Chapter Three #2
The sleeveless dress she had chosen travelled well—nothing looked more unprofessional and slapdash than crumpled fabric.
And the diagonal-draped pleated wool flowed into an A-line silhouette that was polished and timeless.
She had swapped out her usual purse for a more casual woven one and added a pearl necklace of her mother’s as some kind of amulet to ward off evil.
She was going to need it.
This man was trying to steal her business, her security, her future. He was her enemy. It was infuriating not to say incomprehensible that her body seemed oblivious to that fact.
‘Shall we go?’ He gestured towards the helicopter.
Another man in a dark suit leapt forward to open the door.
She nodded stiffly. Taking hold of the handle and her courage, she stepped up into the cabin.
Moments later, Antaeus joined her, and then they were rising up into the cloudless blue.
As they swung away from the runways, she mapped her progress through the airport to the helipad.
It was all so smooth and effortless, each step choreographed by the man sitting beside her, and suddenly she felt very afraid.
After about five minutes, that fear escalated as she realised that they were flying away from the red roofs of the city.
‘Is the meeting not in Thessaloniki?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re going to Krokos. It’s about fifty kilometres north-east of Thessaloniki. It should take about fifteen to twenty minutes to get there.’
Krokos? Was that a town, a hotel, a business?
‘And what are we doing there?’
He looked at her for a long moment. ‘You’ll see,’ he said finally, lips curving, eyes hard. ‘I have some emails to attend to, but I might need someone to take notes for me, so why don’t you practise your typing? Make sure you can keep up. I don’t repeat myself.’
Her hands balled at her sides as fury rose up to butt against her mask of composure.
So this was how it was going to be? Death by a thousand little humiliations.
It wasn’t the note-taking. She could and did take notes.
For herself. And if that was her job, she would be perfectly happy to do so for him.
But it wasn’t. In this charade he had blackmailed her into playing, she was still CEO.
She lowered her gaze from his maddeningly perfect profile.
As she did so, he stretched out his leg, and she found herself staring at his muscular thigh.
It felt unnecessarily and dangerously close to hers.
She quickly refocused her attention on her shoes.
They cost a stupid amount of money, but a CEO’s personal appearance was an extension of their business, and the right brands confirmed that the person wearing them was accomplished and at home operating in a world of high-value deals and influential people.
The shoes would make good weapons, too, she thought, and she had to press her hands against the armrests to stop herself from reaching down and plucking her shoes from her feet and hurling them at Antaeus’s head.
‘What is it?’
His voice snapped her thoughts in two. She glanced up at him, shuttering her eyes.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘You’re fidgeting.’
‘I’m thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘Mostly about pushing you out of this helicopter.’
His hard, sensuous mouth flattened. Then it flicked up at the corners, and he laughed. A proper laugh that wrapped around her body and made their recent history just disappear from her head as if it had never happened.
‘I’d like to see you try.’ She felt his gaze sweep over her. Her heart thudded hard as something charged reverberated around the soft leather interior of the cabin.
‘Isn’t that what Goliath said to David?’
‘Good point.’ He stared at her—no, studied her—for a long, level moment. ‘Are you carrying a concealed slingshot? Maybe I should pat you down.’
‘I’d like to see you try.’ Her breath snatched in her throat. She was aiming for cool defiance, but somehow it sounded more like an invitation. And she hated that she said stupid things around this man.
He held her gaze for a second more, and then he looked back down at his phone. She inched across the seat silently, trying to widen the distance between them. Cheeks still warm, she stared out the window.
This wasn’t a Greece she’d seen before. Athens had been a cosmopolitan, bustling city, and Mykonos was all sun-kissed, golden beaches and whitewashed villages.
Thessaloniki was wedged between the deep blue expanse of the Thermaic Gulf and a formidable mountain range. Cloaked in a soft, misty haze, the mountains felt like silent guardians watching over the city.
‘That tall peak over there in the distance is Mount Olympus.’ Antaeus’s voice cut across her gaze, and she turned towards him.
He would be right at home there, she thought, and a shiver ran through her body as she met his dark, impenetrable eyes.
It wasn’t just his Greekness or his beauty—he shared the gods’ same single-minded ruthlessness and punitive temperament.
It was not a comforting thought. Glancing away, she stared down at the landscape beneath them.
Moments earlier it had been a patchwork of farmland and forests of pine trees dotted with the occasional cluster of stone-walled houses.
But now the ground was growing steeper, more rugged and rocky, and the number of roads was shrinking and she realised they were flying up the lower slopes of the nearest mountain.
But surely nobody could live or work up here?
As if Antaeus could hear the question echoing ominously inside her head, he shifted forward to glance past her shoulder.
‘That’s why we flew. You can drive, but the roads are fairly basic.
You’re in bandit country here.’ His words were accompanied by a razor-edged smile that she badly wanted to ignore, but—
‘Must have been slim pickings.’
His pupils flared. He looked just as he had in her office then, his face all structure and steel and shadow. He would have made a good bandit, and she felt that thought pound through her in a dizzying drumroll.
‘They lived up here. They robbed people lower down the mountain. Mostly they held up travellers or stole livestock. Occasionally they even kidnapped people for ransom. But they were also freedom fighters.’
A shaft of sunlight cut across his face, and there was a tautness across his enviable cheekbones.
She tilted back her head. ‘Freedom fighters who kept people imprisoned for money. Not at all contradictory.’
‘Not everyone lives in some carefree bubble of comfort and complacency like you. The real world is messy and complex.’
Her stomach tightened, skin prickling as his gaze held hers. This time she was the one to look away.
The rest of the journey passed in silence.
It didn’t last long. Some three minutes later, she felt the helicopter start to slow, and then the slap-slap-slap of the blades intensified.
Glancing down, she saw a vortex of dust and gravel swirling up chaotically to meet the helicopter’s undercarriage.
She felt the light shudder of the landing gear as it made contact with the ground and then there was nothing but the soft tick of contracting metal.
They were here.
But where was here?
At first she didn’t notice the low-slung building hugging the contours of the land. It must have been designed to blend in, she thought, her gaze moving over the turf-covered roof that merged seamlessly with the surrounding hillside.
What gave it away were the blink-and-you-missed-them features not found in nature.
The security cameras tucked into the rocky outcrops and the stark lines of the landing pad.
Although that would only truly be visible from above.
Which meant that whatever this place was, it was designed not to be seen unless you knew of its existence.
A flutter of panic danced over her skin.
‘What is this place?’
Antaeus shifted in his seat. ‘This is Krokos. It’s a secure facility. Not for people.’ He smiled suddenly, wolfishly, as if he could sense her panic. ‘It’s a document, data and artefact storage facility.’
His bodyguard was already opening the door, and Antaeus stepped smoothly out. ‘Give me your hand,’ he ordered. ‘The ground here is slippery.’
She took his outstretched hand, letting go as soon as she could. She hated the sharp burst of heat as her hand brushed against his, but not as much as she hated the way his eyes jerked up to hers as if he had been burned too.
‘Does krokos mean secure?’
He shook his head. ‘It means saffron. Saffron comes from the crocus flower, hence the name. They used to be farmed here commercially. Even now, if you come up here in the late autumn, it’s a mass of purple.
Or that’s what it looks like from a distance.
But up close, there are a thousand different tones and shades, like a pointillist painting. ’
Cassie blinked.
It was the single longest sentence Antaeus had spoken to her that had nothing to do with either the takeover or the trauma of their shared pasts.
But it was not so much the subject matter that caught her off balance but the sudden bloom of animation in his face and voice, and the way his hands had gestured towards the dry landscape as if he was painting on a canvas that she alone could see.
She felt her breath lurch. It was jarring, meeting this raw, unfiltered version of him.
Ever since she discovered who was behind the takeover, she had characterised Antaeus in her mind as a collection of almost entirely bad qualities.
Now, for the first time, she felt she was seeing a part of his soul.
‘It must be beautiful,’ she said quickly.
‘It is. But there are equally beautiful things inside. And more importantly, they have a far greater value.’
He held out his arm imperiously, herding her towards the facility. She was reminded of how he had orchestrated her path through the airport, and it was a relief to hate him again.