Chapter One #3
‘Let them whisper, Konstantinos,’ Léon urged.
‘These men who watched you grow into a man and build a shipping empire bigger than your father’s—they have turned their backs on us both.
’ His lips pursed. ‘So let them take their business deals elsewhere. Let it all fall to the bottom of the sea. None of it matters.’
The rumours were true.
Léon had given up.
‘You’re ready to lose everything?’ His gaze narrowed. ‘To me?’
‘Everything that mattered has already been taken from me,’ he dismissed with a wave of his too thin wrist.
Konstantinos recoiled. His acceptance was an ugly thing. Léon was dead already. He’d died two years ago when they’d pulled the only survivor from the helicopter crash. Him. His son, his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter, gone.
Like Isaak?
He grimaced. He wouldn’t form a connection between them because of their losses. This was business. Nothing else.
His father had been right all along. Power only remained with those willing to take it—with those who would do anything to keep it.
Konstantinos’s chair scraped against the floor as he stood. ‘As of tonight, Durand Cruise Liners belongs to me to settle the debt you owe me.’
‘As is your right,’ Léon agreed flatly.
He closed his eyes.
It was relief, not doubt, making his skin…
uncomfortable. He was shedding a suit he’d resewn too many times to count to fit a man he’d thought was fair, but a man he now knew was a fool.
But he’d corrected his error in judgement.
He’d sliced off all of his soft edges with the blade that had cut free months of hair he’d let grow too thick, and too long, looking for a wife who didn’t want to be found.
What if she’s still sick?
The image of her on the clifftop drifted into his mind.
His jaw firmed to granite.
She’d made her choice, and now…
He’d made his.
He opened his eyes. ‘The papers will arrive tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You will sign them.’
Léon dipped his head. ‘I will.’
It didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like…nothing.
Konstantinos turned to leave…
A coldness expanded in his core, turning the blood in his body into a thick and sluggish pulp. It moved through his limbs at a glacial pace—refusing to pump into the heart now beating too slowly in his ears.
He swayed on his feet.
In slow motion, his gaze moved over the face in the doorway, watching him with blue eyes framed by obscenely long lashes, making them appear bigger—deeper. So similar to the eyes he’d searched for in every crowd these past twelve months.
His lungs forgot to inhale.
His unblinking gaze moved over her diamond-shaped face, her high cheekbones flushed with freckles, her flicked nose, her haunting rose-pink mouth wide and gaping.
Her hair was loose. Longer now, skirting the open collar of her too big, long-sleeved white shirt. It came to her blue denim-clad thighs…
He took a step back on stiff knees.
It couldn’t be.
‘You…you…betrayed me,’ she said brokenly. Her eyes no longer on his, but on…
He blinked. Slowly. He followed her gaze.
‘Forgive me, Poppy,’ Léon pleaded. ‘You will see—in time—it was the right choice to bring your husband here tonight. The only choice. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I knew you’d flee…’ Léon’s voice spoke softly beside him. ‘But I will stay here with you. If you want me to.’
Konstantinos’s mind whirled.
Léon was the mediator?
He turned his gaze back to her.
His wife.
For a year, Konstantinos had searched. The night terrors had returned. Crashing waves and seaweed. But it hadn’t been his mother he’d fought against the current to save. It had been Poppy, caught in the green weeds of the sea. Drowning.
Flashlights on the heads of the specialist teams searching the island’s waters, the whoosh of the helicopters swarming over the hills, and the cliffs, trying to find her the night she’d vanished, pummelled his mind’s eye.
She was the one he’d vowed to keep safe. He hadn’t been able to keep his mother safe. He hadn’t protected her from the monsters in her head or the real live monster—his father—who had berated her for being sick.
His father had abandoned his mother.
He…he hadn’t abandoned Poppy. Not when she was physically sick, not when her mental health had failed her. He’d protected Poppy. He was not his father. But she had walked away anyway.
Abandoned him.
Just like your mother?
His chest squeezed.
You failed your mother.
You failed Poppy.
You let your son die.
You failed them all.
The breath in his throat turned heavy—threatening to choke him.
He’d done everything right to keep them safe.
He wasn’t at fault.
She was.
She’d destroyed everything he’d built.
She’d destroyed him.
Heat flushed through his body. The ice in his veins shattered, replaced by a roaring inferno.
She’d promised she would always be there, by his side, and she…betrayed him.
And Léon, after everything he’d done for him and his family, had harboured his runaway wife. Hidden her from him.
Great lava waves crashed against his chest wall.
‘For all this time?’ Konstantinos’s feet moved of their own volition towards her motionless frame in the doorway. ‘You’ve been…here?’
Her eyes bulged. She stepped back on flat black pumps, and raised her arms, outstretched them, palms forward, as if to ward him off.
Her eyes moved to the corridor beyond the room in front of her.
‘Popp—’
She turned her feet in the direction of her eyes. She moved. Her pumps squeaked.
He leapt into motion. Any heaviness in his core evaporated. His adrenaline spiked, giving life to his limbs. His brisk step covering more than her run, he followed her back the way he’d come.
She stopped at the entrance—reached for the handles.
She looked up.
Their gazes locked.
It pulsed between them. A vortex of all that was unsaid. So many questions. His neck corded, and he choked down every single one in his throat, and said, ‘Come to me.’
She dragged her gaze back to the oak and iron trapping her inside.
‘Do not open those doors,’ he warned.
Her fingers flexed on the handles.
His solar plexus tightened.
She yanked open the doors.
It ripped through him. Rage.
Strawberry blonde wisps of hair flying in all directions, she disappeared through the open doors. Out of sight.
A guttural roar built in his chest.
Konstantinos moved to the entrance, and he howled into the Parisian night.
‘Poppy!’