by Caro LaFever
Natalie watched as the black limo inched into the early morning traffic and drove off. Leaving her alone on an icy sidewalk in lower Manhattan.
She’d asked to be let out. Dropped off. Left. She couldn’t stand to be with him for one more moment. The words had from her mouth before she’d even realized it was what she desperately wanted and needed.
He hadn’t even blinked.
A tight knot of grief filled her throat. Was this what her mother felt when she’d finally confronted the reality of her husband? No, not really. Her mother had never done what Nat just did. Her mother had ignored all the signs around her showing what her husband really was. Her mother had never had the courage to cut her father off completely. She’d wheedled and stuck like glue to her husband instead of demanding her freedom.
This was good what she’d just done. Unlike Elena Globenko, Natalie Globenko had done the right thing.
Terrible, impossible grief welled in her throat.
Her hand tightened around the envelope. The thick wad of cash felt like a lead weight pulling at her fingers, her palm, her arm. Dragging her down and down. Down into the hellhole her mother had escaped into for the last years of her life.
Fifty thousand dollars.
She hadn’t had to count the bills. She already knew. She’d known as soon as he’d looked into her eyes after he’d opened her gift. She’d known for an entire day her dreams and hopes and love were impossible. Merely with one of his looks.
The money was just the perfect way to get rid of a pretend wife.
She glanced down. The white of the envelope, the last thing he’d touched that she would ever hold, the white contrasted like a blinding light with the dirty crust of snow on the sidewalk curb. Her payoff. A way in which he could salve his conscience and get her out of his life without any silly emotion and sad goodbyes and sullen looks.
A way he could subtly put her in her place.
A tight gasp escaped her.
Along with it went the grief. In its place surged an angry determination.
She would not do this. She would not be like her mother in this instance either. She would not pretend everything was okay. She would not take a man’s money even if it were the easier way. She would not slink away with the cash and use it to pay off the thugs—the thugs who surely would see the photos taken a mere hour ago. Zenos coming home with his reclusive bride would warrant at least a bit of attention in the tabloids. Within a day, she’d be hunted. But she wouldn’t take the easy way. Not like her mother. If that meant facing the possibility of being killed, then she’d face death when it came.
Looking around, she almost laughed. How convenient.
She was only a couple of blocks from his company’s building if she wasn’t mistaken. Tugging her suitcase behind her, she weaved around the growing crowd of office workers striding to work and street vendors crying their wares. Within a few minutes, she walked right to the front doors proudly proclaiming the Zenos name.
The Zenos crest. The lone eagle, gilded with gold, flying into the air on the glass pane.
Proud and alone.
Aetos Zenos could not have been clearer. And that was fine with her. He could fly off, leaving her behind forever with her blessing. Still, she would not allow him to crush her in his talons and leave her in the dust. Exactly like every other woman he’d had.
She’d survive. She wasn’t dead yet.
Natalie opened the door and strode into a lobby filled with the bustle of a new day. The envelope burned in her hand. She needed to get rid of it. Rid of him.
“Yes, miss?” The elderly gentleman’s bushy eyebrows rose and he leaned over the front desk as she approached.
For a moment, she held onto the envelope.
Not the money.
No.
No, for a moment, she held onto the connection to her lover, her soul mate. For a moment, she remembered. The way he threw his head back when he laughed. The light in his chestnut eyes as he eased inside her willing body. The adorable look of confusion when his giagiá hugged him.
Then the moment passed.
The envelope was gone. As well as Aetos Zenos from her life.
Chapter 22
Aetos stared through his office window at the skyscrapers. The spires of blue glass and gray steel reminded him of the silly, bright shingles his giagiá had picked out for her roof.
He shifted in his leather office chair. The thought was crazy. There could not be anything so dissimilar as these monsters of modernity compared to a simple farmhouse lost in the ancient mountains of Greece.
Swinging around, he stared at the blank screen of his computer. Exactly as he had the day before. The computer had nothing to say to him. He glanced once more, because he couldn’t help himself, at the newspapers littering his desk. The newspapers he’d bought as he walked from his brownstone to the office this morning.
His chauffeur had been astonished.
Aetos Zenos always went to work in the limo. The habit allowed him a few extra minutes to make a dozen calls and answer a hundred emails.
He couldn’t be in the limo. It reeked of her scent and her presence. Plus, he was restless. Even though he’d lain awake all night long in his empty bed, a sort of hot, hard virus streamed through his blood. It made him feel as if he were about to explode if he didn’t keep moving.
So, he walked.
The pictures of her caught his attention the moment he’d seen the papers. The blond wisps of hair streaming in the wind when he’d yanked her to the limo. Her wide blue eyes staring in shock at the camera. Her lithe, long body twisting as she took her seat.
He stared at himself in the photos. Stared at the hard, guarded face, the ugly slant of his mouth, the fisted hands. He’d never paid much attention to the thousands of photographs taken of him during the course of his rise to wealth and power. His time was better spent making money and purchasing properties. What did it matter if he rarely smiled or laughed or enjoyed himself?
That wasn’t the point of life. That wasn’t what mattered.
Was it?
The pictures made him look like a tough, angry tyrant.
He was tough. He’d admit it. He’d had to be to survive. The way he’d gotten rid of her could be described as tough, but again, it was a matter of survival. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t a tyrant.
He was just as he’d learned to be: a survivor.
Aetos took in a deep breath. His hand fisted on the desk and the gold cufflinks flashed in the dull light of the sun. A sudden tight burst of bewilderment streaked through him and with a startled look, he realized his hand was shaking. Right over the image of the mágissa’s horrified face.
“Mr. Zenos?”
His PA’s voice shot through the intercom jolting him in his seat.
What the hell was wrong with him? “Yes, Cynthia?”
“I have some correspondence for you that was dropped off at the front desk yesterday, sir.”
“What?” No one dropped off correspondence in this day and age. Even if they had, Cynthia should have dealt with it in her usual capable fashion. The only kind of correspondence he received was via email and texting from people he gave his personal information to.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get it earlier. The front desk said it had been misplaced.” Cynthia’s voice hesitated. “The envelope is labeled personal, Mr. Zenos.”
His assistant should be hesitating. Never, in the entire ten years she’d worked for him, had there been a personal issue she’d had to deal with.
He didn’t have personal issues.
A sliver of emotion he hardly dared to define as hope slithered down his spine and landed in the pit of his stomach. But it didn’t stop there. Silky deft fingers of hope slid along his nerve endings, zinging and dancing, turning his skin to fire.
Had Natalie reached out? She was the only person he could think of who would do such a thing.
The beat of his heart pumped and pushed inside his chest. The heat of his blood and his hope
bloomed into a searing need. The need, the want, the hope astonished him, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help the words. “Bring it in.”
Cynthia gave him her usual crisp smile as she entered his office. With her customary discretion, she said nothing as she glided over to him. However, when she glanced down at the newspapers strewn across his desk, her smile turned into a wide O of surprise.
Aetos Zenos never perused his own publicity.
He never spent his time scouring the tabloids.
He never cared what others thought of him.
For the first time since he’d been fifteen, confronting a naked woman intent on initiation, he flushed. Yet the ancient memory no longer hurled him back into the black abyss he’d entered as a kid. Instead, to his astonishment, the memory barely scraped his heart. He was too focused on the now, on the future, on what this personal correspondence was to spend any time on the past. “Where is it?”
“Here.” His PA’s mouth snapped shut and her hand shot out.
The envelope. Of course, it could be another envelope. There were thousands, millions of plain white envelopes on the planet. Plus, this envelope was different than the one he’d handed Natalie yesterday. It had his name emblazoned on the front of it in sharp, black lines.
Zenos. Personal.
He took it. Felt the heaviness of the money inside. Felt it burn his fingers in accusation. “That will be all, Cynthia.”
She left. Left him holding the envelope. He opened it and looked at the money. Only money. Nothing personal. No note or plea. No begging words or humble requests. Nothing of her.
A slight whiff of scent floated around him.
She might not have called to him in words. But the smell of her, the fresh, wild scent of her soft skin and moonbeam hair and sweet breath wrapped around him. Bringing her back to him, bringing the memory of her back to him.
The teasing smile she gave him when she slid her hand down his naked stomach.
The sound of her laugh while she watched him eat another of his giagiá’s cookies.
The gentle touch of her fingers as she brushed a curl off his forehead.
Aetos stood. He had to stand in order to breathe. Still, it didn’t help. The stream of memories continued to storm through his brain and blood like a seething, scouring fire.
Blindly, he stared down at the papers, the photos. His brain had not been working when he’d given her this money. He hadn’t thought of her going to the papers and telling her story and cashing in for a bigger prize. All he’d been thinking of was getting rid of her. Somehow, someway.
Wrenching away, he paced to the window and back. He ran his hands through his hair, then wrenched his suit coat off and threw it on a chair. His brain buzzed and bustled with myriad thoughts, none of which made any sense.
If her plan was to tell her story, why weren’t those words plastered across the papers along with the photos? She’d had plenty of time to sell him out yesterday. Plenty of proof she was involved with him. The pictures had made this clear.
Yet she hadn’t sold him out.
Why hadn’t she kept the money she’d requested from him weeks ago? Why had she dropped off the wad of cash without asking to see him? Why hadn’t she demanded an audience so she could yell at him and scold him and harass him?
Theós. He missed her scolding. Her chiding. He missed her belief that he could be…
Whole.
“Mr. Zenos?” Cynthia’s voice over the intercom was far from her usual serene tone. Trepidation edged her words.
What now? “Nai.”
“There’s a man on the phone.”
“So what?” What did he care if there was some man on the phone? Cynthia’s job was to take care of the hundreds of people who called his office every day.
“He insists on talking to you.” Her voice dripped with fear. “He’s very demanding—”
“I’m busy.” Busy trying to keep himself from cracking open, becoming something other than the man he’d been for seventeen years.
“He says it’s personal.” Disbelief colored her tone, indicating she found it hard to believe she had to deal with two personal issues in one day.
Aetos stared at the photos of the Natalie. “Tell him no.”
“He says it’s about your wife.”
The jerk of his head wrenched his neck. His wife. His mágissa. His Natalie. “Put him through.”
The man’s thick Brooklyn accent didn’t mask his innate intelligence nor the implicit threat in his words. He’d been cunning enough to see the tabloid photos, spot his prey, and zero in on the person who had the money—all in less than twenty-four hours. If Aetos had been any other kind of man, a man who’d never had to sully his hands with the seamier side of life, he might have let himself be intimidated. But this was a world he’d lived in when he’d arrived in America. The hard work on the docks, the constant jostling for position, the ever-present threat of the gangs and hoods and mobs.
This was a man he knew how to handle.
Within minutes, the deal was struck. Business was business. He didn’t care about the small amount of cash the man demanded. Kólasē, he held the amount in his hand as they spoke. The only thing he cared about was getting rid of the man and his threats toward his wife.
His pretend wife.
Where was she?
The man didn’t know and now that he had his deal, he didn’t care.
Slowly, he lowered his hand and let the phone slip onto the desk. He stared blankly at her image on the papers. The horror now made sense. All of it now made sense. She hadn’t landed in his house looking for a free ride. She hadn’t demanded the fifty thousand dollars so she could go out on a shopping spree. She hadn’t agreed to come with him to Greece with the idea she’d found her golden ticket.
His Natalie had been afraid.
His mágissa had been on the run.
His pretend wife had become his perfect wife because she’d been desperate.
To compound it all, the debt wasn’t even hers. Her stupid, dead brother had not only dug himself a grave, he’d also placed his sister in a grave situation. If the guy stood before him right now, he would have punched him in the face.
Knowing Natalie, she would have hauled off and hit him in the jaw right after.
He chuckled, a dry, raspy sound.
Because look at what she’d done. In spite of the danger she faced, in spite of the fact he’d handed her the money that would set her free from her fear, she’d turned him down. She’d walked away from his money right into the terror she’d fled from weeks ago. Willingly.
He spun on his heel and paced to the window once more.
Why?
He stared out the window, trying to find an answer. The blue of the sky suddenly struck him as impossibly dull and lifeless compared to the sterling blue of the Greek sky as it arched above its ancient mountains. The sky held no answers. Nor did his brain.
Only his heart—the heart he had left behind when he’d departed Greece for the first time, and somehow, inexplicably had found again with Natalie’s help—only his heart held any kind of sure knowledge.
He had to find her. Only she had the answer.
Chapter 23
The tiny, black spider inched along the cracked wall before skittering into the moldy corner of the hotel ceiling where it stopped, as if waiting for her to make the next move.
Natalie didn’t move from the bed. She hadn’t moved from it since she’d lain down on it two days ago. Well, not exactly true. She’d managed to go to the bathroom a time or two.
Everything seemed…pointless.
The bravado that had swept over her when she’d made the decision to return the money had leached from her at a fast clip. By the time she’d marched out of the Zenos offices, she’d come back to the realization that she’d marched into a New York reality.
No money. No future. No hope.
When she’d stumbled onto this rundown hotel, the only thing she’d wanted to do was lie dow
n and never wake.
She was so pitiful right now she hated herself.
The spider eased away from the corner, finally realizing she posed no threat, and scurried across the line of the ceiling heading toward its silvery web in the archway by the bathroom. Any other time, Nat would have called housekeeping to wave a broom or even taken care of the spider and its web herself.
However, this was not any other time.
She didn’t have the energy and honestly, the spider gave her an object to focus on. Other than her crying and weeping. Other than her endless what ifs and could have beens. The spider had been her only companion, but at least she had one. For now.
For now was ending, though.
When she’d checked into this seamy hotel, she’d used her credit card since she hadn’t cared about anything anymore. She knew her trackers would spot the purchase and it would lead them right to her door. The hotel wouldn’t provide any security; it wasn’t that kind of place. Rather, it was the kind of hotel people came to when they were desperate. No one asked any questions or wanted any answers.
She hadn’t cared. Hadn’t cared about no one caring. Hadn’t cared about the lumpy mattress or the dirty ring around the tub. Or the spider. What did it matter for a day?
Yet now it was day two.
Where were they? Where were the threats and demands?
Wherever they were, they apparently were not going to be fast enough to find her here. Her credit card limit was maxed—she’d been informed of this by last night’s call from the hotel manager. She had to leave this morning. Nat peered at the red light of the clock. Actually, she had to leave within the next fifteen minutes.
Pushing herself up like an old woman, she glanced down. She still wore the black slacks and turtleneck she’d put on a thousand years ago in Greece. On the day they’d left, the day she’d left hope behind.
She waited. For the rush of anger and grief. For a tear or two. Anything.
But there was really nothing inside her. Evidently, she’d managed to drain everything out of her with her endless bouts of weeping. She wasn’t even panicked at being homeless or terrorized by the sure knowledge the men who tracked her were not going to quit.