Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
A NAX LOOKED UP from a long, satisfyingly brutal stretch of hours at his desk to find his sister haunting his doorway.
He sat back, glancing at his watch to determine how long he’d been poring over the documents on his desk, looking for the sorts of secrets that he knew too well his opponents and their legal teams liked to hide in contracts where they thought no one would look. Throw enough clauses into the mix and people assumed they’d gotten the gist of all of them without actually reading them all.
Anax knew different. From experience on both sides of said clauses.
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” demanded Vasiliki in her usual half-scornful, three-quarters disrespectful manner.
Truth was, he found it heartwarming. No one else treated him in exactly the same way she always had. There was nothing on this earth that affected his sister or her responses to things—except, perhaps, how discomfited she looked in the presence of Stavros, the security head. Anax assumed that was because she also disliked having her movements curtailed. No matter what good reasons there might be for it.
“Not one word,” he agreed now, as close to cheerful as he got, because he knew it annoyed her. “And had I known you were here, I would have ignored you even longer. To make a point.”
She only rolled her eyes at that as she consulted the tablet she held. “All the holiday invitations are rolling in again. It’s all the usual suspects, as expected.” And then she rattled off a list of charities, holiday balls, events, and the like. “Your company is graciously requested and eagerly anticipated at all of the above, of course.”
“Don’t you normally answer for me without consultation?” He stood up from his desk and allowed himself to stretch, looking out at the bustling streets of Athens far below, gleaming in the December dusk. Something about the lights prodded at him, and he didn’t like it. It reminded him of a firelit night, and a whispered question in a darkened hallway—in the promise he made himself that he had nearly broken. He turned back to his sister. “You are the one who tracks my contributions and packs my calendar with these obligations, are you not? Why is this discussion necessary?”
“This year is different.” Vasiliki lifted her gaze to his with an air of surprise when he did not reply to that. “This year you have a wife, Anax, or have you forgotten that?”
“Am I known for being forgetful?” He was aware that she would not find that an adequate response, and sure enough, she frowned at him.
“Stavros says you haven’t been out to the island in two weeks.” Vasiliki lifted a brow in that way she had that suggested others found it precisely this irritating when he did the same thing. “Trouble in paradise, my brother?”
“What I cannot imagine is what you imagine you are doing with this bizarre conversational gambit.” He considered her for the sort of long, thoughtful moment that would have anyone else at this company quaking. His sister stared back at him, immune. “Have you suffered a head injury?”
Vasiliki laughed. “Sometimes I wish I had, but then I remember, I am an Ignatios. It is a genetic injury.” She tucked the tablet under one arm. “The fact remains, you have a wife. And that changes the conversation.”
“Apparently so, and in astonishing ways. I’d like to change it back.”
“Every year, you attend these balls and it is nothing short of mayhem,” Vasiliki reminded him. “It doesn’t matter how dire or sad the charity, the women are all over you. Old women, young women. You can’t walk three steps without being propositioned. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that it was so bad last year they had to close down that one gala so you could be evacuated.”
Anax rubbed at his temples with only slightly exaggerated impatience. “I was not evacuated . I chose to leave out the side entrance. It had nothing to do with me that the organizers chose to make a scene.”
“This year,” Vasiliki said, very brightly and very slowly, as if he was deeply stupid, “there is another option. You could present your wife to the world, which I feel quite certain would not stop everyone , but might put a damper on the usual stampede.”
“ókhi.” He belted that out so abruptly, so succinctly, that he wasn’t sure who was more surprised. Him or his sister. “No.”
They stared at each other as the light continued to fade from the sky outside his office. The ancient city sprawled there before them, ribbons of lights leading to Syntagma Square, looking festive this time of year. Vasiliki, not one for atmosphere, reached behind her and slapped on the overhead lights.
“And am I to know why you refuse to take the life preserver that has been offered to you?” she asked. “It makes no sense. You have complained for years about these cattle calls.”
“Think about what you’re asking,” Anax retorted.
And as he spoke he became more convinced that his gut reaction had been based on facts. On reason and rationality, having nothing at all to do with how close he had come to kissing Constance after watching her sing to their baby.
He didn’t like to think of it. He thought of little else.
“How is it fair to throw Constance headfirst into a sea full of sharks? She cannot swim.”
Vasiliki stared at him. “Is that a metaphor? Are you speaking in metaphors , brother? Has a Christmas miracle finally occurred before my very eyes?”
Anax thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and reminded himself that she tried to get under his skin as a matter of course. That she had been doing that since birth. Allowing her to succeed was on him. “The fact of the matter is, Delphine picked Constance for a reason. She knows nothing of this world and why should she? The American cornfields that created her are not simply far away from here, they might as well be on a different planet.”
Vasiliki blinked. “The same could be said for your own trajectory, Anax, or have you forgotten what neighborhood we come from?”
He ordered himself to unclench his jaw. “Not to mention, she is my wife. I owe her my protection. I cannot in good conscience allow her to appear in front of the kind of people that run in these circles. They would eat her alive. Her wardrobe alone would make her little more than chum in the water.”
“Again with the sharks.”
“It is unthinkable,” Anax said, warming to the topic, or perhaps he was simply letting his temper out to play here, with his perpetually unimpressed sister, where it could do no harm. “I cannot think why you would suggest such a thing. What has Constance ever done to you?”
His sister had eyed him for a long, uncomfortable moment. He thought that she would say something and braced himself, but instead she pulled her tablet back out, swiped at the screen, and moved on to other topics.
That night, though he had not intended on going out to the island, Anax landed there anyway. And found his wife, not in the dining room where they ate when he was expected, but in a small sitting room near her bedchamber that he could see, at a glance, she had taken over as her own.
And he could not account for the little pop of warmth in him at the sight. At the notion she was actually...settling in here.
“Maria did not tell me you were coming,” Constance said in something like alarm when he opened the door and found her there. She stood up from the small table where she’d been sitting, and she looked...guilty.
Anax took in the pile of books beside her. The tray of food, a crock of soup and freshly baked bread in place of the usual delicacies.
“Would you have hidden all these books?” he asked after a moment. “For fear I would discover that you’d actually been reading?”
“You are a deeply annoying man,” Constance told him, but so very calmly, that he almost missed what she was telling him. “I have always read. Your suggestion that I should try reading as an activity made me want to never read another word as long as I lived. And yes, I would rather that you not see me doing it, because it would give me pleasure to read every book in your library and never mention it.”
“What would be the point of that?”
“It doesn’t matter if you know how wrong you are,” she said, and smiled at him. A bit too piously. “ I know, and I will nurse that flame for as long as I live.”
But he was caught up on that smile. It was so bright . Festive, or near enough. He tried to imagine her smiling like this in the ballrooms of Athens, surrounded by those circling predators, and couldn’t.
He had made the right decision. He was sure of it.
“Have you been complaining to Stavros about my not making it out to the island recently?”
He walked in further and threw himself down on the couch where she had clearly spent some time, if the cashmere throw that was tossed aside there was any indication.
She eyed him narrowly, breaking off a piece of bread with her fingers and dipping it into the crock of her soup. “I’m not much for complaining. My grandmother used to say that a complainer was a coward, too afraid to say what they really wanted until it was too late. I don’t know about you, Anax, but I do try not to be a coward.”
“That feels pointed.”
She looked at him, then back to her meal, which rather dug the point in deeper, to his mind. “Besides, why would I complain to Stavros? He works for you. What would be the point?”
“My sister says that you did.” He considered. “Or rather, she said that he had mentioned it had been a while.”
“Has it not occurred to you that your sister and your head of security invent reasons to talk to each other?” Constance smiled again when she looked up and saw the blank look on his face. “Oh, come on, Anax. Where are those killer instincts you pride yourself on? You can’t see that your sister and your head of security are enamored of each other?”
“Stavros would never—” he began. But then stopped himself.
Because he would not. But Vasiliki was bound by nothing at all—and least of all any disapproval from Anax.
Constance only shrugged. “Why? Because you would disapprove?” She did not roll her eyes. Not precisely. But the way she did not roll her eyes had the same effect. “You might not have any interest in being happy yourself, Anax. That’s perfectly clear. But does that mean no one else can be, either?”
When he left later that evening, he could not think of a single reason why he had come, save the few moments he’d spent with his beautiful daughter after her bath. Much less why he would hurry to return.
But he found himself watching his sister and his security head over the following days, noticing that it did seem as if the two of them paid a bit more attention to each other than necessary...
And he hated that his secluded wife, who saw the pair of them far less than he did, had picked up on something he should have understood was happening before it started.
But there was little time to think too much of these things. Because the holiday event season was beginning, and, as ever, it started off with a particularly ornate gala in the center of Athens. Vasiliki had made certain to block it off in his calendar in capital letters to remind him of their conversation.
He had to hurry out of a meeting to get ready the way he always did, because he put effort into the things he wore, unlike some. He had learned early on that the real secret of fashion was the way it was discussed, as if it was the sole province of empty-headed women, when the truth was that powerful men had whole conversations with their clothes alone. Sometimes these conversations took the place of other negotiations entirely.
It was the first foreign language he’d taught himself.
And yet tonight, instead of plotting out the conversations he wished to have and avoid, the photographs he would allow and those he would not, he found himself wondering why he’d been so adamant that Vasiliki continue to keep Constance’s existence a secret. His sister had not been wrong. He had grown tired of these events long since. The same conversations with the same people, over and over again, were tiresome.
And yes, there were the women who followed him around, something the younger version of him would never have believed could prove objectionable. But then, Delphine had soured him on such experiences long before he’d learned of her vicious revenge.
In the car that drove him to the gala, he found himself thinking about his ex-lover, something he normally preferred to avoid. There was still such a huge part of him that wanted to enact his revenge upon her in a manner no one could mistake. So that no one, ever, would dare attempt such a thing again—on him or on anyone.
And yet...how could he wish his daughter out of existence?
He hated being away from her. That was the stark truth of it. Natalia had started walking. She was saying words, deliberately. Every time he saw her, she was a brand-new human. Even her face looked different, and he deeply loathed the fact that he could not be with her all the time to see these things.
He had been adamantly opposed to ever having children, and this was part of the reason why. Already he could feel it, this helpless certainty that he would raze the earth to dust and rubble for her. That he would never be happy if she was not. That everything he was, or would ever become, was wrapped up in two chubby fists, that stubborn little scowl she often wore, and that smile of hers that was already too much like her mother’s.
What revenge could he take on Delphine for that?
Because this is what he knew about his ex. She was not a happy woman. It was not even him she had ever wanted, not really. It was what he had stood for. It was his status, his money. All the things it would have meant for her to become the wife of a man of his stature. That was what Delphine had wanted.
He could not even be certain that she had truly enjoyed the pleasure they’d taken in each other. Mechanically, he knew she had. But had she actually liked that kind of release? He had come to think that she hadn’t and that was why he’d ended it.
It had become too difficult to see what part of Delphine was an act and what was real.
This all-encompassing, life-altering feeling inside of him whenever he so much as thought about his daughter was something else again. He knew people called it love, but it was far deeper than that. It was more terrible, more total.
It was something fused into his bones.
It was terrifying.
One moment he had been himself. And the next, his daughter had been born, and laid upon Constance’s chest, and he had been changed forever.
He could not say he’d liked any of it.
But his life had changed that day and he had known, irrevocably, that there was no going back. He would keep his daughter safe. He would dedicate his life to her happiness, and it did not matter if he was happy in the midst of that.
He did not need to wreak his revenge on the woman who so richly deserved it, because she had ceased to matter. What mattered was Natalia.
And Constance, the woman who loved her as he did.
The woman he had very nearly kissed, and not because it was the end of a date and a kiss was called for. But because it had been dark in that hallway and she had smelled so good, and they had been standing close, and he had felt so raw —
Thank all the gods, old and new, that he’d remembered himself in time.
Another truth, he acknowledged as he was announced into the gala, was that he barely remembered what Delphine looked like any longer. He struggled to recall a single face of any woman he had known intimately. They all seemed to fade away, suggesting he had been as unengaged as many of them had accused him of being.
All he could see these days were eyes like smoky quartz, a spray of freckles across a pert nose, and that devastating smile.
He found himself particularly unhappy about that, but the more he tried to bring another woman’s face to mind, the more he realized that it had been a very, very long time indeed since he had thought of any woman save Constance. And that truth was...unsatisfying.
Unwieldy.
And only half-true to begin with, something in him argued.
He ignored it as he walked into the throng of people, nodding at faces he recognized, but not wishing to stop or speak to anyone.
Until, that was, he found himself face-to-face with his sister and had no choice but to stop. And even attempt a smile.
“There you are,” Vasiliki said, dressed splendidly. She swept a sharp gaze over him. “You look lonely, brother. More so than usual.”
Anax decided he hated that she could read him. He supposed he always hated it—no matter how he relied on it—but today it seemed more offensive than usual.
“It is my natural state,” he bit out, without the usual gloss of civility he tried to pull on at events like this. “It suits me. As it does you, or have I read you wrong, Vasiliki? Do you only pretend to be lonely out of some sense of solidarity?”
But if he’d thought that would land like some kind of weapon, he was mistaken. Vasiliki managed to give the impression of a deep, jaw-cracking sort of yawn without allowing so much as a muscle to move. Or her gaze to become any less withering.
“I will book some time in your schedule to discuss my loneliness, shall I?” she asked, sardonically. “I am sure you are precisely the therapy I need, brother. As you are so evolved yourself. In the meantime, let me present you with your date for the evening.”
Anax opened his mouth to cut that off, and fast—certainly not to apologize—but instead it was as if all the air in the world...vanished.
His sister reached back and pulled the figure he had only half noticed standing behind her to the front.
It had been a very long time since anyone had kicked him hard enough in the gut for him to lose his breath. But that was not a sensation that a man forgot.
He felt it again now. Intensely.
“It is my pleasure to present to you, Anax, your wife,” Vasiliki said, with a mock bow. “Constance Ignatios, this is your husband, little though you might know it after his recent behavior.”
And then, whether because that had been her plan from the start or because she saw whatever look was on Anax’s face, Vasiliki smiled as if she’d won a great prize—then made herself scarce.
Leaving Anax with nothing to do but gaze in helpless fascination at his wife.
His wife.
Who was, to his astonishment, completely done over.
Gone was his farm girl. Gone was any faint hint of the cornfields where he’d found her. And there was a part of him that missed the familiarity of that tragic tracksuit ensemble she favored. There was a part of him that longed for that coziness.
But then there was...every other part of him.
“I know,” she was saying, with a wry twist of her lips. “Vasiliki would not be dissuaded. She descended upon me with a battalion of stylists and told me it was my Cinderella moment. So I suppose it’s up to you if you’d like to be the Prince Charming in that scenario, or if you’re feeling a bit more like the pumpkin.”
But something was happening inside Anax.
A terrible illness, he thought, coming at him fast. His lungs hurt. His ribs seemed to be buckling in on his chest. His heart was pounding, too hard, and there was something wrong with his eyes.
He couldn’t seem to tear them away from her.
And Anax realized something then, though it was lowering in the extreme.
Some part of him had preferred it when he could keep Constance in the box where he’d found her. Her terrible clothes. Her costumes. This was exactly what she’d been getting at, he realized in her talk of the kinds of childhood they’d had and the differing degrees of the poverty of their origins.
And he’d missed it because he’d wanted to miss it.
Because some part of him must have known the truth all along.
Because Vasiliki had taken that rough little piece of Iowa rock and polished her into the diamond that had been there all along.
She was buffed to a shine. Everything was done, from her nails to her makeup. The dress she wore, the shoes, even the bag she clasped in one hand.
Constance gleamed .
And Anax could not pretend that this was some costume she was wearing tonight. He knew too well the things fashion could and could not do. This was not a makeover—this was her. This was the Constance he had first seen in the back of that church.
It was just that now, here, there was nothing to detract from that beauty.
Her gown clung to her body in the richest hue of deepest purple. She looked elegant. Sophisticated. And he did not like the part of him that found it easier to recognize her beauty because of those things.
Or his sure knowledge that everyone else here would, too.
“Come,” he said gruffly. “We should dance.”
She laughed, as if that was a joke. “Should we?”
“If you do not, I will have to introduce you to all kinds of people who do not deserve to meet you. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.” Somewhere inside him, the manners he had taken such care to teach himself over the years, so he could painstakingly make his way up into these higher echelons of society, stirred. Reminding him of the man he wished to be, even under duress. He extended his hand, and inclined his head. “If you would do me the honor, Constance.”
Her smile widened, and he could see the delight that poured over her. And it occurred to him that she was simply...attending a party tonight. This was another fancy dress to her and she’d put as much concern into it as she had in the wearing of a chicken suit.
He was the one who was finding it hard to breathe.
Anax was the one who felt something inside of him seemed to change shape. When his hand wrapped around hers. When she leaned into him so she could slip through the throng of people and he caught the faint hint of a scent he knew was only hers. When he pulled her out onto the dance floor—a place he typically avoided like the plague—so that he could finally, finally, pull her into his arms.
Because it was as close as he could get to her here.
“Lucky for you,” she said, sounding nothing but merry as she tipped her head back to look up at him, “I actually know how to dance. My grandparents used to dance in the kitchen at night, listening to the radio and humming along. I would sneak up the stairs to watch them when I heard the floorboards creak. They always danced cheek to cheek. And they both knew all the words.”
She smiled as if the memory brought her fresh joy and he wondered what that must be like, the kind of life where memory was a true blessing instead of a curse.
He moved with her and she flowed along with him, and Anax could not imagine ever dancing with anyone else. Ever.
“Eventually, my grandfather taught me, too,” Constance told him. “My grandmother always said that knowing how to let a man think he was leading was one of the most important tools a woman could have in her arsenal.”
“Your grandmother sounds like a woman I would have admired a great deal,” Anax managed to grit out.
“Everyone admired her or feared her,” Constance said brightly. “Often both, I think. But as for me, I just loved her. I still do.”
Her memories were a fire she warmed herself by, he saw. His were a gas fire in a trash can.
And Anax could not keep up the conversation. He could not compare blazes, flame to flame.
All he could do was dance. Because Constance was in his arms, at last.
He did not have to pretend, not with the music soaring all around them, and his gaze locked to hers. He did not have to tell himself lies.
He did not even have to redirect his attention to his daughter, because the baby wasn’t here.
There was only this. There was only her.
It was as if the fancy dress glow his sister had engineered had been a kind of stripping down, in the end. Because all he could see now was the truth.
All he could feel was the truth.
It was that truth he was thinking of as he danced her out of the ballroom and onto one of the balconies, in the dark.
Where, finally, he looked down at her and thought that he would count the constellations on her lovely face.
But that would have to wait, because she gazed up at him and he was hit with yet another truth that he’d been denying for far too long—
I want her, he thought, admitting it to himself.
Maybe he said it, too, because her eyes grew wide.
And finally, finally , Anax leaned down and took Constance’s fascinating mouth with his.