Right now, all I know is that somebody came to me and told me the brothers were pulling a fast one, masquerading as responsible diamond sourcers and then marking up the prices on conflict diamonds to ratchet up profits. I want to know if there’s any truth to the story, and if there is, I want to know every single detail about it before we run this story and blow their whole business sky-high. You double-, triple- and quadruple-check this source and every other source you come across. Understand?”
    “Absolutely.” She opened up the file on her tablet, skimming over the information he’d sent her. Most of it was pretty sketchy, but she’d fix that soon enough. “When’s the due date? And how many words do you want on this?”
    Malcolm shook his head. “Let’s just see how it goes. You find out if this is just some disgruntled ex-employee blowing smoke. If he is, the story goes away.”
    “And if he isn’t?”
    “If he isn’t, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It will be a huge story and I’m thinking you’ll probably need a partner to write it with you.”
    “I don’t need a partner—” she started, but he held up a hand.
    “Look, I know you’re good. I know you’re ready to show me what you’ve got. But you’re still a rookie reporter and it doesn’t matter how good you are, kid. There’s no way I’m trusting a story this big to a snot-nosed society reporter.”
    “You’re going to use me for the grunt work and then cut me out.” She kept her voice calm when all she really wanted to do was curse. This could be her big break, and he was already talking about taking it away from her.
    “I didn’t say that. What I said was that I’m going to let you investigate and if you get something, I’m going to let you help write the biggest story of your career to date. If you want to write this story, if you want to see your byline front page above the fold, you need to give me something to work with. Show me what you got.”
    “Of course.” She nodded calmly while inside she was dancing. What he said made sense—and it was fair. She would investigate the hell out of this story, find out everything she could and even find out the angle she wanted to take. Maybe she’d even write the article and present it to him as a fait accompli. Then he would see what she could do and make an informed decision about how to proceed. And if she did this right—if she triple-checked her sources and dotted every i and crossed everything that even looked like a t—then he wouldn’t have a choice. He’d have to move her out of the society pages and into news. Or at least into features.
    This was what she’d been waiting for. Her big break. The story she’d been dying to tell.
    “Got it?” Malcolm asked again.
    Oh,