Chapter Six
SWITCHING OFF THE SHOWER, Antaeus yanked a towel from the drying rail.
He had been standing under the water for ten minutes now, hot at first, then near freezing, hoping it might wash away the memory of everything that had happened since he walked out of the Krokos facility and climbed into the pilot’s seat in the helicopter.
It hadn’t worked. He still felt as though he was trapped in that storm, only now the lightning was crackling beneath his skin.
He ran a hand over his face, then pressed his palms against his eyes as if that would make him unsee it all.
The frantic rhythm of the helicopter blades, the rain lashing against the windows.
Cassie’s pale face in the flashing lights of the instrument panel and his own suppressed fear coiled low in his gut.
And that raw, undeniable relief when they’d landed.
Because it was his fault they were there.
Down in the vault, watching her gaze in wonder at the krater, something had changed.
He had felt as if she understood not just Jason’s journey but his own.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he could imagine another, different life where he wasn’t carrying this burden of expectation and responsibility.
It was a weight he never put down. A constant, crushing presence that defined every action, every thought.
For him, the world had only ever been a stage for a revenge tragedy scripted by his father and grandfather. It had never been a place of wonder or possibility and peace.
Until that moment in the vault, watching Cassie, her beautiful tear-streaked face stripped of composure.
But stepping out into the daylight, he had felt ashamed.
He was supposed to be punishing her, making her dance to his tune, not making peace with her.
The sun’s rays had felt like spotlights shining on his failure.
Picturing his dad’s face on their last video call, he saw the hopeless ineffectuality of his revenge strategy.
In a single, blinding flare of clarity, he had known how to punish Cassie properly.
Appropriately. By forcing her to feel the same crushing helplessness and desolation he had felt.
Only by making that happen could he move forward to a future that wasn’t poisoned by the past. Because no matter which way he looked at it, his dad’s imprisonment, his mother’s accident, his exile to live with his furious grandfather, all of it tracked back to Henry Appleton.
He’d felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders, relieved at last to have found the perfect solution he had been seeking to the task set by Papou. And it was perfect in its clear-headed neutrality.
Except so far, none of his interactions with Cassandra Appleton came even close to being clear-headed.
Or neutral.
His fingers tightened around the towel. What all that water and soap and scrubbing had failed spectacularly to do was blot out what happened after she woke up the first time. And the second time, too, and the next.
He swore softly. Why had he touched her?
But he knew why. She had been shaking, and he had wanted to comfort her. He had reached for her hand, heard the change in her breath, felt his own breath stutter when she pulled away.
Only then she had taken his wrist, her green eyes fixed on his face, pupils pulsing in time to the lightning splitting the sky in two. As if her need for him was a similarly powerful, unstoppable force of nature.
Was it any wonder that he had lost his bearings and surrendered unthinkingly to her touch?
He had been literally out of his mind with need of her. Her body in its various stages of nakedness had cast a spell over his senses. He had been entranced. Bewitched. Light-headed, his body aflame.
And it had all been a hoax.
In the mirror, he could see his hands balling into fists, trying to hold on to his anger, to contain the chaos.
He hadn’t known immediately, not until she started talking about Thessaloniki. And the stupid thing, the most humiliating part of it was that he had forgotten his threat to imprison her. His head was full of other things: her vulnerability, her body, the noises she’d made.
Then she had made it clear that she thought the situation was different now.
That having sex had changed his mind, and that he was taking her back to the city.
He’d felt flattened, stunned. And nothing had ever compared to the intensity of his rage in that moment.
That she had taken him for such a fool, that he had been as easily duped as his father had been by Henry.
He was blinded by it.
And he’d heard the frustration in her voice, the disbelief and the fury, but it was probably one of her party tricks when things didn’t go her way.
Maybe there was a routine, just like she had when she seduced him.
The pulse leaping in her throat. The trembling mouth.
That softness in her eyes, and her hands reaching clumsily like she wasn’t in control of herself—
The truth of what had happened curdled in his gut. He was a traitor. To his father, to his name, to the very vow he’d made to seek justice. And for what? A honey trap.
A moment of heat.
And yet in those febrile moments with Cassie, he had felt a freedom and a wholeness that he had never experienced.
Tossing the damp towel onto the bed, he stalked into his dressing room and snatched a T-shirt from the neatly folded pile. She was going to pay for her deception. With her freedom.
And he was going to enjoy making her pay. Every single second of it.
Leaning as far out of the window as she dared, Cassie gazed down at the seemingly endless rock face and then jerked backwards as her head spun vertiginously.
She had served four hours of her sentence. Thankfully, three of those were spent sleeping. But she couldn’t sleep forever, and waking was only ever going to be a brief respite from this ridiculous but inescapable nightmare she was living in.
After Antaeus had made his savage and unjust accusation, it had taken another thirty minutes for them to reach his mansion on the slopes of Mount Pelion. She had hoped that on arrival, sense would prevail.
It hadn’t.
Momentarily, she had considered refusing to leave the helicopter. When her fingers stilled against her seat belt buckle, he had turned towards her, the cold intent in his dark blue eyes making her skin prickle with warning. She had understood that the outcome would be the same whatever she did.
His staff were waiting in front of the beautiful mansion, its rugged stone softened by intricate woodwork.
Did they know what was happening? Antaeus spoke to them tersely in Greek, but she had no idea what he said to them.
Momentarily she had considered asking them to help.
But what would be the point? They were his employees.
Perhaps he did this often. Maybe he dragged women back to his mountain lair on the first Tuesday of every month.
Either way, nobody had tried to intervene, and Antaeus had whisked her through the interior of the house and deposited her in this room.
Her room.
Her cell, to be precise. Although it was the most spacious, elegant prison cell she could imagine. Her gaze moved over the pale pink walls and clean lines of the bed with its pristine white quilt.
A pale apricot velvet armchair had been placed near the window, possibly to encourage introspection and penitence. She had sat there while she ate the delicious brunch that had been left for her on a tray. And while she ate, she admired the view.
Although view didn’t do justice to what she could see from her window. It was a rugged world of green and grey. Beyond, stretching to the horizon, the Aegean was a single shimmering sheet of beaten silver.
If only she could dive in and swim to freedom.
She glanced at the door. There was no lock. She was free to come and go as she wished. But there was a reason for that, she thought, her gaze dropping to the rock face beneath her.
There was no way out.
Gazing down from the helicopter, she had seen the high walls surrounding the estate. Seen, too, that there was only a single, winding road that snaked up the slope of the mountain. But of course, to reach the road and freedom, she would have to get past the high metal gates first.
That was the easy way out.
As she glanced back out the window, her fingers tightened around the frame. On every side there were barriers, both natural and man-made.
Which meant she was stuck here until Antaeus was satisfied that the punishment fitted the crime.
And now a new offence had been added to the list.
She felt her stomach lurch as she heard Antaeus’s voice say softly, ‘Was that what last night was about? Saving your skin.’
It hurt more than it should have that he could think she was that woman. But at least she understood now what a battle it would be to change his mind.
His opinion of her had been forged too long ago, the molten metal cool now and impervious to pleas or logic.
Which meant that even though she wanted to keep hiding out here in her room, she was going to have to just suck it up and play his ridiculous game until he got bored. And it was a game. The same jumping-through-hoops game as before, just in a different venue.
But beautiful, self-serving men like Antaeus, like her father, like Gray, had short attention spans. They were modern-day Viking raiders. They chose their target and moved in fast, taking what they wanted and then retreating with their spoils.
Antaeus would quickly get tired of having her around. But perhaps she would have long enough to persuade him that her business was worth keeping, her staff too. That was what mattered.
All she needed to do was stay calm and one step removed.
Obviously, Antaeus would try to provoke her. As far as the staying calm and one step removed strategy went, she hadn’t exactly followed her own advice.