One Reckless Decision (Mills & Boon M&B): Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past (Special Releases)

by Crews, Caitlin

  But the logical part of her mind was not the part that had dressed in this gown, allowed her hair to be teased into place or her makeup to be applied with such care by her attendants. The logical part of her had nothing to do with the serene bridal vision she saw reflected in her mirror. And the truth was that Tristanne had no idea what she should do—what she wanted to do.

  Except…that was not the truth, was it?

  Tristanne felt something click into place inside of her then, as realization finally dawned, the fog that had invaded her brain seeming, finally, to clear.

  A woman who was appropriately appalled by the fact that Nikos had, very clearly, wanted nothing to do with her declaration would have done something about it. She might have left, called off the wedding, or found Nikos to demand that he explain himself. A woman who was not afraid to push the issue would…have pushed. But Tristanne was afraid. She was afraid that if pushed, Nikos would disappear. Hadn’t she been afraid of this very thing since the evening he had proposed? So instead, she had allowed herself to be carried along by the age-old rituals of the bride’s toilette. She had chosen what she wanted by pretending not to choose.

  “You must come and see,” Vivienne said then, her thin, breathy voice breaking in to Tristanne’s reverie. “Look at this fine sight, Tristanne!”

  Tristanne blinked, feeling as if she was waking from some kind of drugged sleep. She turned to find that her mother had moved across the room to peer out of one of the windows that looked out over the villa’s sculpted gardens where the civil ceremony was supposed to take place. Tristanne walked over to join her there, feeling the caress of her gown against her legs, the brush of her curls against her shoulders. Her skin felt too sensitive, as if Nikos was in front of her, that half smile on his dark face and molten gold in his eyes. Her body knew what it wanted. What it always wanted and, she feared, always would. No matter what.

  She stood at her mother’s side and looked down into the sun-kissed garden. Guests were already taking their seats in the rows of chairs set to face the gleaming blue sea. White flowers flowed from baskets, and birds sang from above. It was a beautiful scene—as if ripped from the pages of some glossy wedding magazine and brought to life.

  All that was missing was the groom.

  “No, I am sure he will come,” Tristanne said at first, when the appointed time had come and gone. The guests’ murmurs had turned to open, speculative conversation that Tristanne could hear all too well from the windows above.

  But he did not come. Fifteen minutes became thirty. Then forty-five minutes, then an hour, and still Nikos did not appear.

  “He would not do this,” Tristanne said, her voice wooden. She had said it several times already—to her mother’s drawn and anxious face, to her increasingly furious brother—both before and after the necessary announcement had been made to the assembled guests.

  She had shut herself down. Her stomach might heave, her head might spin, and she might be fighting back tears that seemed to come from her very soul—tears she was afraid to give into because she did not think she would ever stop—but she would not show it. She could not show it!

  “Would he not?” Peter spat this time, whirling to face her. “He has no doubt lived for this moment for the past ten years!”

  “You do not know what you’re talking about,” Tristanne said, automatically jumping to Nikos’s defense, even as she heard the desperate edge in her voice. How could this be happening? How could he have done this?

  Please…she cried inside her mind. But she remembered that bitter undercurrent to his words. That bleak look in his eyes.

  “It had to be Nikos Katrakis, didn’t it?” Peter sneered. His pacing had rendered him red-faced and slightly shiny, and his cold eyes slammed into her. Ordinarily she would heed these warning signs and try to maintain a safe distance from Peter’s rage—but she could not seem to move from the chair she had sunk into when the clock had struck an hour past the time she had been meant to walk down the aisle. She could only stare at him, willing herself not to break down.

  Not in front of Peter. She had never broken down in front of Peter. Not even when he used his hands.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, with admirable calm. From a distance, she thought, she might even look calm, while inside she thought she might already have died.

  “You had to pick out the one man alive who could make our situation worse! We will be the laughingstock of Europe!” Peter hissed. “I knew this would happen—I told you this would happen! You selfish, irresponsible—”

  “That’s rich, coming from you,” Tristanne heard herself saying, with fight and spirit that felt completely foreign to her. As if she cared about Peter, or, perhaps, it was that she no longer cared at all, about anything. “I am not the one who lost the family fortune.”

  She heard her mother gasp in horror, but she could not tend to Vivienne just then. She could not even tend to herself. She could only sit there, her hands clenched in her lap, her dress stiff and uncomfortable all around her, trying to make sense of what was happening. What could not be happening. What was, it became clear with every passing second, really and truly happening after all.

  He would not do this! something inside of her howled. Not after she had told him everything. Not after all that had passed between them. She thought of that archway in Florence—the way that he had held her then. The fierce, consuming way he had made love to her. So raw, so desperate. How could none of that be real?

  Peter laughed, unpleasantly. “I hope you enjoyed your low-class love affair while it lasted, Tristanne. I hope it was worth the humiliation we will now face in front of the entire world! Our father must be turning over in his grave!”

  “Something must have happened to him,” Tristanne said, but even she could not believe it at this point. Two hours and thirty-six minutes, and Nikos was not here. He was not coming. He was not coming. Though, in truth, she was still hoping. That he had been in a car accident, perhaps. His broken body in a hospital bed, and wouldn’t they all be so ashamed of their revolting speculation—

  But then there was a commotion near the door, and one of his servants stood there, looking embarrassed. And she knew before he said a single word.

  “I am so sorry, miss,” he said, not making eye contact, wringing his hands in front of him. “But Mr. Katrakis left this morning. He took the helicopter into Athens, and he has no plans to return.”

  Tristanne got up then. It was that or simply collapse into herself. She launched herself to her feet, and moved away from the chair, looking desperately around the stark, white room as if something in it might calm her, or make this nightmare better somehow. He has no plans to return.

  “What a surprise,” Peter snapped, advancing on her. His face was screwed up with rage, and that black hatred that had always emanated from him in waves. “He remembered that he is a Katrakis and you are a Barbery! Of course he could not marry you! Of course he chose instead to humiliate you! I should have expected this from the start!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told Peter, through lips that felt numb. She wanted to scream, to run, to hide…but where on earth could she possibly go? Her old life in Vancouver? How could it possibly fit her now? How could she ever pretend she had not felt what she had felt, nor loved as she still loved, even now, in the darkest of moments? It was choking her. Killing her. And she had the strangest feeling that even should she survive the horror of this moment, what she felt would not diminish at all. She knew it in the exact same, bone-deep way that she had known that Nikos Katrakis would ruin her. She knew it.

  “Did you think he wanted you, Tristanne?” Peter hissed. “Did you imagine he was sufficiently enamored of your charms? The only thing you had that Katrakis wanted was your name.”

  “My name?” She felt as thick, as stupid, as Peter had always told her she was. “Why would he care about my name?”

  “Because he loathes us all,” Peter threw at her. “He swore he woul
d have his revenge on us ten years ago, and congratulations, Tristanne—you have handed it to him on a silver platter!”

  “Peter, please,” Vivienne murmured then. “This is not the time!”

  But Tristanne was watching her brother’s expression, and a prickle of something cold washed over her.

  “What did you do?” she asked. Her fists clenched, as if she wanted to protect Nikos from Peter—but no, that could not be what she felt. She wanted to make sense of what was happening, that was all. There had to be a reason he had abandoned her—there had to be! “What did you do to him?”

  “Katrakis is nothing but trash,” Peter snapped. “Ten years ago he had ideas above his station. He got in over his head in a business deal, and could not handle himself. He lost some money, made some threats.” He shrugged. “I was astounded he ever made anything of himself. I expected him to disappear back into the slime from which he came.”

  “Then let me ask you another way,” Tristanne said coldly, Nikos’s words spinning through her head, their whole history flashing past her as if on a cinema screen. “What does he think that you did?”

  “I believe he blames me for any number of things,” Peter said dismissively. “He had a rather emotional sister, I believe, who fancied herself in love and then claimed she was pregnant. ” He scoffed, and made a face. “He blamed me when she overdosed on sleeping pills, but his own mother was a known drug user. I rather think blood tells, in the end.” His lip curled. “Look at yours.”

  Vivienne made a soft sound, and something ignited inside of Tristanne. She waited to feel the usual wave of shame, of anger, that someone who should love her should find her so disgusting, so worthless. But it never came. All she could think was that this was how her brother chose to speak to her just after she had been left at the altar. This was how he chose to behave. And the worst part was that it was in no way a departure from his usual behavior. He had treated her this way for years—and she had allowed it, because better her than her mother. But why would he stop, now that Gustave was gone? Soon, she had no doubt, he would turn it on her mother directly, and she could not have that.

  She had not gone through this, all of this, to watch Peter destroy Vivienne as she knew he wished to do—as he had already tried to do. She did not know how she would survive the next moment, or the next breath, with the vast, impossible pain that ate her from the inside out. She wondered who she was now that it was over, now that Nikos had left her, and how she might ever put the pieces of herself back together. She had no idea what might become of her.

  But she was still standing, and maybe that was all that mattered. For as long as she could stand, she could protect her mother. Which was why she was here in the first place.

  “You are a monster,” she said softly, but distinctly, to Peter. “I do not think there is a shred of humanity within you. Not one shred.”

  Peter moved closer, his face set into a scowl. Yet Tristanne did not step away. Or shrink back. After all, what could he do to her that Nikos had not already done? Threaten her? Bruise her? Why should she care? The worst had already happened. She was a fool in the eyes of the world, and worse, she was in love with the man who had abandoned her. She had no idea how she would ever get past this. She had no idea where she would start. How could Peter possibly compete?

  “You had better watch yourself, sister,” he hissed, his voice menacing.

  It was the word sister that rang in her, then. That ricocheted inside of her and made her realize that he had never honored that term, not even when they were children. At least her father, for all that he had been cold and dismissive, had performed his fatherly duties. He had fed her, clothed her, paid for her schooling until he no longer felt he could support her choices. And perhaps Nikos had been right to make her question the appropriateness of those choices. It had hurt her at the time that Gustave could not be more supportive of her—but then, that was not at all who Gustave Barbery had been. He might not have been the best father she could have hoped for, but at least he had been a father.

  What had Peter ever done? Tristanne, who had never asked him for anything, had asked him for access to her trust fund a few years early and what was his response? To whore her out at his command, for his purposes. And now, in the worst moment of her life, abandoned at the altar on her wedding day—still wearing her wedding dress—he behaved liked this. If she could have felt something beyond the agony of Nikos’s betrayal, she might have felt sick.

  “I am not your sister,” she told him, feeling more free in that moment than ever before. “I don’t know why I ever cared to honor the relationship when you, clearly, do not. Consider it ended.”

  “How dare you—” he began.

  She turned her back on him, and looked wildly around, her gaze landing on her mother. Beautiful, vibrant Vivienne, so diminished now. So delicate. She was the only family Tristanne had ever had. The only thing worth protecting. And she was worth this, Tristanne told herself fiercely. Her mother was worth any price, no matter how heavy.

  “Mother,” she said, her voice rough enough to be a stranger’s. But then, she felt like a stranger to herself, almost as if she inhabited someone else’s body. A body Nikos would never love again, never taste again; a body that would never melt into his—she shook the thoughts away, and bit back the sob that threatened to spill out. “I must change out of these clothes, and then we are leaving this place.”

  “Where will we go?” Vivienne asked, like a child, her voice soft. Weak. It only hardened Tristanne’s resolve.

  “You will go directly to Salzburg,” Peter ground out behind her. “Or I will cut you both out like the parasites you are. Do you hear me?”

  “Do what you must,” Tristanne said offhandedly—only to gasp when he reached over and grabbed her arm, hauling her toward him as he had many times before, his fingers digging into the flesh of her arm.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Your pathetic life in Canada? You are useless and she makes you look industrious! Do you imagine you can both work on your backs?”

  Tristanne heard Vivienne’s shocked exclamation, but she focused on Peter’s hard, cold eyes, and let all of her pain and rage build inside of her.

  “I doubt my imagination is half so vivid as yours,” she spat at him. She jerked her arm out of his grasp, shoving back from him with a force that surprised them both. He was stronger than her—and a true bully—but he did not expect her to push back. He dropped his hand. She moved around him, heading for the dressing room door.

  “This is all very impressive, but we both know you’ll come crawling back to me within the month,” he snarled. “Don’t think I will be as generous with you as I was this time.”

  “Believe me,” she threw over her shoulder, her sarcasm practically burning her tongue. “I am well aware of the limits of your generosity.”

  He laughed at her. “And what exactly do you think will become of you, Tristanne?” he taunted her.

  She looked back then. For the last time. She knew in that moment that she would never see Peter again. And in the midst of all the rest of the pain, the horror, that she was not certain she would ever sort out, it ignited one small flare of hope.

  “I will survive,” she told him, and she knew, somehow, that she would. “No thanks to you.”

  All she had to do was keep standing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NIKOS sat in his favorite small bar in Athens, drinking the most expensive liquor available, and told himself he was celebrating.

  He had been celebrating in this manner for weeks now. He had so much to celebrate, after all. He should be overjoyed. The pictures of his aborted, abandoned wedding were in all the papers, the humiliation for the Barberys as extreme as he’d anticipated. He had it on excellent authority that Peter Barbery’s investors had abandoned him, and the Barbery fortunes were in free fall. Peter was expected to declare bankruptcy before the year was out, whether he had faced this truth or not.

  At first,
Nikos told himself that the odd feeling that claimed him was no more than the usual letdown after a particularly long campaign. One should expect to feel the absence of focus after living with such a specific goal for so long. It was natural—logical, even. And that was all that it was. There could be no other explanation.

  So he told himself while he closed other deals, racing through them like a madman. A chain of hotels in the Far East. A thoroughbred race horse considered highly likely to win the Triple Crown. A boutique inn on the French Riviera that catered to a very elite, very private few. All deals that should have made him feel that his position—his global dominance—was cemented. Unassailable and assured. All deals that would have had him truly celebrating not so long ago. With the prettiest women, the most expensive wine, in the most glamorous places he could find.

  Instead he found himself on the same bar stool in this same hidden-away bar that he had once worked in, in another lifetime, bussing tables for the actors and actresses who frequented the place. Tonight he swirled a fine whiskey in his glass and stared at nothing, unable to avoid the truth any further.

  He had achieved his ultimate revenge—made all of his dreams come true—and he simply did not care. He had stood at his father’s grave, laid flowers for Althea and her lost child and he had not felt a thing. What a pointless exercise, he had thought, staring down at a stone marker that commemorated the man who had never cared overmuch for him, the girl who had hated him and the baby who had never had a chance. He had become the man his father would be proud of, finally. He knew this was true the moment he realized he simply could not bring himself to care about the family name he had taken all this time to avenge. It was as if he had turned to stone himself.