Chapter One #3
‘Put the golden parachute on, darling, and jump.’ Henry’s lazy drawl echoed inside her head.
It was what her father would do. What he had done on several occasions, implementing the clause in his contract that guaranteed a substantial payout if he was fired following a takeover.
Just him, nobody else. But she wasn’t her father.
Henry lived in the moment. There was no past or future, just a continuous, constantly evolving present. It was what allowed him to be all things to all people. To carry no remorse or responsibility for his actions.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t be that person. Not when she’d seen the consequences and lived with them personally. However, what she could do and had done was exploit her name, her connections.
That didn’t come naturally to her either. But the alternative would be to upend her life and turn her back on the only world she had ever known.
And maybe if it had been just her, she might have done it, but her mother had already given up so much, suffered so much.
She couldn’t ask her to give up anything else, so she had followed her father’s playbook to the letter.
And it worked. She had created a business that paid the bills and made Henry’s debts just a bad memory.
One day, she would be free to break away to set her own rules that reflected her values.
But not if she let Antaeus take her business.
Without acknowledging him, she stalked out of the boardroom and into her office, switching off the microphone as she walked.
‘We need to talk.’
She spun round sharply and instantly wished she hadn’t as she found herself at eye level with the broad chest of the man himself.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she snapped, trying desperately not to sound as panicked as she felt.
‘I just told you. We need to talk.’
‘Is everything okay?’
Antaeus turned, and she saw that Daniel, her PA, was hovering nervously outside her office, his face pale with a combination of fear and undisguised awe.
‘Sadly, no.’ Antaeus frowned. ‘It appears there’s been a mix-up. I have a long-standing appointment with Ms Appleton. If you could hold her calls.’
Cassie watched in stunned, disbelieving silence as Antaeus closed the door firmly. Then her pulse picked up as she realised that they were alone. As in, on their own.
She swallowed inaudibly this time as Antaeus turned to face her.
‘Do I need to call security?’ she asked.
‘No, you need to sit down and listen to what I have to say.’
‘Don’t tell me what I need to do in my office.’ She snatched up the phone on her desk.
‘Really? You’re going to throw me out of the building. Imagine if somebody happened to take a photo.’ He made a tutting sound with his tongue. ‘You see, that there is why you’re in the position you’re in. Lack of foresight. You’re not thinking of the optics.’
She licked her lips. Much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, Antaeus was right.
The business shared the building and, more crucially, the entrance foyer with three other firms. All it would take was one nosy parker with a smartphone.
Antaeus Tsiartas was not the kind of man to pass under anyone’s radar, particularly if he was being frog-marched out of the building by security guards.
‘I’ll give you ten minutes. I’m sure that will be ample given that you’ve already made your big sales pitch.’
His eyes rested on her face, something slicing through the irises like the dorsal fin of a shark cutting through the blue of the ocean. ‘I’m not here to sell. I’m here to buy.’
‘Then I hope all your years of dominating the global markets have taught you how to manage your disappointment, because nothing here is for sale.’
She felt his gaze change form, grow liquid. It was stupid, ludicrous for her body to react as it did, yet she felt sideswiped and breathless. Her mind shied away from why she should be feeling like that, and she was suddenly close to tears. And she couldn’t explain that either.
‘Everything is for sale if the price is right. I’m surprised your business has lasted this long if that is still a new concept to you,’ he said, his gaze steady and hard-edged.
She shivered inside. ‘Not everything. So, I’ve just saved you seven and a half minutes of your valuable time. No need to thank me. Just close the door on your way out.’
He didn’t move. He just stared at her. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he turned on the spot as if mentally sizing up the space.
Cassie felt panic start to beat out a drumroll inside her ribcage. It was so loud that she was surprised Daniel wasn’t knocking on the door to find out what was happening.
She was desperate to know the answer, and equally resistant to the idea of asking him outright. But what was he doing here?
Ever since his name had finally dropped into the conversation like a tiny but deadly depth charge, she had been racking her brains for an explanation for Antaeus Tsiartas training his laser focus on her business.
Closure? Maybe claiming something from Trojan Princess would take the sting out of his father’s imprisonment.
Pride? Perhaps he wanted to prove that he was different to Andreas. Better. And the simplest way to do that was to demonstrate his success was greater than hers. Maybe even use her business to promote and protect his own.
Revenge, then, on many levels.
It sounded so primitive, and the man standing in her office seemed like the antithesis of that.
She glanced sideways, and her eyes moved over Antaeus’s superbly tailored suit. Her father was a great connoisseur of suits. As a child, she sat through countless fittings with him at his Savile Row tailor. This suit, she knew unhesitatingly, would meet his approval.
It was cut beautifully. Wider than average lapels added strength to his already broad-shouldered appearance.
Then there were the cuffs.
The standard number of buttons on an average suit jacket was four.
But there was nothing average about Antaeus Tsiartas, which was why his cuffs had five ‘kissing’ or slightly overlapping buttons to emphasise the length of the sleeve.
And like her father, Antaeus chose to leave the last cuff button undone as a subtle signal of that quality.
As Henry liked to say, the devil was in the details.
She shivered again.
And this man was an exquisitely clothed devil. Which made the idea of him seeking revenge even more terrifying.
But life had taught her that pretending something wasn’t happening was a fragile and ultimately fruitless defence. To survive, she had a choice. Surrender or stand her ground.
Cassie felt something smooth and cold slide through her. Her mom had chosen surrender, and it had crushed Cecilia Appleton, leaving her small and diminished and dependent on a man without integrity or any core values.
She knew she couldn’t be that woman just as strongly as she knew why he was here. But she needed him to say it out loud. Instead, with a mildness that caught her off guard, he said, ‘Why don’t you have the corner office?’
It wasn’t something anyone had asked her before, but she knew why he was asking. Corner offices were always the most sought-after in any office. There was less footfall, more light, and usually more space and better views.
Her father would have snapped up a corner office without blinking, but she had spent so much of life already walking reluctantly in his shoes. Whenever she got the chance, however tiny, to rebel, she took it.
But explaining that to anyone, especially this dark-eyed man, was not an option. It seemed likely that his presence here in her office was motivated not by a sudden and overwhelming need to own a PR agency but by something more personal and vengeful.
‘I don’t need a public display of power to compensate for some private inadequacy,’ she said crisply.
There was a tense, electric pause that made her breath go shallow, and she had that same edgy feeling she’d felt when he shook her hand in the boardroom. A fluttery looseness in her chest but also a tautness to her limbs as if her body was fighting itself.
‘Interesting theory.’ His mouth changed shape again, curving into a taunting smile she felt everywhere. ‘I don’t have a corner office myself.’ In other words, he wasn’t compensating for anything. But he didn’t need to finish the punchline to his sentence. The twist to his mouth did it for him.