Chapter Twelve
ATHENA CLIMBED INTO the back of the car with Grace and Draco.
She felt sick. The evening had gone to hell, and now Draco sat in brooding silence, Grace in less brooding silence but clearly thinking about Josefina and wondering if the poison that had erupted between their respective bosses meant the first shoots of romance between them had been trodden on.
Athena’s silence came because she didn’t know what to say.
An evening that had started with high expectations of a lucrative deal had ended terribly, and it was all her fault.
The goodnights exchanged with Grace when they dropped her at the hotel were muted.
The knots of guilt making Athena nauseous tightened, and she side-eyed Draco and wished she could read what he was thinking. He must be deeply regretting inviting her to the dinner.
After a long beat of silence he stiffly said, ‘I apologise for what you heard. You can rest assured I will not be doing business with that man.’
The guilt knotted even tighter. ‘But I thought it was a good deal that had the potential to make you a lot of money?’
‘I cannot do business with a man like that.’
She could hear the anger still underlying his rough tone.
That he’d stood up for her, had been so furious on her behalf…
For that, she could only love him more.
‘Draco,’ she said quietly, ‘don’t throw the deal away because of me. What Diego told you was true. I did try to seduce Thanasis.’
She felt him tense beside her.
‘That’s why I was banned from their wedding and banned from my nephew’s christening. I tried to steal Thanasis for myself, and now Lucie and Thanasis won’t let me set foot on Sephone or be at any family event they’re attending.’
There was a long exhalation of shocked breath. ‘When did this all happen?’
‘Last summer.’ She rested her head back and closed her eyes. She owed him the full story and if he hated her for it then she had no one to blame but herself. ‘Do you remember all the negative headlines last year when the war between my father and Thanasis’s father hit the press?’
The Antoniadis and Tsaliki patriarchs had been at war for decades but a year or so earlier their escalating methods of retaliatory fire had made headline news, causing both of their shipping companies serious reputational and financial difficulties.
‘I remember.’
‘The wedding was a sham to calm the investors.’
‘I had my suspicions,’ Draco said slowly, remembering how the engagement between Thanasis Antoniadis and Georgios Tsaliki’s beloved stepdaughter Lucie had caused many suspicious raised eyebrows, ‘but if it’s all a sham then they’re damn good actors.’
Along with the rest of Greek society, Draco had attended the eventual wedding—a car accident involving the bride meant the initial date had been postponed—and it was at the reception that Draco had first approached Alexis, who’d taken control of Tsaliki Shipping and was steering it back to robust health, about buying the company.
It was also at the wedding that Draco’s intuition that none of the Tsalikis associated his name with his mother had been confirmed…
all except one Tsaliki, who had not only associated it but known exactly who he was.
But that one Tsaliki hadn’t been at the wedding. This absence had been explained by the family telling everyone Athena had Covid, and now she was telling him she’d been barred from attending.
His guts roiled heavily.
‘They fell in love for real,’ she said.
He had to fight to keep his voice steady. ‘Did you know that when you tried to break them up?’
Her voice fell to barely a whisper. ‘They were still at the stage of hating each other but I knew Lucie had fallen for him.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been too easy to fool himself into believing the Athena he’d got to know was the ‘real’ Athena and forget who she’d always been. ‘Is that why you did it?’
She was silent for a long time. ‘I would love to tell you that had nothing to do with it, but it played its part. I’ve loved and hated Lucie since she came into my life.
I suppose I loved her because I couldn’t help but love her—I want to say she’s a horrible bitch like Rebecca but she isn’t—but I hated her for stealing my life, and when I learned Thanasis had wanted to marry me, I blamed her for stealing my future too. ’
A pulse of nausea cramped his guts.
‘Alexis brokered the deal. Thanasis wanted to marry me but my father refused and so it was Lucie who was pushed forward to marry him instead, and I hated her for it.’
‘You wanted to marry him?’
‘Yes, and when I learned I’d been his first choice I decided to make it happen.’
‘Even though you knew she was in love with him?’
‘Even though I knew she was in love with him,’ she echoed.
He felt Athena’s stare fall on him through the darkness.
‘I went to his offices and tried to seduce him. He rejected me, and so I went to Lucie and told her the truth, that the only reason she’d been pushed forward for the role of marrying Thanasis was because my father wouldn’t let his real daughter marry the devil’s spawn. ’
Just when he’d thought there was nothing about Athena that could shock him… ‘Why would you act so cruelly?’
Her voice caught. ‘Because I’m an evil bitch and hurting people is my default, and you shouldn’t throw away a deal with Diego out of a misplaced sense of honour for me.
He didn’t say anything the rest of Europe doesn’t think, and if he’s heard that I tried to seduce Thanasis into dumping Lucie and marrying me instead then that means it’s leaked and probably everyone’s heard it. ’
He swore under his breath. His head was pounding, guts as cramped as they’d ever been. ‘So everything you’ve told me has been bullshit and all along you wanted Thanasis.’
‘No,’ she refuted, swallowing. ‘I leapt at the chance of marrying him out of spite for Lucie and because I knew he would never push for the marriage to be consummated. I could have the big white wedding I’d always dreamed of without a proper groom and be the centre of attention.’
‘You tried to seduce him,’ he stated through gritted teeth. Even to think of Athena putting her lips to another man’s collar sharpened the cramping in his guts and pushed blood roaring into his head.
‘At his office, where there was no danger of it being taken further than I could bear. Thanasis is a gentleman. He was safe. I knew if I told him no for the whole two years the marriage was agreed to last that he would respect that and never try to force himself on me.’ There was another catch in her voice.
‘So not only am I a bitch but I’m a selfish, vindictive bitch.
I spent over twenty years waiting for an opportunity to hurt Lucie and when it came, I took it.
I felt that she took my place in my own life, and I was so jealous that both her parents wanted her so much that she spent half her time with her father in England, whereas my mother left without looking back at me and even when she moved into a house on the same street as us never seemed to want me there.
I never let myself see that Lucie was a child, too, and she’d had no more say in where she lived than I did, and I hurt her deliberately when she never did anything to deserve it. ’
The words flowed without any conscious thought, but the more they flowed, the more Athena knew they were right and the deeper the gnaw of self-loathing.
Memories filled her, the two of them sneaking onto the top deck of the Tsaliki yacht in the middle of the night, gazing at the stars and talking about everything and nothing until the sun came up, making each other laugh so hard their ribs hurt.
Lucie had been the only person in the world she’d ever laughed with. Until Draco.
The silence this time was so profound that she heard Draco’s hand move through the air before it covered hers and he gently squeezed.
She swallowed hard and pulled her hand away. ‘Don’t be nice to me, Draco, please. I don’t deserve it. I hurt people. I hurt everyone. I’ve even hurt you and you’re the best person I know.’
His voice was heavy. ‘But only because of the hurt done to you.’
‘That’s no excuse. I’m an adult. My actions belong to me and me alone, and the consequences of them should belong to me alone too. I can’t bear to think of you being tainted by your association with me.’
‘If you’re thinking of Diego, then don’t. You’re worth a million of him.’
‘I’m really not. I’m a horrible person.’
The car had stopped but, instead of getting out, Draco took her hand and clasped it between both of his so she couldn’t pull it away again.
‘Athena, you’ve developed a self-awareness most people never find.
You’ve done some awful things but that’s not who you are now and it doesn’t need to define you for ever. ’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Because I can hear the pain and guilt in your voice… I can feel your guilt.’
She could barely choke the words out. ‘Right now, I think I’m feeling a lifetime of guilt.’
How could she have done that to Lucie? She’d done so many cruel things to her over the years, their relationship a push and pull, love and hate, but to do that?
He brought her fingers to his mouth and gently kissed the tips. ‘Then make it right. Apologise to Lucie. If she won’t speak to you, write her a letter. I don’t know if she’ll accept it or if she’ll forgive you, but I do know that the guilt will stay lodged in you until you purge it.’
‘You’ve dealt with guilt?’
‘Everyone deals with it in some form or other. The difference is your conscience has been repressed almost your whole life, but it’s found you now.’
‘What have you ever done to feel guilty about?’
‘I wasn’t there for my mother as I should have been when she lost her job and then our home. I was too wrapped up in my own life to help her or take any of the burden off her shoulders. I didn’t see how much she was suffering until she had a nervous breakdown.’