Chapter Twelve #2
‘I’ll go to a hotel for a few days, while I find somewhere else to live. You stay here. I will uphold everything I agreed to in our deal, naturally. I’ll fix your father’s company, and then return it to you. I’m sorry I used you like this. I will always regret it.’
‘Used me,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘Is that really what this was to you? Was I honestly just a means to an end?’
He closed his eyes at the accusation in her voice, but then, he was stuffing things into a bag and Annie was staring at him with the realization that he was actually about to walk out of his own home.
‘Don’t,’ she shouted, eyes filling with tears. ‘Don’t you dare pack that bag. If either of us is leaving, it will be me. This is your home. I’m not staying in it without you.’
‘You can leave, if you want, but either way, I’m going.’
‘Does it mean nothing to you to hear that I love you?’
‘It means I was even more careless than I thought. All I can hope is that you are mistaken.’
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I love you. You need to look at me, and accept that. Accept that you are walking away from someone who has given you their heart, for always and ever. And Theo? That means something.’
He was silent.
‘Coward. You’re running away from me because you’re terrified to love, knowing there’s a risk that you’ll lose me. So what? Aren’t I worth taking that risk for? Don’t we deserve a chance?’
His response was to walk out the door.
Theo went to the island, rather than a hotel, and that was a mistake, because memories of Annie chased him there.
Even in the ocean, there was no solace. Whatever their first time had been about, it had imprinted on him in a way he couldn’t shake.
She was in the wind, the sand, the sky, the very air he breathed.
He stayed for a week, each day, hoping to wake up and feel something like his normal self, but without success.
On the eighth day, he returned to Athens with a heaviness in his gut he couldn’t shift.
He thought about going home, but he couldn’t.
He didn’t want to see Annie. He wished this whole thing had never happened.
He’d been so focused on the chance for revenge against her father, he hadn’t stopped to think about what that revenge might do to Annie.
He hadn’t stopped to think about the fact he was making her collateral damage, nor the fact that he really, really cared about that.
And even though he knew he couldn’t be with her, he also knew he couldn’t be responsible for ruining her life—and her relationship with her father.
She’d called him a coward? Maybe she was right. But he was going to stand up and fix at least one part of this debacle, starting with her father.
Nine days after walking away from Annie, he arrived at her father’s house, grim-faced but determined, and pressed the doorbell.
A maid answered after a few moments.
‘Is Elliot Langley in?’
‘May I take your name?’
Theo compressed his jaw. ‘His son-in-law.’
Even then, when’d come to relieve himself of the burdens of guilt and hate, he found it hard to step back from what he was feeling.
‘Very good, sir. Please, come in. Mr Langley is in his study.’
Theo nodded once, but having only come to the house on the occasion of Elliot’s recent birthday, he had no idea where that was. That must have shown on his features, because the maid said, ‘Please, follow me.’
Theo strode behind her, noting the lack of photographs of Annie on the walls, whereas everywhere he looked there were pictures of his late daughter, Mary.
He knew what the dynamic had been, because Annie had told him, back then, but that didn’t make it any harder to see.
To imagine how it had been for Annie, growing up here, amongst this museum—a tribute to the little girl they’d lost. A little girl she could never replace, no matter how much her parents wanted her to.
Something cavernous opened up in his chest as Annie’s spirit flooded through him.
Annie, who’d never really been loved, either.
Who’d only been wanted to stem the tide of grief, and hadn’t been enough for that.
Annie who had learned her role in life was to give up everything to please her parents, including her own independence, her own desires.
Including him, even when he was what she’d wanted most.
Annie who’d come to him for help, and received instead the weight of Theo’s bitter resentment and anger, who’d been destroyed by him when she’d most needed compassion.
The gnawing, cavernous hollow in the middle of his being expanded out. Regret was a third footfall, right behind him, chasing him relentlessly.
‘Leonidas.’ Elliot pushed back his chair, staring across his office at Theo, as though he’d seen a ghost. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘We need to talk,’ he said, striving to infuse his voice with a hint of cordiality, and failing.
‘What the hell for? I thought I made it clear the other night—you’re not welcome in my house.’
‘Even as your son-in-law?’ he asked, his lips sneering, before remembering he’d come here to be honest, to at least fix things, as much as he could, for Annie.
‘The fact she was stupid enough to marry you doesn’t change a thing about how I feel. She’ll wake up and see the light one day.’
‘And if she doesn’t?’
‘It’s inevitable. You’re not right for her. How could you ever hope to be? Someone like you…’
Theo crossed to the window and stared out at the familiar view of Athens. His own outlook, from his bedroom in the Georgiadeses’ house next door, had been in this direction.
‘It’s good to see your elitist streak hasn’t mellowed with age.’
‘Is it elitist to speak the truth?’
‘Your truth is exactly that—yours. Not mine, not Annie’s. Never Annie’s.’
‘You were a mistake. You were always a mistake. She’ll see that eventually.’
‘Yes.’ Theo dropped his head forward, the words piercing his soul.
‘Our marriage was a mistake, you’re right.
My mistake, not hers.’ The weight on his chest grew heavier.
‘Annie married for love. I married for revenge.’ He turned then, dark eyes glittering with ruthless anger, and saw the way Elliot had to brace himself against the desk.
‘She married out of a love for you, and, I believe now, a love for me. Perhaps she hoped she could love us both enough to get beyond how much hatred you and I share for one another. One thing has become very clear to me, though. Our marriage will destroy her. Loving me will destroy her. You were right about that.’
‘What do you mean, you married for revenge?’
Theo hesitated for the briefest moment, before forcing himself to admit what he’d come here to say. ‘Annie needed my help with a professional matter. I gave it on the condition of this marriage.’
Elliot cursed loudly. ‘You blackmailed my daughter?’
‘Yes.’ What was the sense in hiding it?
‘For what possible reason?’
Theo compressed his lips.
‘To get back at me,’ Elliot groaned. ‘Because I made her leave you back then. Are you really so petty and broken, that you cannot let bygones be bygones? Are you so damaged that you couldn’t see Annie would be the one you hurt with this?
Annie, who stood up for you until she was blue in the face.
Annie would probably have walked out of her home for good that night, rather than lose you, if it hadn’t been for her mother. ’
Theo absorbed those charges with no small measure of hurt.
But Elliot was not finished. Face puce with anger, he shouted, ‘Good Lord, what in God’s name have you done?’
‘Done?’ Theo ground his jaw. ‘I’ve let her go, Elliot. Just like you wanted me to. She’s free. Annie and I will be getting divorced. It turns out, you win, after all.’
Elliot sat down in the chair behind his desk, staring at the wall opposite. ‘You really are a fool, Leonidas.’
Theo made a scoffing noise of surprise.
‘I never thought much of you, but at least you showed yourself to have good judgement. Are you telling me you’ve ended things with my daughter? You’ve broken up with her?’
A muscle jerked in his jaw as he heard the older man’s shock. Hell, he could even understand the reasoning for it. What man in his right mind would walk away from Annie without a gun to his head? Even then…
‘If you’ve hurt her—’ Elliot said, the words ringing through the room.
Theo paced to the desk and pressed his fingertips against the inlaid leather surface. ‘Isn’t that a little like the pot calling the kettle black?’
‘What the devil does that mean?’
‘Annie came to me hurt. She came to me broken. Because of you. Because of how you treated her—because of how you pushed her, her whole life, into Mary’s shadow.’
The older man paled immediately, his lined face showing surprise and indignation, as well as something else. Something like guilt. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I know that woman deserved better than to feel like a substitute for someone you loved more.’
‘I love my daughter.’
‘Perhaps. But loving someone doesn’t always go hand in hand with treating them well.’ The words fell like stones against him, thudding into the emptiness of his chest cavity in a way that he knew would leave permanent scars.
‘I have always protected her, and tried to do what was right for her—’
‘You’ve done what was right for you. You’ve spent your life trying to turn Annie into the person you thought she should become, rather than appreciate the woman she is.’
‘This is none of your business.’
Theo opened his mouth to dispute that, to say that anything that concerned Annie would always concern him, but that would have been a lie, wouldn’t it? Annie was not his wife in anything but name, and even that would soon be dissolved.
‘If you’ve hurt her, Theo, so help me God—’
He narrowed his gaze, his gut rolling with acid waves. ‘I would never hurt her.’