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‘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
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.’
‘What?’ She blinked at him, shocked even now that her husband could have been so foolish. So stupid. ‘So now that I have inherited Petra Innovation...how much of it do I actually have?’
‘You have roughly forty per cent.’
‘All right.’ She took a deep breath, forced her thoughts to calm. ‘That still must be a majority. The other sixty per cent of shares will be owned by many different people, surely—’
‘No,’ Metaxas contradicted her, his voice gentle. ‘The other sixty per cent is now owned by one person. Your husband didn’t realise it—the investments were made quietly, slyly even, under different corporate names, over the last few months. But the man at the source was the same.’
Iolanthe stared at him, her hands clutched together so tightly her nails were making half-moon marks in her palms. ‘And who is this man?’
‘Another tech wizard. Alekos Demetriou.’
She drew her breath in sharply, her nails digging in even deeper, but other than that gave away no reaction. In truth she was so stunned she didn’t know how to react. Alekos Demetriou. She had schooled herself not to think of him these last long ten years. Tried to pretend he was not Niko’s father, that his name meant nothing to her. All of it lies. All it had taken was for Metaxas to say his name to have her hurtling back to that wonderful, terrible night, when she’d known both pleasure and pain so acutely.
And now Alekos Demetriou owned her father’s company? Her company? Except of course it wasn’t hers at all.
‘What does this mean exactly?’
‘I don’t know,’ the older man admitted. ‘Demetriou only just revealed that he has a controlling interest. I requested a meeting with him to discuss the future of the company.’
Iolanthe’s stomach soured. ‘So the future of Petra Innovation is up to Alekos Demetriou?’
‘In a word, yes.’
Abruptly she rose from her seat and paced the room, stopping in front of the window that overlooked Athens’ business district. She barely saw the wide boulevard, the neat buildings, busy people going to and fro. In her mind’s eye she saw Alekos as she’d last seen him, in his own drawing room, his face cold and closed and forbidding, as he’d demanded she leave.
And so she had.
‘Kyria Callos, I realise this news comes as a shock.’
‘You have no idea,’ Iolanthe admitted with a harsh laugh. What would Alekos do with the company? With her son’s—his son’s—inheritance? ‘Do you think it likely that he will simply allow things to continue as they are?’ Even as she spoke the question she knew it was a ridiculous hope. A naïve one, and she’d put naïvety behind her long ago. She’d had to. She knew how bent on revenge Alekos had been back then. A decade didn’t seem to have changed things. He still wanted to get back at her father, her family, or maybe even her. Why else would he have bought controlling shares?
‘I really don’t know what Demetriou will do,’ Metexas answered. ‘I don’t know why he has essentially initiated a takeover of Petra Innovation. But the fact that he was secretive about it concerns me, of course.’
Iolanthe nodded numbly, her unseeing gaze still on the city street.
Metaxas cleared his throat. ‘Do you have any history with Demetriou?’ he asked.
‘Me?’ Iolanthe turned around, her expression once more composed, closed. ‘What are you asking? I married Lukas when I was twenty.’
‘Of course, of course, forgive me. I only meant, perhaps, between the families...’ Metaxas trailed off as Iolanthe regarded him coolly, giving nothing away. She hoped.
‘Demetriou was in a race with my father a long time ago,’ she said. ‘Something about a software system. My father beat him to the invention—I think Demetriou was angry about it.’ So angry that he’d seduced his daughter, all for a petty, pointless revenge.
‘So you think he has bought the company as some sort of payback?’
‘It seems like him.’
‘You know him, then.’
‘I know his deeds,’ Iolanthe corrected crisply. ‘And what my father told me. He is not an admirable man in any shape or form.’ That she knew all too well.
Metaxas sighed heavily. ‘This doesn’t bode well for Petra Innovation. But I expect Demetriou will inform us of his plans when I meet him tomorrow.’
Iolanthe tensed, shock like an icy flame rippling through her body. ‘He agreed to a meeting?’
‘Yes—’
‘With you,’ Iolanthe said, repeating his words. Metaxas, like her husband and father before him, intended to cut her out of any business decisions. Before Lukas’s death she’d made herself be content to stay at home, out of the way. But not any longer. Not when her son’s inheritance was at stake. ‘I want to be present at that meeting.’
Metaxas looked startled. ‘If that is your wish,’ he said after a pause. ‘But as you know it had always been your husband’s desire for you not to be bothered by business concerns—’
‘And look where that got us,’ Iolanthe finished. The thought of coming face-to-face with Alekos Demetriou again filled her with both terror and dread, but she would still do it. She wanted to know exactly what Alekos intended for her father’s company—and for her son.
* * *
‘Kyrie Metaxas and Kyria Callos will see you now.’
Alekos’s mouth twisted in wry bitterness as he strode into the CEO’s office at Petra Innovation. He might have been kept waiting like a supplicant, but he was one no longer, neither lackey nor slave. Petra Innovation, to all intents and purposes, belonged to him. And he found he was looking forward to informing Iolanthe Callos of that fact.
The receptionist opened the doors and he stalked through them, stopping abruptly at the sight of Iolanthe standing by the window, the sunlight gilding her dark hair. Looking upon her after so many years felt like a punch to the solar plexus, and he found, to his surprise and irritation, that he was suddenly breathless. Memories assaulted him, a kaleidoscope of images and sensations that he’d long ago determined to forget. A white silk mask, the petal-pink curve of a smooth cheek. The touch of her lips, the breathy sigh of her pleasure.
Resolutely he moved his gaze from the woman by the window to the other occupant of the room: her solicitor, Antonis Metaxas. Alekos gave one brief nod.
‘Kyrie Metaxas.’
‘Kyrie Demetriou.’
The silence stretched between the three of them, taut and brittle. Alekos glanced at Iolanthe again, determined not to react to her as he had before. At that first burning glance he’d thought she looked the same, but now he saw that she was older, just as he was. He glimpsed faint lines by her eyes, and, although she looked pale, he saw a composure to her that had not been there before. She was thirty years old and recently a widow. He noticed she wore a pale grey suit, a suitable colour for mourning. The jacket was belted around her slender waist and the pencil skirt emphasised her lithe figure. Her hair was caught up in a neat chignon and it made him remember how those inky locks had felt tumbling through his hands as he’d drawn her towards him for a deep kiss...