by Trish Morey
She smiled up at him. ‘Sleep would be a change.’ Such a beautiful face, she had. So open. So trusting now, with no hint of the caution and suspicion she’d shown that first day. She waved her hand in the direction of the desk where the signed papers lay. ‘When do you think we’ll hear more from the lawyers?’
‘It won’t take long. I expect we’ll hear of any developments tomorrow.’ If not sooner.
‘So soon?’ She reached up on tippy toes and pressed her lips to his. ‘Thank you so much for doing this for me. You’re the best.’
Then she was gone.
Alexios flopped into his chair, staring blindly out of the window, waiting for the feeling of exhilaration to kick in. The feeling of exhilaration he was owed. Because he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d made good on the deathbed promise he’d made his father.
It was done.
But instead of exhilaration, he felt—numb. No doubt because he’d spent so long on this journey and now the final blow had been struck. The share transfers she’d blindly signed over to his name would be filed today and by tomorrow every bit of the Nikolides empire would be his.
There was a knock on the door and Anton entered. ‘You have the signatures?’ Without turning, Alexios picked up the folder, pulled the first few pages from the file, and held the folder out for him. ‘Like plucking ripe fruit from the tree,’ he said.
‘And she suspected nothing?’ his co-conspirator said, taking the folder and flicking through the pages.
‘Not a thing,’ said Alexios, as he tore the Loukas Spyrides Fund agreement into tiny pieces and let them scatter on the floor around him. ‘Not a thing.’
* * *
Loukas smiled when Athena returned from her lunchtime appointment with Alexios. ‘You look happy.’
She stashed her handbag and smiled right back. ‘It was a good lunch, thank you.’ Even though she hadn’t eaten a thing.
The old man chortled, and Athena turned a piercing eye at him. ‘And that’s all I’m telling you.’
Because she wasn’t telling him anything yet. The Loukas Spyrides Wing was her surprise to him, a thank you for all he’d done in her life, but she wanted to wait until everything and all the approvals were in place and the plans under way. Then she’d organise an evening to honour her mentor and make the announcement.
‘But I will be working late tonight,’ she said, ‘so there’s that.’
He clapped her on the shoulders as he passed. ‘I’m so sorry to keep you from the man you love.’
‘It’s not for long,’ she said, not bothering to argue when she knew what he said was true. ‘And this is a labour of love.’
‘I’ve made a fresh pot of coffee,’ Loukas said, on his way to the kitchen. ‘Can I get you one?’
And Athena said yes, until he put the freshly brewed coffee on her desk and her stomach churned as she caught a whiff. She put a hand to her mouth. Oh, boy.
‘Are you all right?’
She couldn’t answer. She dared not open her mouth. It was all she could do to flee to the rest rooms before she lost what little contents were in her stomach.
It seemed to take for ever, the heaving, the violent retching, and yet it was only a matter of minutes before she was staring into the mirror, pressing wet towels against her blotched face, the eyes staring back at her looking frightened.
Because this could be no reaction to last night’s overindulgence. Not when her cramps had still not seen a period arrive. She’d blamed it on her irregular period, but she’d felt queasy on the boat that day, too...
God, it couldn’t mean... She couldn’t be—could she?
Surely not! That wasn’t supposed to happen. Alexios had used condoms, hadn’t he?
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Except for that one time.
Oh, God, that time on the boat, when he’d asked her afterwards if she’d been safe and she’d misunderstood and said yes...
How could she tell him the truth, after telling him that she was? And even though she loved him, it was still too new. There was still so much they had to learn about each other. Still so much they didn’t know.
Though he’d admitted he would like a family one day...
She took a deep breath and wiped her face one final time.
And even if Alexios had stayed silent after her clumsy declaration of love last night, even if he hadn’t told her he loved her too—he did care for her. He must—otherwise why would he want to get involved with jointly funding the new wing? If she was pregnant—and it was still only if—then she would go see him and she would explain. She trusted him. He would understand.
Loukas hovered over her when she got back. ‘You look so pale. Something’s wrong—you should see a doctor.’
‘I will,’ she agreed, knowing she was letting Loukas down, but her stomach was still feeling queasy and she knew she was as much as useless today. She would see a doctor if it came to that, but first of all she would call in to a pharmakeia on the way home—if only to obtain the tools to rule the possibility out.
She didn’t wait for morning, as the box suggested. She couldn’t. She had to know. She tore open the box and the packaging and followed the instructions, praying that her period would miraculously appear and that she’d wasted her money while she held her breath for the allotted time.
The packaging lied. The stick took nowhere near the allotted time. Two bold blue lines screamed out at her.
She was pregnant.
Pregnant with Alexios’s child.
She stayed there, staring at the stick and sitting on the pan, because her legs were suddenly worse than useless. And she didn’t feel nauseous any more, so much as blindsided. Steamrollered.
Pregnant.
The word held a world of connotations and consequences and none of them she could get her head around.
Pregnant.
What the hell would it mean for her work—her career? She was just getting started in her professional career. She hadn’t figured on children until her thirties at least, and then, only vaguely, as something that might happen in the future.
And what would it mean for her and Alexios? She put a hand low down over her belly where a baby was already growing. Her baby.
God, what the hell was she going to do?
She didn’t know. All she knew was that she couldn’t deal with this on her own. She had to talk to Alexios. She had to tell him.
Resolve poured strength back into her legs and got her moving. She was almost out of the door when her phone rang. The lawyers’ number, she recognised. They hadn’t wasted any time. Probably just confirming receipt of the signed documents.
She listened, but the speaker’s voice was too loud and garbled, almost manic, for her to be able to make any sense out of what was being said—something about shares? But that made even less sense.
‘Signome,’ she said to him in Greek. ‘Please, slow down. I don’t understand. These are the signed papers to establish the Loukas Spyrides Fund?’
The man at the end of the line cursed and seemed to take great delight from telling her he had no idea what she was talking about. He was talking about the papers she’d signed handing over a hundred per cent ownership and control of the Nikolides Group to Alexios Kyriakos.
And Athena’s knees buckled under her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS A MISTAKE. Athena took a taxi to Alexios’s offices. He wasn’t expecting her, but he’d see her, she knew. This was too important for him not to. Because the lawyer had to be mistaken. She’d signed papers establishing a fund for a new wing in Loukas’s honour, nothing about shares. She’d read through the first pages herself—she knew what she’d signed.
Although there had been an awful lot of documents...
What if...?
She chewed her bottom lip, her mind tangled in possibiliti
es.
No, it wasn’t possible. Alexios wouldn’t do such a thing. It was unthinkable. She’d see him. He’d soon get to the bottom of it.
The taxi driver stopped at a red light and Athena almost screamed at him to ignore it, so impatient was she to get to Alexios’s offices. This wasn’t the impromptu visit to Alexios she’d anticipated, filled with trepidation and nervous tension at sharing her news with him, wondering how it would be received. Instead she felt confused, baffled, because it couldn’t be happening—but what if it was?
Finally they were there. She thrust a pile of euros at the driver when he pulled up, not bothering to wait for her change, arriving breathlessly at the front desk. ‘I need to see Alexios.’
The receptionist recognised her from her earlier visit and smiled, reaching for her phone. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
She shook her head. ‘Alexios will see me.’
He had to.
* * *
‘She’s downstairs.’ Anton put the phone down. ‘Do you want to see her?’
So the shit had already hit the fan? So be it. Alexios had told her it wouldn’t take long to hear from her legal team but even he was surprised at their efficiency. He smiled. The lawyers for the Nikolides Group must be running around like headless chickens right now.
And Athena must be reeling. No doubt, she wouldn’t believe it until she heard it from him. Alexios sighed as he stood and strode to the windows, to the view out to the Parthenon. ‘I suppose it’s unavoidable. Send her in.’
‘Alexios!’
Athena rushed past Anton at the door, but something about Alexios stopped her halfway over to him. He was standing by the window, arms crossed, with the sun poking out from behind a cloud behind him, his body in silhouette. While she stood rooted to the spot, he turned around, his arms still crossed. ‘You wanted to see me?’
She couldn’t see his face, but his tone was all wrong, his body language all wrong, and there was a vibe coming from him that charged the air and spoke of danger. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. ‘Alexios?’
He said nothing. He didn’t make a move towards her, and Athena felt as if she were being sucked into some parallel universe, where everything she thought she knew was suddenly back to front and upside down, and somehow she’d wandered into the wrong office of the wrong Alexios. She swallowed down against a rising tide of panic and a bitter taste in her throat. Because things couldn’t be that wrong.
‘I had a call from my lawyers,’ she said.
‘I told you you’d soon be hearing from them.’
The tone of his voice was strangely at odds with the rest of him. It was almost as if he were talking to a child, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head, but there was no comfort there. No solace. It almost felt as if there were a crack in the air between them and it was widening with every passing second. ‘But they said they knew nothing about a fund for the new Loukas wing.’
‘You signed those papers yourself.’
‘I know, but...’ She paused, willing him to fill in the gaps, to tell her there must have been some mistake and that he would soon sort it out. ‘That’s what I didn’t understand. Because they said, and I know it sounds crazy—they said something about the ownership of the Nikolides Group being transferred to you.’ She gave a little laugh. No more than a bubble of sound that no sooner swirled into the fractured room and died a quicker death than if it had been made from soap. ‘Because that’s crazy, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe it’s time you put her out of her misery,’ came a voice behind her. ‘Maybe it’s time you told her the truth.’
She spun around. She hadn’t realised the man was still in the room. She turned back to Alexios and put out her arms in appeal. ‘What does he mean—tell me the truth? Alexios, what’s going on? I don’t understand.’
He moved then, but not to her. He moved to his desk—the desk that they’d made love on under the silvery light of the moon—and sprawled down in his chair. Now she could see his face, and yet he was almost unrecognisable. His features looked twisted, a snarling animal in the place of the man she thought she knew.
Her heartbeat spiked, because for the first time she didn’t just feel confused, she felt afraid.
‘Alexios?’ she whispered. ‘Tell me it’s not true.’
‘You really should be more careful what you put your signature to, Athena.’
‘What? You went through those papers with me. I signed papers to establish a fund—we both did.’
There was a snigger from behind her. ‘And underneath those? Did you not realise you were signing your fortune away?’
The realisation was like a sucker punch to her gut. She gasped, almost doubled over, while blood pounded in her ears. Still she was unable to tear her eyes from Alexios’s suddenly twisted face, willing him to deny it, to say it had all been a horrible mistake. But he didn’t even try to deny it.
When finally she could find the words, her voice sounded as if it were coming from a long, long way away. Another world. Another time. ‘So it’s true.’
But it was as if she hadn’t spoken. All he said was, ‘Leave us, Anton.’
‘And miss the fireworks when we’ve worked on this so long?’
‘Get out!’
She turned as the door behind her opened, and Anton went, but not before he’d taken one last look over his shoulder at her, one last sneer, giving her one last glance of profile.
She blinked, remembering in a thunderbolt that momentarily blinded her as realisation zapped down her spine and out to her extremities. A café in Santorini. A man with her bag under his arm, looking back at her to see if he was being followed.
She turned back to Alexios, white-cold fury running thick like mercury in her veins, pieces emerging from the tumult of her mind and fitting together in a horrible new way. ‘Him,’ she said, and she could see by the flare in Alexios’s eyes that she was right. ‘It was him all along. You had your goon steal my bag that night so I would, what? Feel indebted so I would agree to have dinner with you? Because I owed you, my champion, my knight in shining armour? My hero? You planned it all, every last detail. The bag-snatching, the dinner waiting. Did you plan for me to fall into your bed? Was your seduction part of that plan too?’
‘A not unpleasant part.’
She swept his words away as despair crashed over her in a wave that threatened to bring her undone. ‘You must have been so sure of yourself—every step planned—every detail worked out to the nth degree, and all the time you were dragging me deeper and deeper into the web you spun. A web made of lies!’
Tears coursed down her cheeks, hot and angry, the salt stinging her eyes, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. There was no pretending and she couldn’t stop. ‘And like a fool I fell for it. I fell for you. I trusted you. I trusted you!’ Her lips tightened. She had to bite down hard against the urge to sob. She couldn’t break down now, not before she got out the words she needed to say. ‘I even thought I loved you—but you were a liar from the very beginning. You were a liar all along. You disgust me.’
He stood, half turning to gaze out of the windows. ‘If that’s all, I see no reason to extend this meeting. I think it’s time you left.’
She stayed right where she was. Anger was taking root in her veins now. Cold, hard anger, and she would not be summarily dismissed, not like some inconsequential employee. Not before he gave her some kind of explanation for his treachery. ‘Why, Alexios? I don’t understand. Why would you do such a thing? Why would you go to such lengths?’
‘Maybe you should ask your father.’
‘But you know... My father is dead.’
‘Hnh.’ He turned back, turned the emptiest and bleakest eyes she’d ever witnessed back on her. ‘You see? You’re already working it out. And now, if that’s all?’
His words made as much sense as his actions, but it w
as clear that his cryptic words were all the explanation she would get. She kicked her chin up high. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear to be in the same room with you a moment longer. I can’t bear to breathe the same air.’
She slammed the door behind her so hard every head swivelled her way. She looked dreadful, she knew, but she didn’t bother wiping her tear-streaked face or blowing her dripping nose, not when she had more important things on her mind.
Because her world was falling apart, shattering, unravelling, and she didn’t understand how it could have happened. She didn’t understand any of it.
Like slops from a bucket, she spilled out of the building and onto the streets of Athens, and found the nearest rubbish bin to cling to while she heaved out her empty stomach and aching heart.
* * *
For a long time Alexios stood at the window staring up at the Acropolis, watching the moving ants that were tourists scurrying around the ruins, looking for scraps of the past before they scurried back to their buses and on to the next site and their next ten minutes of history.
But it wasn’t the tourists causing the coiling, snaking feeling in his gut. It was Athena.
He’d expected her to be upset.
He’d expected her to be angry. Why wouldn’t she be both upset and angry when she’d gone from pauper to billionaire and back to pauper almost before the ink was dry on her father’s will?
He’d expected her to be hurt. Baffled. Confused. But how could he avenge her father’s betrayal of his father without hurting her? What she didn’t realise was that it wasn’t about her.
Collateral damage.
It wasn’t personal.
And there was no feeling guilty and no point trying to explain it, because it didn’t matter if she understood or not. It didn’t matter if she was angry and confused and hurt. All that mattered was that it was done.