Chapter One #2
It was a unique property with generations’ worth of history engraved into the high gold-leaf ceilings, into the ornate cornices of the Haussmann architecture and buried deep into the herringbone floors.
‘This way, sir.’
He strode inside and swept past the straight spine and the dipped head of the butler without greeting. He knew the way, but he also knew who he’d find inside the formal dining room when he arrived… Léon was changed.
It wouldn’t be the same as their meeting three years ago. Laughter wouldn’t be heard above clinking glasses.
His Adam’s apple dragged heavily up and down his throat.
He didn’t let his eyes linger on the portraits of those loved and lost lining the walls, but a stillness only attributed to the forever sleeping, and those they left behind wide awake, hung in the air like a sickness.
On leather-cushioned feet, he entered another corridor.
His gaze stalled on the adaptations not in keeping with the décor. The stairlift, customised to encircle the spiralling staircase. The solid wooden ramp leading up the short three steps to a closed door.
Another bowed head greeted him at the end of the corridor. A white-gloved hand pressed down the gold handle to open an ornate door expanded to allow for a wider gait.
He stepped inside.
The panelled windows, the palest of pinewood adorned with ornate gold rims, let in the view and the orange light of a setting sun over the heart of Paris.
Clear vases full of white blooms with overly long green stems adorned every polished surface.
The chandelier roared with the tiny flames of dozens of thin church candles above the table.
An oval top made of rosewood, dressed with silver cutlery, and crystal glasses, held the central piece.
A bigger vase held longer stems, bigger blooms.
The smell of death didn’t live here.
It was floral.
It was Poppy.
His wife.
He clenched his teeth.
She was everywhere and nowhere.
The ghost of her had walked beside him on every street for a year. She’d sat beside him—distracted him—in every meeting, on every plane ride across the ocean to see for himself if his team had the right woman this time. If they’d found her. And each time, it hadn’t been her.
She’d simply stopped existing. And yet, she was in the very air he breathed.
He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
He’d thought they were the same. Level-headed.
He’d never wanted to marry. He’d thought his actions would be enough to prove to the world he was nothing like his father, but when the articles had turned into a frenzy after his award for providing a work-life balance for his employees and their families, the mock outrage that he had no family, that he wasn’t married… It became front-page news.
He’d known there was one way to end the speculation he was anything like his tyrant of a father.
He’d known he could do it with Poppy. A marriage of convenience. A marriage based on sex, but in public they’d be the epitome of a healthy relationship. Childless, but still whole. A couple who respected each other.
His father had never respected his mother, but he had respected Poppy. Respected her boundaries set into place because of her childhood. As she respected his.
Never emotion.
Never love.
She’d wanted only the things he could give her.
The things she wanted.
Security—loyalty—sex.
He’d given her all three in exchange for a marriage of convenience to bolster the image of his business ethos. Family and health first.
The press had torn him apart with her disappearance.
The image of her on the cliff. The stolen photograph of his wife in despair.
Lost. Displayed for the world to see. Captioned in sensational, vulgar words in gossip and news columns worldwide accusing him of hiding her away because of his advocacy for mental health, and how badly it would look if he couldn’t support his wife.
It wasn’t true.
He’d made sure she had everything his mother hadn’t. Help.
He walked further into the room, empty but for the sound of his breath leaving his flaring nostrils.
‘Konstantinos,’ a voice called from the doorway.
He turned, and his instinct was to let his gaze linger on the wheelchair, on the legs, smaller now, outlined beneath the grey wool blanket keeping them warm.
But he didn’t. He made himself look straight into the eyes of the cruise-liner tycoon, and swallowed down the words of condolence in his throat.
He wouldn’t let himself care for anything or anyone any more.
He’d cared for her, and she’d betrayed him. He’d trusted her to keep her word.
No one would leave him behind again.
Tonight, he’d let himself be everything he’d fought against becoming all his life. His father.
He’d be brutal. Ruthless. Cruel.
He’d make himself enjoy this, because what was the alternative?
It was his reputation or the cruise-liner tycoon’s.
It wasn’t personal.
This was business.
The only personal connection they’d ever had was her.
Their meeting three years ago should never have been what it was.
A date. It had gone from formal to casual when she’d joined them, not as anyone’s employee, but as his wife.
Caleb’s wife had joined them too, at Poppy’s request. And she’d joined them with their daughter in tow, who’d fallen asleep before dessert on her grandfather’s knee. Against Léon’s chest.
He snarled.
He was a fool.
He’d known the Durands most of his life. He’d been to boarding school with the tycoon’s son. But they were not friends.
Poppy was your friend.
He stepped forward.
She was nothing to him now.
He stretched out his hand. ‘Léon,’ he greeted in return without inflection.
‘Konstantinos,’ he repeated, wrapping two hands around his. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’
‘I was already in Paris.’
He released his hand. ‘I was aware.’
Konstantinos stood tall and watched him roll his wheelchair into place at the head of the table.
Léon nodded to the chair beside him. ‘Sit with me.’
Konstantinos exhaled. One foot after the other, he took his seat beside him at a table Konstantinos had shared with him and his family three years ago when he’d saved the tycoon’s business by pumping millions into it.
He never should have given them the loan.
The business had been failing. Rapidly. It was high-risk.
A risk he wouldn’t usually take. But the dinner…
when the two wives had put the little girl to bed.
Leaving the men downstairs to talk. To keep business and family separate.
It had done something to him. Seduced him with its family foundations.
He’d never had a conventional family. But he’d known that night, watching them all, why he did what he did. Why when his mother had died, he’d sworn to be the opposite of his father, and build an empire that put family and health first.
Family—it gave them each strength. A strength his mother had been denied by his father.
His entire business model was about putting family first. A vow he’d promised to his mother when he’d held her in his arms. He’d promised he’d prove it didn’t have to be the way it was for her.
No one had to be put second place to money. Or power. No one.
It had felt like a moral obligation to save them all.
And he had.
He’d saved Léon’s family business that night.
But now Léon had no family.
And neither did he.
Now… Konstantinos would protect only himself.
Konstantinos eyed the perfectly set table. The three crystal goblets. ‘Why are there three place settings?’ he asked.
‘I thought tonight might call for a mediator,’ Léon admitted.
He frowned. ‘A mediator?’
‘I expect there will be difficult discussions.’ His loosened skin rolled with the heavy drag of his Adam’s apple. ‘About your wife.’
‘My wife is none of your business,’ he warned.
‘Of course she’s my business. She is why you’re here. You have come to deflect the salacious rumours: “Is she in the attic?”’ he pressed, repeating the recent headlines. ‘“Has Konstantinos lost his business acumen and his wife?”’
Intelligent blue eyes met his. They were still sharp, yet they were glazed—fogged—by too many defeats.
‘The rumours won’t end because you take over my organisation,’ Léon finished.
‘They will,’ Konstantinos countered.
He’d show them all he was stronger than he’d ever been. Before or after her.
‘They won’t. The press—’ Léon’s nostrils flared ‘—they question my mental health with their disgusting articles, because I sought refuge in my home after the death of my family.’ He continued, ‘And they mock you because of the disappearance of your wife after losing your son. They parade our grief daily.’
His throat dried. Images, too bright—too clear—burst to vivid clarity in his mind.
His son in his arms.
The weightlessness of him.
His ears had strained to hear the whoosh of a heart that no longer beat. To hear his son breathe. He’d placed his too big hand to his still chest. Waited for his eyes to open. But they hadn’t. His eyes had never opened. So peaceful he had looked.
You failed him.
He hadn’t kept his promise. He hadn’t protected them when he’d vowed he would. Protected them both from the monster that lived inside him. A monster like his father who could abandon all those he should have protected.
He’d never wanted to risk having a child.
He’d wanted his father’s DNA to stop with him.
And it had.
Isaak was dead, because he’d willed it.
He stiffened. Tentacles of grief wrapped around his vital organs and squeezed.
Konstantinos cut them down at the root.
He refused to allow anything like what he’d experienced after his mother’s death to enter his bloodstream ever again.
He wouldn’t grieve for someone who had never lived.
He wouldn’t think of him.
His son. Born too soon…