Chapter Two #3
‘Rookie mistake,’ Andreas muttered under his breath five minutes after Vayle Lancaster had blurted that unexpected response, and he and Nelios had left her in the dining room without replying.
‘I’m not sure whether I pity her or am amused by her.
Either way, you’re better off cutting her loose asap.
I’ll go grab the security. She’ll be someone else’s problem within the hour, my friend. ’ He walked away.
Outside, the flurry of activity rumbled on, including the squad car and two policemen waiting patiently to board with Nelios’s permission.
He rolled his shoulders with a combination of irritation at his friend and the knowledge that he needed to heed Andreas’s warning and cut her loose.
He didn’t need this drama. Didn’t need the flare of heat across his skin whenever he looked at her face, at her mouth, heard the breathless quality of her speech or observed the way her damn eyelashes fluttered when she was agitated.
He didn’t need to remember how firm and supple her body had felt beneath his touch.
His latest creation, the Nelios XV hotel, was in the final stages of construction in Argentina and needed every ounce of his attention. It would be the milestone to mark the many he’d accrued over the years, and it was his first foray into South America, a place he’d fallen in love with.
A place where he’d also witnessed the kind of hardship that ravaged his soul.
Which was why, alongside his hotel construction, he was also building special housing for desperate children, as he and Andreas had once been.
Both projects were ambitious, with varying challenges, the kind he fully relished.
But also the kind that needed his full attention.
So why the hell did he hear her I’ll do anything plea on repeat in his head?
He’d already let himself down in that bedroom by revealing truths he’d excised from his life.
Yes, her words and blind belief in his parents had riled him like nothing else had for a very long time.
He’d barely managed to snap that, contrary to her belief, he had attended his father’s funeral.
He had stood beneath a tree thirty feet away and watched the man who’d discarded him get put in the ground.
Then he’d waited until everyone had departed, and he had stood over his grave—bitter, bewildered, angry and, much to his deep chagrin, a little lost.
Maybe it was that last sensation that had triggered this end game, the need for answers before time cruelly stole them from him.
Whatever.
And, yes, he’d concluded the quicker he ripped those rose-tinted glasses off Vayle’s face, the better for them all, because he wanted her to know exactly who Agnes Adamis truly was. Who Tolis had been. Wanted there to be no crumb of compassion left for them by the time he was done.
If Vayle cared enough to take the trouble, verification would only take her hours, days at most. Nelios had never bothered to hide his past. Hell, his first business venture had been one street away from that alley in which he’d nearly lost his life after he’d run away from the final foster home he’d been placed in.
A home where flying fists and verbal abuse had been as commonplace as the stale, infested oatmeal he’d been expected to choke down at the breakfast table, or the freezing showers he was forced to take just so his foster parents could save the euros they’d greedily accepted from the government and kept for themselves.
Approaching his bedroom now, to where she’d marched off to rescue her shoes and whatever else she’d brought aboard on her little stowaway adventure, Nelios fully expected to toss her out and let the authorities charge her with whatever crime they saw fit.
Seeing her distraught expression when he entered, though, he hesitated.
Not because he felt for her; absolutely not.
But part of him wanted to understand how she could be so conclusively fooled.
How her belief in Agnes and Tolis could be so unshakeable.
He had known his parents were lying that day.
And, true to their lies, they’d never bothered to come back for him.
Not the year after, and not in the two decades since.
And yes, Vayle’s knee-jerk offer to ‘do anything’ also intrigued him far more than he should’ve allowed. Even now, all the possibilities of how he could wield those two words in his favour seductively stirred through him.
His late father had had a gifted tongue, able to charm the very birds from trees. What lies had he and Agnes spun on this woman? Was it even worth his time to try and disabuse her of her beliefs?
No. It wasn’t. This interest was akin to a scientific experiment he wanted to comprehend, so he could actively avoid its deficiencies.
She was staring out of the window, at the hive of activity below. At the authorities who would shortly cart her away.
Nelios leaned against the doorway, a sliver of interest piercing his rigid guard.
Her hair had almost fully escaped the knot at the back of her head, several heavy strands of rich chestnut battling with gravity to stay put.
It drew attention to the sleek line of her neck, her slim shoulders and the tiny movement of her throat as she swallowed.
She sucked in a breath through parted lips and Nelios recalled her unguarded expression when he’d turned.
The tiny flicker of her tongue ignited that same spark low in his belly, his jaw gritting as the spark gravitated south.
No. He was absolutely not attracted to Apostolis’s and Agnes’s deluded little charity case.
And yet, when she took another, deeper breath, his gaze followed it to her firm breasts straining against the cheap suit she’d attempted to use as a disguise. Nelios cursed as the spark flamed higher.
‘If you’ve come here to gloat, just get on with it, will you? You’re running out of time.’
She kept her gaze on the window for several more seconds before pivoting to face him.
The sight of her fighting tears while her chin lifted in clear defiance should have been laughable.
But he wasn’t laughing. He was wondering why the words he needed to utter remained locked in his throat.
Why the two reasons continued to clamour ever louder as he slowly approached her.
Step aside. Cut her loose. Be done with this. Nelios shook his head, his brow furrowing tighter.
She blew out a breath, half-relieved, half-puzzled.
Then, still eyeing him, she attempted to sidle past him.
He would probably not understand why his hand shot out then, any time soon.
Why he gripped her elbow to stop her taking another step.
And why he gave life to the words that fell from his lips in that moment.
‘I will stay your execution—not because of your entirely foolish offer to do anything, although we will revisit that later.’
Her eyes grew wide and, this close, Nelios saw the ocean-blue held green and gold specks that sparkled and dimmed at will. They could almost have been considered mesmerising if one were foolish enough to succumb to their allure.
‘What do you want in return?’
A science experiment. That is all this is. Information gathering too. Knowledge is power, right?
‘You’re coming to Argentina with me. Make no mistake, your dilemma hasn’t changed.
With a single phone call I can have you thrown in jail and then deported, a process that could last weeks or months.
You’ll be in no position to help Agnes then.
Or I will offer you an alternative: for the next forty-eight hours, you’ll tell me everything I wish to know about them.
And you will leave nothing out. Agreed?’
On the one hand, it felt like the easiest thing in the world to agree to. But Vayle knew that, scratch the surface, there were all sorts of traps waiting for the unsuspecting. Traps that could well give him the ammunition he sought against Agnes, the mother he believed had wronged him.
If she was going to agree to this she would have to play this very carefully—and from the appearance of Nelios’s right-hand man in the doorway, she knew her time was up, just as she knew prison in a foreign country was the very last thing she wanted.
‘Why do you want to know about them? I thought you didn’t care.’
His jaw clenched tightly, once. ‘That is my business, not yours.’
She searched his features for some humanity.
Vayle was reminded that he’d helped her with her cramp, despite coming across as ruthless and unfeeling.
He’d fed her when he could easily have had her removed from his presence.
But a trap was still a trap, whether disguised with flowers or lined with barbed wire.
So she pushed just that little bit harder.
‘Your illusions were shattered so you want mine shattered too? Because what—misery loves company?’
‘Should it be an illusion to expect the people who decided to sire you to give you a modicum of care and consideration?’
The memory of being locked in a dark room for hours on end threatened to upsurge her already rollercoaster emotions.
‘No, it’s not. But expecting me to view my history through your warped lens is equally inconsiderate.
’ She raised her chin. ‘But I will accept your deal. And, by the end of it, you’ll see nothing you say can sway me about Tolis and Agnes. ’
His mouth twisted, along with a hint of angst crossing his face, swiftly stifled. ‘Tolis. How benign you make him sound. When exactly did he start calling himself that?’
The bitterness in his voice shook her to the core. ‘I always knew him as Tolis. And I wasn’t quite finished. I will accept your deal on condition that nothing I say will be used in this…vendetta against Agnes.’
The snort came from behind him, from Andreas.
But Nelios raised his hand before his friend could put his clearly incredulous feelings into words.
‘You’re very bad at your job if you believe I’d need a lowly marketing and PR manager of a three-star hotel to give me the dirt I need to best my enemies.
No, Miss Lancaster, I will not give you my word because it isn’t needed.
Agree without conditions or get the hell off my plane. ’
Time ticked loudly and ominously in her head. Andreas levelled a narrow-eyed gaze at her, almost daring her not to take the deal. It was clear the other man despised her, that he wanted her gone.
In some abstract part of her brain she wondered what his story was; what exactly the two men had been through together.
But she corralled her wayward thoughts. She was on the brink of buying herself two days, which was much longer than she’d anticipated when she’d hightailed it to London City airport half a day ago with her passport and a leaky plan with more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
She refocused on Nelios, on the laser beam gaze fixed squarely on her.
For better or worse… ‘Yes. Agreed.’