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It had been utter madness. Pleasurable madness, she remembered that all too well, but then she really had thought they’d been building some sort of future. In her naïvety she’d thought a sexual connection indicated an emotional one. The memory of how ruthlessly Alekos had dismantled that dream made Iolanthe inwardly cringe even now. Of course it had only been sex. She’d seen him as her chance of escape but he hadn’t wanted it. Hadn’t wanted her.
‘Iolanthe?’ Talos prompted coldly. ‘You realise the desperate situation you are in, I hope.’
Iolanthe’s startled gaze moved back to her father. ‘Desperate?’ she repeated warily. She’d spent the last month essentially quarantined, with only books and a sketchpad for company, while her father had gone about his business and barely spoken to her. His physical and emotional withdrawal had hurt her more than she’d thought possible, especially on the heels of Alekos’s rejection. Her father had never been close to her but she realised now how she had always stood on the bedrock of his approval and love. Which made her actions on the night of the ball even more reprehensible and foolish.
‘You are spoiled goods,’ Talos stated. ‘Damaged beyond repair. What man will have you now?’
Iolanthe flinched at her father’s flat statement. His words belonged in another century, and yet she knew in his world—and hers—they held truth. ‘Someone who loves me...’ she managed in a hesitant whisper.
‘And what man would love a woman who gave herself to a stranger so wantonly?’ Talos shook his head, hurt flashing in his eyes. ‘Truly, Iolanthe, I am still shocked. I did not think you capable of such an act of wanton disobedience.’
She clenched her hands together, knuckles aching. ‘I made a mistake, Papa, I know that.’
‘A mistake with terrible consequences,’ Talos returned. He sighed, sitting back in his chair as he massaged his temples. ‘Where did I go wrong, Iolanthe? That you would treat me this way?’ Talos regarded her for a moment, his expression stony. ‘You must marry,’ he stated. ‘Fortunately Lukas is willing to have you.’
‘Even now?’ Iolanthe said bitterly, and ire flashed across her father’s face.
‘You are fortunate he is willing to overlook your indiscretion.’
‘Yes, of course.’ So now she was lucky to have Lukas Callos. The realisation was bitter. She felt like a lame mare that had to be offloaded onto some charitable soul or else made into glue.
‘Your other option,’ Talos continued implacably, ‘is to remain shut up at my country villa, and remain a shame to my name. It is not what I would prefer.’
Iolanthe closed her eyes briefly. The prison doors were inexorably swinging shut.
‘I will give you a day to think about it,’ Talos said, with the air of someone who was granting a great favour. ‘But no longer. I don’t want Lukas to change his mind.’
But Lukas would most likely change his mind, Iolanthe thought, her heart like a stone inside her, when he learned just how mired in shame she was. It had been four weeks since her night with Alekos, and she hadn’t had a period. The newfound queasiness in the mornings, the tenderness in her breasts, the overwhelming fatigue...all of it pointed to a truth she’d been doing her desperate best to ignore. She was pregnant. Lukas might be willing to marry her as spoiled goods, but would he take Alekos’s bastard child as his own? And didn’t Alekos deserve to know about his child?
‘I will think about it, Papa,’ Iolanthe promised woodenly, even though the prospect of pledging her life to Lukas Callos made everything in her sink in resignation and despair. But before she thought of Lukas, she needed to see Alekos. They’d parted terribly, yes, but he’d said he wanted to know about their child. And maybe, maybe he would soften towards her if he knew she carried his baby. Maybe he would be reminded of how much they had shared.
It was the stuff of romantic fantasy, she realised that, and yet Iolanthe clung to it all the same. What other hope did she have?
‘Papa,’ she said hesitantly. ‘What about...what about Alekos Demetriou?’
Talos stilled, his eyebrows snapping together in displeasure. ‘What about him?’ he growled.
‘Couldn’t he...couldn’t he be a suitable husband?’
Her father’s face darkened, fury flashing in his eyes, making Iolanthe take an instinctive step backwards. She’d never seen her father look so angry before. ‘You have no idea about Demetriou,’ Talos spat.
She swallowed hard, one hand pressed to her throat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You think he cared for you, Iolanthe?’ Talos demanded. ‘He was using you, to get at me. He’s always had it in for me, ever since I came out with a software system he was trying to develop himself. The trouble was Demetriou wasn’t fast or smart enough to keep up. It set his company back years, and he’s blamed me. You were no more than part of his petty revenge.’
Iolanthe stared at Talos in appalled realisation. Alekos had a history with her father? A bad history? ‘No...’ she whispered. ‘That can’t be—’
‘I assure you,’ Talos cut across her, ‘it is.’
Iolanthe shook her head, wanting to deny such a terrible reality. ‘But how did he even know I was your daughter?’
Talos shrugged. ‘The man does his research. I’ll give him that much.’
‘But...’ She remembered the way Alekos had held her as they’d danced, the brush of his fingers against her cheek. It hadn’t felt like revenge. At least not until afterwards, when he hadn’t seemed able to get her out of his bed, his life, fast enough.
Sickly Iolanthe recognised how unlikely it was that a man like Alekos would have sought her out with such determination. Would have seduced her with such thoroughness. He must have had an ulterior motive, and it seemed that it was revenge. The realisation was bitter indeed, making what had happened between them seem even more sordid. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said numbly, even though she already did.
‘Believe it,’ Talos returned flatly. ‘And marry Lukas Callos.’
* * *
Alekos stared at the announcement in yesterday’s Athinapoli and told himself he felt nothing. So Iolanthe was marrying Lukas Callos, her dull keeper from the ball. Was he really surprised? She’d told him herself that her father would arrange her marriage. Her father... Talos Petrakis.
Bitterness surged through him at the memory of the last time he’d come face-to-face with his enemy. After bursting into his hotel suite, Petrakis’s thugs had taken him to an alley behind the hotel and beaten him almost senseless. It infuriated him even now to think that Petrakis would flout the law with such easy indifference. To have a grown man, an upstanding member of the business community, beaten as if he were some nameless street rat. The fact that Alekos had at one time been hardly distinguishable from a street rat only made him more determined to avenge himself on Petrakis. Nothing would stop him now. Nothing—and no one—would sway him from his purpose, even for an instant.
As for Iolanthe Petrakis... Alekos’s mouth firmed into an unforgiving line. Who knew what had been in that pretty head of hers? Perhaps she’d set him up, fully intending for her father to find them together. How else would Petrakis have known where she was? Where he was?
She’d certainly pressed herself on him. Looking back, Alekos could only wonder at Iolanthe’s determined urgency to lose her virginity to a stranger. Perhaps she’d wanted to rebel against her father and the strict isolation he’d kept her in. Perhaps she hadn’t realised how overwhelming it had all become. In any case it didn’t matter whether she’d been conniving or merely naïve. He couldn’t trust her. He wouldn’t trust anyone.
‘There’s a woman here to see you,’ Stefanos, his bodyguard, said as he appeared in the doorway of Alekos’s study. Alekos had hired Stefanos after Petrakis’s attack; he intended never to be caught like that again.
Now Alekos stiffened in surprise. No one visited him at home; the apartment in Athens’ Plaka district that he’d recently rented was private, the address unlisted. ‘Did she give a name?’
‘Just a first name. Iolanthe.’ Stefanos’s face was impassive as he waited for Alekos’s orders.
Alekos tossed the newspaper onto a nearby table and drove a hand through his hair. How had Iolanthe found him here? Clearly she was more resourceful than he’d realised. And why did she want to see him? To gloat about her engagement? Or to tell him something else? He still felt uneasy about not having used birth control. For that reason only he would see her.
‘Where is she?’
‘I’ve left her waiting in the hall.’
‘Put her in the drawing room,’ Alekos commanded. ‘I’ll see her in a moment.’
Stefanos nodded and withdrew from the room. Alekos rose from his chair and paced the confines of his study; despite cloaking himself in icy numbness for the last month, he felt an unwelcome welter of emotions at the prospect of seeing Iolanthe again. He had no idea what to think, to believe, of her any longer. She’d enchanted him once, but now he suspected he’d merely been duped, just as her father had once duped him, encouraging his ideas, clapping him on the shoulder, asking him to explain everything. Only twenty-two years old, Alekos had thought he’d found his mentor. His home. How wrong, how stupid he’d been. How trusting.
Never again, he vowed. Never would he trust a Petrakis, or anyone, again. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and strode from the room.
* * *
Iolanthe stared out at the dusky night framed by the curtains of Alekos’s drawing-room window and tried to still the wild beating of her heart. She couldn’t quite believe she’d possessed the audacity to slip out of her father’s house and dart through the narrow streets of Athens’ old district like some errant shadow. If her father discovered her here...
But she had to see Alekos. She had to know if he’d been using her as Talos had said. And if he hadn’t...even now a girlish fantasy spun through her mind in shining, golden threads, of Alekos explaining everything, of her telling him about her pregnancy. He’d whisk her away and she wouldn’t have to marry Lukas Callos. They’d live happily ever after, the end.
The door opened and Iolanthe whirled around, one hand pressed to her heart. Alekos stood in the doorway, loomed there, looking as darkly attractive as ever, and also utterly unwelcoming. The mouth that had kissed her so thoroughly was now thinned into an uncompromising line, and eyes that had glittered gold with desire now looked flat and hard. The straight slashes of his dark eyebrows were drawn together in a frown as he folded his arms across his impressive chest and stared at her in silent hostility.
Those golden threads of fantastical possibility disintegrated in an instant. What was she doing here? Why had she come? Iolanthe swallowed, and then started to speak.
‘Alekos...’
‘How did you find me?’
She jerked back at the aggression in his voice. ‘Your address was among my father’s papers.’ She’d sneaked into Talos’s study late one evening, surprised but gratified to find Alekos Demetriou’s details on his desk. No doubt her father wanted to know more about the man who had ruined his daughter. Except in reality she’d ruined herself, by being so phenomenally stupid.
‘Ah.’ Alekos nodded, unsurprised, unimpressed. ‘What do you want?’ There was no welcome in the words, no warmth or even negligible interest. Of course not. Every damning word her father had spoken had its proof in this moment.
‘I wanted to see you,’ Iolanthe said in a low voice. ‘I wanted to know if...if...’
‘If what?’
She stared at him miserably, fully aware of how foolish and pointless this mission had been. It had been one last desperate act before the noose tightened around her neck. ‘If there was anything real between us,’ she whispered, the words like bile in her mouth. She knew now there wasn’t.
And as for their child? Could she really tell him about their pregnancy now? Even if Alekos agreed to marry her, Iolanthe didn’t know if she could stand a union based on convenience and built on the foundations of hatred.
‘Anything real?’ Alekos repeated incredulously. ‘You can actually ask that, after your father burst into my hotel and dragged me away like some thug?’
Iolanthe stared at him, her eyes wide. ‘He...he was protecting me.’
‘And you’re defending him.’ His unyielding gaze raked over her, dismissing her in an instant. ‘Get out, Iolanthe. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.’ His eyes glittered, but with malice rather than the desire she’d once thrilled to see there. ‘Unless there were consequences?’
Iolanthe stared at him, appalled and more than a little frightened by the anger she saw in his eyes, felt in his taut body. It radiated out from him, a malevolent force.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Are you here because you are carrying my child? Because if it is for any other reason, then I advise you to leave. Immediately.’
Iolanthe tasted the acid sting of bile in the back of her throat. His words sounded and felt like a threat. How could she tell him she was pregnant now? Was this cold, forbidding man, a man bent on some kind of sick revenge, the one she wanted as the father of her child?
And yet even now Alekos surely had a right to know.
‘What would you do, if there were consequences?’ she whispered.
‘Hedging your bets?’ Alekos scoffed. ‘I saw the announcement that you were marrying Callos.’ His gaze darkened and he reached for her, one powerful hand encircling her wrist. ‘Don’t lie to me, Iolanthe. Are you pregnant?’
His fingers felt like a vice on her arm. Terror clawed at her insides. Where was the gentle, funny, charming man she’d fallen for? Evaporated, like the mirage he’d been all along.
‘No,’ she managed to get out of her too-tight throat. ‘No, I’m not pregnant.’
Alekos released her, contempt twisting his mouth. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then leave.’
Iolanthe blinked back useless tears. She would not cry now. Not in front of this cold, hard stranger.
Alekos waited, his arms folded, saying nothing, impatience radiating from him. Iolanthe drew a ragged breath and then, swallowing the sob that threatened to escape, she turned on her heel and fled.
Outside, the air was warm and sultry, the stars like diamond pinpricks in the black velvet drop cloth of the sky. Iolanthe tipped her head to stare up at the sky and willed the tears back. No more tears, not ever again. She’d grown up tonight. She’d truly put her childish ways behind her, for better or for worse, and she would not go back to them.
She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, and then began the long walk back to her father’s villa. Hopefully no one would have noticed that she’d gone; she’d told the housekeeper, Amara, that she was going to bed early, and then slipped out when her father had been enclosed in his study.
In the Plaka, people were filling up the bars and cafés, and amidst the mingled laughter and chat Iolanthe heard the strains of rebetiko, the folk music popular in such establishments. All the sounds and sights combined together to form a picture of carefree happiness that felt a million miles from her reality.
Iolanthe knew she had no choice now. Alekos Demetriou’s attitude had made that clear to her. She was pregnant, dependent on her father’s charity, without friend or resource, damaged and desperate.
She would marry Lukas Callos.
* * *
Two weeks later Alekos saw the marriage announcement in the Athinapoli.
Heiress Iolanthe Petrakis marries Petra Innovation’s Lukas Callos.
There was a photo; Iolanthe looked lovely, if pale, in a sheath dress of off-white. She clutched a posy of lilies; Callos’s face was bland, almost indifferent. It had been a small affair.
Acid churning in his gut, Alekos tossed the newspaper away and vowed never to think of Iolanthe Callos again. All he would let himself think about was success—and revenge.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u092481c9-424c-5d75-945c-d978a99a5052)
Ten years later
‘I’M SORRY TO say your position is...difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ Iolanthe straightened in the club chair that her husband’s solicitor, Antonis Metaxas, had ushered her into moments ago to discuss Lukas’s financial position. Her husband of nearly a decade had died in a car accident a fortnight ago, leaving Iolanthe alone in the world save for her nine-year-old son Niko. Her father had died two years earlier, and Petra Innovation now belonged to her—and was Niko’s legacy.
Metaxas steepled his fingers together, his expression a little too compassionate. The nape of Iolanthe’s neck prickled with alarm. She hadn’t involved herself in her father and husband’s business these last ten years; she hadn’t been asked to. She’d focused on her son instead, on nurturing and protecting him, and on trying to be happy, or at least content with the way her life had turned out, a loveless marriage to a near stranger and a son she adored. It could have been worse.
Even as she’d carved out a life for herself, virtually separate from Lukas, she’d always thought she’d have Petra Innovation, for Niko’s sake. Niko was the only heir of both Talos Petrakis and Lukas Callos. The company was his birthright.
‘Petra Innovation has had some financial setbacks in recent years,’ Metaxas explained carefully. ‘I’m afraid it leaves you in a rather precarious position.’
Iolanthe’s nails dug into her palms as she clutched her hands tightly together in her lap and took several even breaths. This was news she really did not need. ‘Why don’t you speak plainly, Kyrie Metaxas? How precarious is my position?’ She lifted her chin and met the solicitor’s gaze firmly. ‘Is Petra Innovation solvent?’
‘Solvent, yes.’ He hesitated, his grandfatherly face pulled into a reluctant frown that made Iolanthe battle both impatience and anxiety.
‘I can handle whatever it is you’re going to tell me,’ she informed the older man crisply, although in truth she didn’t know if she could. At least she would try. ‘What is it?’
‘I fear your husband was not as financially savvy as your father,’ Metaxas explained. ‘He was a genius when it came to technical innovation, of course,’ he added quickly.
‘Yes, I know.’ Lukas had spent far more time at work than he had at home. His first and only love had been computers, and Iolanthe had long ago accepted it. Long ago stopped looking or hoping for love or even affection. How could she, when she had never loved him back? Their marriage had been nothing but a convenient match of expediency, on both sides.
Now she met Metaxas’s gaze directly. ‘So what has happened to the company since Lukas took over after my father’s death?’
‘Six months ago he offered the company’s shares on the open market. Your father had always been reluctant to take such a step, wanting complete control.’
Which sounded very much like her father. Iolanthe knew that Talos and Lukas had split the shares of the company. Or they had, until...
‘So other people could then buy shares in Petra Innovation?’
‘Yes—’
‘But Lukas still maintained a controlling interest.’ She knew enough about business, about life, to understand how important that was.
Metaxas sighed and shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
