Imprisoned By The Greek's Ring

CHAPTER TWO

ATLAS WAS USED to fury.

He was used to rage. That black, choking spiral that had threatened to drag him under again and again over the past decade and some years, very nearly had for good.

But this was different. She was different.

Because little Lexi Haring, who had once followed him around these very grounds like a shy puppy, all big eyes and a shy smile that was all for him, was the architect of his destruction.

Oh, he knew in some distant, rational part of his brain that she was no less a pawn than he had been in this. He knew exactly how little her relatives thought of her and more, what they’d taken from her. Her presence in this hidden away little carriage house made her status amongst the Worths perfectly clear, far away from the members of the family who mattered. More than that, he’d had his own investigators digging into these people for years now, gathering all the things he’d need when he was finally free, and he knew things about her he doubted she knew herself.

Things he’d always known he’d use against her without a second thought once the opportunity arose.

From the moment of his arrest Atlas had refused to accept that he’d never be free again. Some long, lonely years, that was all that had kept him sane in that loud, bright hell of concrete and steel.

And now, standing here in this drafty old place, he realized he remembered all the ins and outs of the Worth family dramas better than he’d like. All those memories of the way they’d excluded Lexi while pretending to extend her a little charity. Keeping her close enough to be grateful and uncertain, but never close enough to forget herself and the subservient place they wanted—needed—her to occupy.

But Atlas would be damned if he felt any sympathy for her. Lexi was the one who had sat up in that witness box and ruined him. One halting, obviously terrified word after the next.

He remembered her testimony too well. That and the way she’d looked at him, her wide brown eyes slicked with tears, as if it hurt her to accuse him of such things. And worse than that. With fear.

Of him.

The worst wasn’t what she’d done to him. It was that unlike her bastard of an uncle, she’d believed that he’d done what he was accused of doing. She’d believed with all her heart and soul that he was a vicious killer. That he’d had an argument with impetuous, grandiose Philippa who had made no secret of the fact she’d have liked to get naked with him, had choked her because—the prosecution had thundered—he was a man with no impulse control and had feared that a relationship with the Worth heiress would get him fired, and had then thrown her into the pool on that cool summer night in the Oyster House compound.

Leaving her there to be found by Lexi when she’d gone looking for Philippa early the next morning.

“If Mr. Chariton feared that he would lose his position at the company because of Miss Worth, why would he leave her in the pool to be found the moment someone woke up?” his lawyer had asked Lexi.

Atlas could still remember the way her eyes had filled with tears. The way her lips had trembled. The way she’d looked at him, there at the defense table, as if he stormed through her nightmares nightly. As if he hadn’t just killed Philippa, to her mind, but had broken her own heart, too.

“I don’t know,” she’d whispered. “I just don’t know.”

And in so doing, had made him the monster the jury had convicted after a mere two-hour deliberation.

It was Lexi’s belief in the fact he must have done such a terrible thing—and how upset she’d been at the prospect—that had locked him away for a decade.

She might as well have turned the key in the lock herself.

“You’ve grown up,” he said when it didn’t look as if she planned to speak. Possibly ever again.

“I was eighteen when you left,” she replied after a moment, her cheeks a crisp, hot red. “Of course I’ve grown up since then.”

“When I left,” he echoed her, his own words tinged with malice. “Is that what you call it? How delightfully euphemistic.”

“I don’t know what to call it, Atlas. If I could take back—”

“But you can’t.”

That sat there then, taking up all the space in the close little room, as claustrophobic and faintly shabby as it was possible to get on this vast, luxurious estate. And he understood exactly why her devious, manipulative uncle had stashed her away here. Heaven forfend she spend even one moment imagining herself on the same level as his feckless, irresponsible sons.

Atlas roamed farther inside the small office, cluttered with overstuffed bookshelves and unframed prints when there were old masters piled high and unused in the attics of the great house. He was aware that it would take no more than an extra step to put himself right there on the opposite side of her flimsy little desk, within arm’s reach. What bothered him was how very much he wanted to get close to her. Not just to make her uncomfortable, though he wanted that. Badly.

But he also wanted his hands on her. All over her, and not only because the past ten years had been so particularly kind to her—so kind, in fact, that he’d had to take a moment in the doorway to handle his reaction. And to remind himself that while he’d expected a drab little girl and had been wholly committed to doing what needed to be done with her, the fact she’d grown into something rather far removed from drab could only be to his benefit.

Because he had a very specific plan, she was integral to it, and it would involve more than just his hands. It would involve his entire body, and hers, and better still—her complete and total surrender to his will in all things.

He thought that might—just might—take the edge off.

Or anyway, it would be a good start.

And the fact she’d grown up curvy and mouthwatering just made it that much better.

“I don’t know what to say.” Lexi’s voice was quieter then, and he watched, fascinated, as she laced her fingers together and held them in front of her as if they provided her with some kind of armor.

“Is this what wringing your hands actually looks like? I’ve never seen it in person before.” He tilted his head slightly to one side as he let his gaze move over her bookshelves. All dull books about the damned house and the Worth family, stretching back centuries. It wasn’t until he looked at her again that he saw the brighter and more cracked spines of the books behind her desk—within her reach—that suggested she allowed herself a little more fun than she perhaps wished to advertise. That boded well. “Is that meant to render me sympathetic?”

“Of course not. I only—”

“Here’s the thing, Lexi.” He stopped near the window and noted that the rain had begun again, because of course it had. This was England. He picked up one of the small, polished stones that lay on the sill, tested the weight of it in his hand, then set it down again. “You did not simply betray me, though let us be clear. You did. You also betrayed yourself. And worst of all, I think, Philippa.”

She jerked at that, as if he’d hauled off and hit her. He wasn’t that far gone. Not yet. He’d stopped imagining surrendering to the clawing need for brutality inside him some years into his prison term. Or he’d stopped imagining it quite so vividly as he had at first, anyway.

“Don’t you think I know that?” she demanded, though it came out more like a whisper, choked and fierce at once. “I’ve done nothing since your release but go over it all in my head again and again, trying to understand how I could possibly have got it all so wrong, but—”

“Lucky for you, Philippa is just as dead now as she was eleven years ago,” Atlas told her without the faintest shred of pity for her when she blanched at that. “She is the only one among us who does not have to bear witness to any of this. The miscarriage of justice. The incarceration of an innocent man. All the many ways this family sold itself out, betraying itself and me in the process. And in so doing, left Philippa’s murder unsolved for a decade. Though there is one question I’ve been meaning to ask you for years now.” He waited until she looked at him, her brown gaze flooded bright with emotion. Good, he thought. He hoped it hurt. He waited another beat, purely for the theater of it. “Are you proud of yourself?”

Her throat worked for a moment, and he thought she might give in and let the tears he could see in her eyes fall—but she didn’t. And he couldn’t have said why he felt something like pride in that. As if it should matter to him that she had more control of herself these days than she had ten years back.

“I don’t think anyone is proud of anything,” she said, her voice husky with all those things he could see on her face.

“We are not speaking of anyone,” Atlas said sternly. “Your uncle and your cousins will face a different reckoning, I assure you, and none of them deserve you rushing to defend them. I’m talking about you, Lexi. I’m talking about what you did.”

He expected her to crumple, because the old version of Lexi had always seemed so insubstantial to him. In his memory she had been a shadow dancing on the edge of things. Always in the background. Always somewhere behind Philippa. She’d been eighteen and on the cusp of the beauty she hadn’t grown into yet.

Though there had been no doubt she would. He’d known that even then, when he had made certain not to pay too close attention to the two silly girls who ran around the Worth properties together, always giggling and staring and making nuisances of themselves.

Her mouth had never seemed to fit her face, back then. Too lush, too wide. She’d been several inches shorter, if he wasn’t mistaken, and she’d bristled with a kind of nervous, coltish energy that he knew had been her own great despair back then. Because she’d been so awkward next to her cousin, the languid and effortlessly blond Philippa.

They’d just been girls. He’d known that then, but it had gotten confused across all these lost, stolen years. And still, Philippa had seemed so much older. Even though it was the always nervous Lexi who had actually done some real living in her early years, when she’d still been in the clutches of her addict parents.

Atlas hated that there was a part of him that still remembered the affection he’d once felt for the poor Worth relation. The little church mouse who the family had treated like their very own Cinderella, as if she ought to have been happy to dine off their scraps and condescension the rest of her life.

Looking at her now, it was clear that she was doing exactly that. That she’d taken it all to heart, locked away in the farthest reaches of the estate, where she could do all the work and remain out of sight and out of mind.

The way her uncle had always wanted it; and Atlas should have had more sympathy for her because of it.

He didn’t.

She’d grown into her beauty now, however, though she appeared to be dressed like a mouse today. Or if he was more precise, a run-of-the-mill secretary in a sensible skirt and an unobjectionable blouse. Brown hair tugged into a severe bun that looked as if it ought to have given her a headache.

She looked as if she was dressed to disappear. To fade into the wallpaper behind her. To never, ever appear to have a single thought above her station.

But still, mouse or secretary or Cinderella herself, she didn’t crumple, which made her far more brave than most of the men he’d met in prison.

“You will never know how sorry I am that my testimony put you behind bars,” she said, her eyes slick with misery as if she was as haunted by all of this as he was. Yet she kept her gaze steady on his just the same. “But Atlas. I didn’t tell a single lie. I didn’t make anything up. All I said was what I saw.”

“What you saw.” He let out a bitter laugh. “You mean what you twisted around in your fevered little teenage brain to make into some kind of—”

“It was what I saw, nothing more and nothing less.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Once, harshly. Then again. “What did you expect me to do? Lie?”

“Certainly not.” He moved until he was directly opposite her, only the narrow little desktop between them. This close, he could smell her. Soap, he thought, crisp and clean. And something faintly like rosemary that washed through him like heat. Better still, he could see the way her pulse went mad in the crook of her neck. “After all, what do you have if not your word? Your virtue?” He put enough emphasis on that last word that she cringed. “I understand that is a requirement for the charity you enjoy here. Your uncle has always been very clear on that score, has he not?”

She flushed again, harder this time. And Atlas shouldn’t have been fascinated at the sight. He told himself it was nothing more than the vestiges of his prison time, making him find a female, any female, attractive. It wasn’t personal.

Because it couldn’t be personal. There was too much work to do.

“My uncle has never been anything but kind to me,” she said in a low, intense voice, though there was a flicker in her gaze that made him wonder if she believed her own words.

“I know he requires you to believe it.”

Another deep, red flash. “I understand that you’re the last person in the world who could think kindly of the family. Any of them. And I don’t blame you for that.”

“I imagine I should view that as a kind of progress, that I am permitted my own bitterness. That it is no longer considered a part and parcel of my guilt, as if remorse for a crime I didn’t commit might make me a better man.”

Atlas regarded her stonily as she jerked a bit at that, though something in him...eased, almost. He’d spent all those years fuming, seething, plotting. He’d discarded more byzantine, labyrinthine plots than he cared to recall. That was what life in prison did to a man. It was fertile ground for grudges, the deeper, the better. But he’d never been entirely sure he’d get the opportunity to put all of this into motion.

“I won’t lie to you, Lexi. I expected this to be harder.”

“Your return?”

He watched, fascinated despite himself, as she pressed her lips together. As if they were dry. Or she was nervous. And Atlas was a man who had gone without female companionship for longer than he ever would have believed possible, before. No matter what else happened, he was still a man.

He could think of several ways to wet those lips.

But that was getting ahead of himself.

“I don’t expect you to believe this,” Lexi was saying with an intense earnestness that made him feel almost...restless. “But everyone feels terrible. My uncle. My cousins. All of us. Me especially. If I could change what happened, you have to believe I would.”

“You’re right,” Atlas murmured. He waited for that faint bit of hope to kindle in her gaze, because he was nothing if not the monster they’d made him. “I don’t believe it.”

And really, she was too easy. He could read her too well. He saw the way she drooped, then collected herself. He watched her straighten again, then twist her hands together again. Harder this time.

“I know why you came here,” she said after a moment. Quietly. “I expect your hatred, Atlas. I know I earned it.”

“Aren’t you the perfect little martyr?” When she shook a bit at that, he felt his mouth curve. “But it’s not going to be that easy, Lexi. Nothing about this is going to be easy at all. If you come to a place of peace with that now, perhaps you will find this all less distressing.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps not.”

She looked panicked, but to her credit, she didn’t move. She didn’t swoon or scream or do any of the things Philippa would have done. No tantrums, no drama.

But then, Lexi had never been about theatrics.

That was precisely why she’d been such an effective witness for the prosecution, all starchy and matter-of-fact until she’d turned the knife in him, one glassy-eyed half sob at a time.

And what was wrong with him that he was tempted to forget that? For even a moment? He felt no connection to this woman. He couldn’t. She was a pawn, nothing more.

It irritated him that he seemed to need reminding of that fact.

“What exactly is to come?” she asked, her voice hardly more than a breath and her eyes much too big in her face.

“I’m so glad you asked.” He stood where he was, watching her. Studying her. Then he crooked a finger, and liked it a little too much when she jolted, as if he’d shot her through with lightning when he wasn’t even touching her. Yet. “Come here.”

She swayed on her feet and he was bastard enough to enjoy it. Hell, he more than enjoyed it. He figured it was as close as Lexi ever got to a full-on faint, and it was only a drop in the bucket next to the pain he owed her.

She swallowed, hard. He watched her throat move and braced himself for a spate of complaints. Or excuses. Anything to avoid what was coming.

But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t argue or dawdle. She straightened that blouse of hers that was already precise to a near military level, and then she stepped out from behind her desk.

“Closer,” Atlas ordered her when she only rounded the desk and stopped, leaving several feet between them.

Another hard, audible swallow. He could see her terror beat in her neck. He could see the flushed state of her skin. He could see fear and apprehension in her gaze, and the truth was, it was better than he’d imagined.

And God knew, he’d imagined this moment again and again and again. He’d imagined it so many times it was as if it had already happened. As if it was set in stone and made memory and prophecy at once.

She took one step. Then another.

“Here,” Atlas said, gruff and cruel. And nodded his head to a spot on the floor about one inch in front of him.

And she surprised him yet again. There was no denying the uneasiness in her gaze, her expression. But she didn’t carry on about it. She simply stepped forward, putting herself exactly where he’d indicated she should go.

Then he got to watch her tip her head back, way back, so she could hold his gaze with hers. And they could both spend a little moment or two recalling how much bigger and taller and more dangerous he was than she could ever dream of becoming.

He, at least, enjoyed the hell out of it.

“I think we can both agree that you owe me, can we not?” he asked.

It wasn’t really a question. He didn’t think she would confuse it for one, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Her nod was jerky. “I wish I could change the past, but I can’t.”

“Indeed, you cannot. You cannot change one moment of the past eleven years.”

“Atlas...”

He ignored her. “Your uncle has invited me to dinner tonight up at the manor house,” he told her. “Perhaps you already know this.”

“I know that was his intention, yes.”

“Your uncle believes that breaking bread with me rather than squabbling in a boardroom or court of law will make this all go away.” He could tell exactly how cruel his smile was by the way her brown eyes widened at the sight of it. “It won’t.”

“I don’t think anyone expects any of this to go away.”

“Wonderful. Then no one will be surprised by anything that happens now, I’m sure.”

“Atlas. Please. No one meant to hurt you. You have to believe that.”

It was an impassioned plea. He thought she even believed it. But he only shook his head at her.

“Let me tell you what I believe, Lexi. I believe that you were a teenager. That you saw something you didn’t understand and put a spin on it that made sense to you. On some level, I don’t even blame you for it. You were little more than a child, and of all the vultures and liars in this family, Philippa was at least the most genuine. In that I suspect she actually liked you.”

She sucked in a breath, ragged and sharp at once. “They’re my family. They all like me.”

But he doubted even she thought that sounded convincing.

His mouth twisted into something as hard as it was sardonic. “Tell yourself those lies if you must. I cannot stop you. But do not tell them to me.”

“You have a harsh view of the Worth family. I understand it and you have every right to it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you. I don’t hate them the way you do.”

He laughed at that. “The thing is, Lexi, your uncle was not a teenager. He was not confused. He knew exactly what he was doing, and you should ask yourself why he was so eager to do it.”