Chapter Twelve
Bethan sat by the garret window and pulled the small trolley nearer her table.
There was nothing better than work. Particularly painstaking, fine-detailed, miniature-scale work that took every ounce of her concentration and dexterity.
It was the only balm that could soothe her tortured brain.
She worked—long hours, late nights. When she got home she worked on other projects.
Phoebe was going to have to birth octuplets to utilise all the baby blankets Bethan had knitted for her in this desperate surge of productivity.
Despite working until her eyes and arms ached, she couldn’t sleep.
Could only overthink. Only yearn. Only grow angrier.
Her eyes were tired and sore—from working, not crying.
She glanced out of the window yet again to rest them.
Not so secretly hoping to see Ares striding along the footpath. She never did.
I chase after no one.
He hadn’t before. He wouldn’t now. She just needed to get over him.
She’d arrived back in London to find Phoebe had gone abroad—working on things with the father of her baby—while Elodie also was away.
It was actually good to have some time to process it internally before trying to talk to them.
As there was a new manager for the escape room, Bethan was free to quietly work on various props plus her personal pieces from the small studio she had on the top floor of the central London building.
She would rebuild her life. She was lunching later in the week with Elodie’s sister, Ashleigh—she would not be wrecked for ever.
She’d survived this once and she would survive it again.
Only this time she was more furious. This time she understood so much more.
The man was bone-headed. Stubbornly isolating himself when he didn’t have to and denying them both everything.
Yes, she’d been a romantic but that didn’t mean she’d been all wrong.
Love healed. Humans craved company and community and they needed it.
She had changed—some—in the years they’d been apart.
She’d gone from shy and awkwardly babbling to confidently keeping her counsel.
Thinking before speaking. Thinking before doing.
Though she’d lost all that progress the second she’d faced Ares again.
He got to her like no one else. He mattered like no one else.
And she wanted to love him. But he didn’t want that.
He hadn’t run away from the expectations and the pressure of the Vasiliadis family. He’d fought his way to the top—not to take power and control, not even to get his revenge, but because beneath it all he’d ached for their acceptance. And never gotten it.
She’d offered him more than acceptance. She’d offered him her heart. Unconditionally. Of course it mightn’t be easy because they each had baggage but they could—would—be amazing. But he wasn’t willing to risk whatever heart he had left.
* * *
Ares sipped the scalding coffee. There wasn’t a pain in his chest any more. It wasn’t hard to breathe. There wasn’t a constant sense of impending terror. Honestly, there was nothing. He was hollow. And it was good.
Four days had passed since he’d walked out.
Theo had driven her to the lawyer, she’d made her declaration, the required paperwork had been filed.
She’d boarded the first commercial flight, rejecting the offer of Ares’s private jet.
All her things were cleared from his Athens apartment and it shouldn’t be long before he received the divorce decree.
Filled with his restless, boundless energy of old he worked—able to sustain long hours easily as he had before.
The source was cold rage. It had served him well for so long and he was on a roll.
He would go to the villa at the weekend.
Going back there would only confirm that he’d done the right thing.
He would reclaim it as he already had the apartment. Exorcise the ghost of her for good.
But when the helicopter landed on Avra a few days later, he had to brace. There were more than memories here, there were things...
Or there had been. Stunned, Ares walked from the bedroom to the studio to the lounge.
Everything of hers was gone—the things he’d bought her, the things she’d made, the tools and supplies.
The only thing that remained was the sculpture he’d bought at the auction.
He phoned Theo, who explained that she’d asked for everything—her clothes and supplies—to be boxed up and donated. Donated.
‘You’ve done it so quickly.’ Ares absently rubbed the hollow in his chest as he glanced around the spotless, empty studio.
‘Should we not have?’ Theo sounded worried. ‘I can—’
‘It’s fine. You did as she asked, which was correct. Thank you.’
There was a rubber band on the table, but no knot in the middle of it. No scraps of this or that. No more balls of yarn tucked about the place. In less than a week she’d filled the villa with projects in varying states of completion but now all remnants of them were gone.
He went outside to the bins and lifted the lids. They’d been emptied already. His staff were that efficient. But at the very bottom he saw a couple of threads. Wool the colour of the kind she’d bound him to bed with on the boat.
She’d gotten rid of everything he’d given her.
He released a long sigh and leaned against the wall of the house as that endless rage suddenly and completely evaporated.
Exhaustion hit. Instant and crippling. He sank to the ground.
It wasn’t his chest that hurt, but everything.
The inescapable, bone-deep ache intensified. The flu, no?
He dragged himself inside. Fell onto the bed. Spent twenty-four hours wrapped in blankets. But there was no fever, only that ache. The erosion of his control was complete, leaving him facing the endless reality of being utterly alone.
On the third morning he made himself get up. No more wallowing, he had work to do. He skimmed the million messages, replied to only the most essential—mainly to tell his PA to instruct everyone that he was on leave. Then he walked down to the beach. Fresh air would do the trick.
He took the boat out—puttered around to the village harbour where he’d dropped her that first day.
He never should have given her the ride but he’d been unable to resist. The boat bumped against the concrete dock and Ares winced.
He jumped to secure the line, making an uncharacteristic hash of it when he became aware of a shadow.
Someone was watching. He spun, heart pounding.
But it wasn’t Bethan. It was a young boy.
‘You’ve not done it right.’ The boy stared at the mangled rope.
‘Yeah,’ Ares chuckled weakly.
The boy moved forward and swiftly retied the line. Securely. He straightened, looking up. ‘You’re Ares Vasiliadis.’
‘I am.’
The boy’s eyes widened. ‘You’re training crew for those fancy boats.’
‘Future deckhands. Captains. Yeah.’
The boy shot the fixed line a sideways look and Ares grinned.
‘I’m just providing the money,’ he added.
‘I can sail. I’m fast.’
‘I bet.’ Ares nodded.
‘Niko!’ A woman hurried down the path. As she approached, recognition changed her demeanour. ‘You’re Ares—’
‘Vasiliadis, yes. Niko helped secure my boat. When he’s a bit older he should apply to the Melina Foundation, he’s got skills, could be a fine sailor one day.’
Niko grew about a foot in front of them.
His mother smiled. ‘His grandfather’s a fisherman.’
‘So it’s in the blood, then.’ Ares managed a smile back and headed up the path with a nod of farewell.
You’re good with them.
Bethan had enjoyed his banter with the trainees on Artemis.
Honestly, he’d enjoyed spending time with them.
He’d liked Niko just now too—his guileless curiosity, his instinctive interest and confidence.
Ares’s own instinct was to want the best for him—as he’d wanted for the trainees too.
And that boy was a complete stranger. If he had his own children he would want more than the best for them, he would do anything to help, to protect, to love them. He’d want to be with them.
Pain struck his chest as if someone had shoved a poisoned lance into his ribs and impaled his heart. He abandoned the steep path and turned back. It took double the usual time to boat back to the villa.
In the lounge he stared at her sculpture.
If he still had that energy, if he still had that rage, he would take that hammer she’d found and smash it himself.
But there was no energy. No rage. Only the ache that was now worsening by the second.
She’d used all kinds of items to create it—taking broken threads and weaving them together—marrying other items to make something new.
Something beautiful. She’d even brought him and Gia together for a brief moment.
He sank onto the sofa. He’d not been able to handle Bethan’s calm dignity, her kind reason delivered with compassion. But now he saw—through the pain, to the truth. God, he had been a coward.
He’d let her think the worst. Fobbed her off with a weak excuse. He’d been too scared to tell her that he was too scared. He was screwed up and so he had screwed up the most important thing to enter his life.
He was supposedly successful. He could have anything money could buy.
He’d taken the reins of an enormous company and built it even bigger.
But the fact was he felt like rubbish inside.
He felt unlovable. Unwilling to risk letting someone in for fear they found out the truth.
That there was a reason why his father had never wanted to acknowledge him.
A reason why his mother had forced him to live with people who’d barely accepted his existence—why she’d rejected him the moment she’d had the chance.
The Vasiliadis family were broken—driven by greed and a rapacious need for power.
They’d wanted his blood lineage, his brain and branded an insane work ethic into him.
But they’d not actually wanted him. They tolerated him, but so unwillingly.
They’d only paid attention when he’d proved himself the way they required—with financial success.
But he was broken too. His endless rage sprang from that bottomless well of rejection—because he’d not been wanted from the start.
Except that wasn’t quite true. His mother had wanted him.
She’d kept him, cared for him and worked so hard to provide for them both.
In the early years she’d refused to give him up, even when she’d had no support from family of her own, let alone Loukas Vasiliadis.
Ares remembered those days when she’d not had a shift and she’d taken him to the beach.
She’d taught him to swim, to sail. She had loved him.
He knew that her sending him to the Vasiliadis compound had been born from some desperate belief that he would have a better life than she could provide.
She’d just not given him any choice in that decision.
She’d known he’d not wanted to go, so she’d lied to make him.
Which was exactly what he’d done to Bethan.
He’d pushed her away. Let her leave believing a lie.
But him denying them a relationship wasn’t what was best for her.
He’d been trying to protect himself. Because he had the biggest fear of failure on earth.
Of rejection. He’d not explained to her about it years ago—he’d been stressed and gone cold and she’d misinterpreted his silence.
He’d valued actions over words but he’d failed her in both departments. Both back then and now.
Because the irony was Bethan had valued him.
She’d appreciated, not just his body, but his humour—the humour that emerged only with her.
Because she was sweet and funny. And safe.
And she appreciated his attempt to honour his mother.
He wanted to take her boating again. Wanted to take their babies too—he would teach them to swim and sail.
Bethan would teach them how to tie firm knots because securing connections—caring—was what she was so good at. And she’d truly cared for him.
Bethan was the one person in his life who’d told him he should be proud of himself. So maybe, if he was fully honest with her—she might be right.