Chapter Eleven
ANTAEUS FELT AS if his brain was on fire.
He was twelve again, back in the principal’s office, a box of tissues placed close to hand. He hadn’t cried when she told him that his mother had been killed in an accident.
And he had hardly noticed the female police officer standing at the back of the principal’s office. Reality had floated away.
Everything had stopped, emptied out of him. He was a gap in the firmament. Lost. And he had stayed lost for decades, not in any purposeful, mythical way. Just lost.
And then Cassie had found him. She had led him away from that emptiness and offered him something other than fury and vengeance. She had given him hope, led him to the light.
Only the crypto data theft had made him look back, and the past had pulled him back, and all his old fears of letting someone get close, of loving someone, had erupted in that flashpoint here moments earlier when he had found her looking small and stunned and hurt.
Seeing her in pain had triggered some primal fear. He was hurting her already. And if they stayed together, he would have to face the certain knowledge that he would harm her more. Because that’s what love did.
Or that’s what it had felt like in the moment.
He had been so scared that he had fallen back into old habits. And Cassie’s rage had felt familiar and comforting. That role of being her tormentor was something he could live with if it meant keeping her safe.
But he had never been in love before. Never known what it felt like for someone to be your magnetic north. Now he was flailing, not just lost but adrift. He had pushed Cassie away, and now she was lost to him forever just as surely as if she had been dragged back down to the underworld.
The thought that he would never see her again made something crumple inside him, something structural.
It was not survivable, that he wouldn’t look up and see her sitting beside him, her legs tucked up under her knees, her blond hair brighter than the sun, her green eyes a barometer for her emotions.
And his, it had turned out.
Because he could see now that since the very start, she had been the one in charge. It had been her resistance, not his demands, that had defined their relationship. He might have summoned her to Greece and kept her captive, but she was the one who crossed lines, forcing him to face his past.
Not seeing the future but giving him a future that for so long had seemed hazy and out of reach.
And now Cassie was not just out of reach. She was gone. Pain blotted out the panic, or maybe it was the other way round. Either way, he was standing at the edge of an abyss.
He couldn’t just stand there. He had to do something. Still clutching the keys she had thrown at him, he headed for the door.
It was raining hard now. Summer rain that soaked everything in seconds, but he barely registered it.
All he could think about was finding Cassie. Where had she gone? Who did she trust?
His heartbeat thickened. He knew who.
It took him ten minutes to reach the Appleton townhouse. He had got there in fits and starts, following the imperfect map in his head from when he had gone there a year earlier out of curiosity and to test his resolve, to see if he could confront his pain without losing control.
Now the house felt like a monument to his own stupidity and lack of judgement.
As he crossed the road, the front door opened, and his heart leapt.
Cassie.
But it was an older woman with glossy dark hair. She glanced up at the sky and hesitated, and he knew instantly who she was.
Cecilia Appleton was still beautiful. There was something regal about her, a vulnerability too. Both made him pause.
But it was too late. She had noticed him.
‘Antaeus. It is Antaeus, isn’t it?’
For so long in his memory, he had cast her as an accomplice, an accessory to her husband’s wrongdoings.
He had only recently acknowledged his mistake and now, here beneath the grey skies of New York, she looked delicate, gentle, ill-equipped for the crimes he had so easily assumed she was capable of committing.
‘Come in.’ She smiled, and it was Cassie’s smile.
‘Come in and get out of this awful rain.’ He followed her mechanically into the house, only realising as he walked into the primrose-coloured kitchen that he was standing in Henry’s home.
In the past, just imagining that would have knocked him wordless.
But Henry had no power over him now. He was just a name.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Thank you, but no,’ he said, shaking his head.
Cecilia turned now, and he saw that her hands were shaking a little. ‘You look like your father. Or perhaps you look the way I remember Andreas. I haven’t seen him for a very long time.’
She sounded sad and nervous, and he softened his voice as he spoke. ‘You look exactly the same too.’
‘You remember me?’ The greenness of her eyes was lost in the late afternoon light. ‘I wish I could go back in time. I would have done more, said more.’ She bit her lip. ‘It was so terrible, what happened.’ Her smile twisted a fraction. ‘I know you must hate me for—’
‘I don’t hate you or blame you for what happened. I know you weren’t guilty of anything.’
‘None of us were innocent.’ Her voice dried up, and she glanced over to where the rain was dripping onto the windowsill.
‘You mean my father.’
Her eyes, Cassie’s eyes, widened, and she shook her head.
‘I was talking about myself.’ She hesitated.
‘I didn’t understand Henry. But more importantly, I didn’t really want to.
I just wanted things to change by osmosis.
Cassie is different. She is brave. And she tries to make the world a better place.
Not just tries—she fights for it. Keeps fighting. ’
Unlike many women of her status, Cecilia Appleton had not gone under the surgeon’s knife, and the creases around her eyes were a testament to the constant anxiety that was so much a part of her. Now, though, her face softened, transforming the lines of worry into a map of love for her daughter.
‘I should have left him, but I didn’t want Cassie to pay for my mistakes.
And in his own way, Henry loved her. I thought that was more important than my pride.
In the beginning, I thought maybe his love for her might redeem him.
But then Cassie saw him with a woman, and she got sucked into his lies. ’
She bit her lip. ‘I should have tackled things head-on. Like you.’
Antaeus felt the world spin. ‘Like me?’
‘Cassie told me you’d come to terms with everything. To be able to face the past like that and move on is remarkable.’
Blood was pounding in his ears. He was blindsided with shame that he had ever relegated this sweet, gentle woman to the status of collateral damage. And her daughter didn’t need his protection. She was braver and tougher than he was.
‘Is Cassie here?’ he managed over the stagger of his heartbeat. ‘I thought she said she was going to drop something off.’
Cecilia frowned. ‘She’s not here. I haven’t seen her this afternoon.’
It took him another three minutes to extricate himself from the house. He stood in the rain, his gaze scanning the street for a glimpse of fluttering blond hair.
She must be in the city.
But where? Where would she feel safest? And then, quite suddenly, he knew where Cassie was hiding. Now he started to run, to sprint as if his life depended on it. Because it did.
Later Cassie would wonder how she made her way to the Trojan Princess office. She had no memory of walking there and only a vague memory of John, the security officer, telling her that the cleaning crew would be arriving at just after nine, and was that okay?
It was as if her brain was in sleep mode and her body had acted on autopilot, taking her to the place where she had found the freedom and independence she craved for so many years.
Now she stared up at the nameplate on the door to her office, breathing unsteadily.
She could still remember the first day they had moved into the building. It had been a rainy day just like this, but colder because it was November. Everyone had been in high spirits, laughing and chattering with excitement. She had brought doughnuts, and someone had gone out for coffees.
It had been a day of hope and anticipation and pride.
She felt an overwhelming sadness wash over her not just for the dreams that now lay shattered, but for the years she had wasted being sucked into Henry’s vortex of chaos and deceit.
And then Antaeus’s. Because he was so like her father, she thought, remembering how he had shifted the blame and then extricated himself with surgical precision.
But there would be no more wasted years.
Forcing herself to move, she walked over to the desk and sat down heavily in the chair behind it. She’d always loved the office when it was empty. Now she leaned back against the headrest, watching the haze of the city lights blur through the rain.
So often in her job, she listened to people in varying degrees of despair. People who were scared, angry, out of their depth. She would listen and strategize, and then they would talk. Slowly but surely, the world would steady and go back to normal.
Her life would never go back to normal.
And part of her wanted to storm back into her apartment and hurl herself at Antaeus’s beautiful, ruthless face and demand answers.
But how would talking change anything? It was too late to take back by force what she had relinquished to him willingly. Besides, there were no words.
She texted her mom and told her to stay with a friend.
It seemed unlikely that the press would pursue Cecilia, but the last thing she needed was for her mom to have to face a baying pack of reporters and photographers.
Then she switched off her phone. Only in silence would she be able to find enough strength and energy to work on a damage limitation strategy for her devastated life.
But how did you fix a broken heart?
At some point she would have to go home and get her stuff. In the morning, she would have to face her staff.