Chapter One #3
Something twisted inside her, something she’d been trying very hard not to pay any attention to.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of having kids—she’d come to the decision that she did want them, but only in the context of a family.
She didn’t want any child of hers to grow up, for example, with Banks as a father.
Not that he’d been the worst. He’d been good to her after Archimedes had left, mellowing a lot in his old age, but still.
‘You don’t have a single thought about that?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’d really be happy for a child to be brought up in Banks’s house?’
‘They will be warm, dry, fed and cared for,’ Archimedes said negligently. ‘What else does a child need?’
Love, Zoe wanted to say. A child needs love.
But she knew already that Archimedes wouldn’t understand the first thing about love.
He never had. She’d told him once about her early experience of growing up with loving parents, and the terrible grief when they’d both been killed in a car accident.
But he’d simply shrugged the same way he was shrugging now.
No one had ever loved him, he’d told her, yet he was fine.
He’d never seen the need for it anyway. Banks was okay.
He fed them, gave them a roof over their heads, made sure they had clothes to wear.
They wanted for nothing, or at least that was what Archimedes had said.
‘To be put to work the moment they turn seven?’ She couldn’t keep the shock from her tone.
Again that casual shrug. ‘Does it matter? We both had the same upbringing and I don’t know about you, but Ares Security is vastly successful so really, I couldn’t have had a better start in life.’
‘You have to be joking,’ Zoe said blankly.
‘Does it look like I’m joking?’ His face was hard, his blue gaze sapphire-sharp, and that something inside Zoe, the thing she never wanted to acknowledge, twisted again.
The priest and Banks approached and Archimedes’s razor-sharp gaze shifted. ‘Finally,’ he said.
Zoe swallowed, her mouth dry. This couldn’t be happening, could it? Was she really going to agree to marry Archimedes? And have a child with him?
She’d been wanting to strike out on her own for years, but she hadn’t done anything about it yet, because she had complicated feelings about leaving Banks.
Memories of her birth parents were few, and she treasured those, but their loss had left a huge hole in her life and it had been Banks who’d filled it, however imperfectly.
He’d been a father to her in more ways than one, especially after Archimedes’s departure.
He’d been kind to her in those lonely months following, and because he was the only family she had, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to leave him.
She loved him, in a way. He hadn’t been totally awful. He had indeed kept all the kids in his care fed and clothed, and while he didn’t send them to school, he did educate them himself, alongside lessons in online crime.
Everyone had eventually grown up and left, though, and most of them he’d let go. She, however, had chosen to stay. He’d often told her how valuable she was to him, and while that wasn’t exactly love, it was enough for her.
She’d eventually persuaded him to give up the black hat business and become an online security consultant, so at least he’d stopped his illegal activities.
However, he was getting on in years and had no one to look after him, and she couldn’t abandon him, not after he’d given her a roof over her head.
Still, if she wanted to finally strike out on her own, she was going to need the money he’d promised her if she went through with this.
The salary he paid her was generous and she’d been squirelling away every penny, yet it still wasn’t going to be enough to build the company she’d been dreaming about—a service that would help protect people from online scammers, hunt down those responsible for sextortion involving young people and women, and anything else black hat operators did that caused harm and distress.
A restitution in a way, to make up for all the illegal things she’d done under Banks’s tutelage.
‘Zoe,’ Archimedes said, his tone sharp as a whip. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the floor beside him. ‘Come here. Let’s get this done.’
Immediately, she bridled at the command in his voice. ‘Don’t you dare snap your fingers at me.’ She lifted her chin, giving him a furious look. ‘I’m not a bloody dog.’
‘Are we going to stand around arguing about this all day?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve got another half an hour and that’s all.’
Despite her determination not to make a drama of this, Zoe couldn’t stand the thought of acquiescing without at least a cursory protest. She didn’t like being told what to do, especially by him.
‘What about a dress?’ She lifted her own brow at him. ‘And flowers? I’m a bride, Archimedes. How can I be a bride if I don’t have a dress?’
Something glittered in his eyes briefly, a spark of something that oddly made her breath catch.
He studied her for one long moment, then took his phone out of his pocket and raised it to his ear.
‘Jen? I need a bridal gown delivered to this address within the next ten minutes. Size ten. White silk. Full length and fitted, I think. Oh, and a bouquet of peonies. Make them pink.’ He ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Satisfied?’