I held on tighter to her hand. ‘I know you love me, Mama.’
She shook her head, tears brimming her eyes. ‘Not the way a mother should love her child, without selfish intentions that end up harming her. I took the wrong turn with you. I left you alone with your father when I should have taken you with me. Maybe if I had—’ She stopped, took a deep breath and dabbed at her tears before braving my worried stare again. ‘All I ask is that you find a way to forgive me one day.’
‘Mama—’ I stopped when she gave a wrenching sob.
Her gaze dropped to the envelope in my hand. ‘Hang on to that, Callie. And don’t hesitate to use it when you need it. Promise me,’ she insisted fervently.’
‘I… I promise.’
She sniffed, nodded, then abruptly turned the wheelchair and manoeuvred herself out of my bedroom.
Before I could process our conversation I was again surrounded by mindless chatter, unable to breathe or think. The only solid thing in my world became the envelope I clutched tightly in my hand. And when I found that within the endless folds of tulle the designer had fashioned a pocket, I nearly cried with relief as I slipped the envelope into it.
Even without knowing its contents, just knowing it came from my grandmother—the woman who’d helped me stand up to my father’s wrath more times than I could count, who’d loved and reassured me on a daily basis during my mother’s year-long absence when I was fifteen years old—kept me from crumbling as my father arrived and with a brisk nod offered his stiff arm, ordered me to straighten my spine…and escorted me to my fate.
The chapel was filled to the brim, according to the excited chatter of the household staff, and as my father led me out to a flower-bedecked horse-drawn carriage I got the first indication of what was to come.
Over the last three weeks I’d watched with a sense of surrealism as construction crews and landscapers descended on our little corner of the world to transform the church and surrounding area from a place of rundown dilapidation into its former whitewashed charming glory.
The usually quiet streets of Nicrete, a sleepy village in the south of the island of Skyros, the place generations of the Petras family had called home, buzzed with fashionably dressed strangers—all guests of Axios Xenakis. With the main means of getting on and off the island being by boat, the harbour had become a place of interest in the last few days.
Every hotel and guest house on the island was booked solid. Expensive speedboats and a handful of super-yachts had appeared on the horizon overnight, and now bobbed in the Aegean beneath resplendent sunshine.
Of course the man I was to marry chose to do things differently.
My carriage was halfway between home and the church when the loud, mechanical whine of powerful rotors churned the air. Children shouted in excitement and raced towards the hilltop as three sleek-looking helicopters flew overhead to settle on the newly manicured lawns of the park usually used as recreational grounds for families. Today the whole park had been cordoned off—evidently to receive these helicopters.
Beneath the veil I allowed myself a distasteful moue. But the barrier wasn’t enough to hide my father’s smug smile as he watched the helicopters. Or his nod of satisfaction as several distinguished-looking men and designer-clad women alighted from the craft.
I averted my face, hoping the ache in my heart and the pain in my belly wouldn’t manifest itself in the hysteria I’d been trying to suppress for what seemed like for ever. But I couldn’t prevent the words from tumbling from my lips.
‘It’s not too late, Papa. Whatever this is… Perhaps if you told me why, we can find a way—’
‘I have already found a way, child.’
‘Don’t call me a child—I’m twenty-four years old!’
That pulse of rebellion, which I’d never quite been able to curb, eagerly fanned by Yiayia when she was alive, slipped its leash. She’d never got on well with my father, and in a way standing up to him now, despite the potential fallout for my mother, felt like honouring her memory.
His eyes narrowed. ‘If you wanted to help then you should’ve taken that business degree at university, instead of the useless arts degree you’re saddled with.’
‘I told you—I’m not interested in a corporate career.’
Nor was I interested in being constantly reminded that I wasn’t the son he’d yearned for. The one he’d hoped would help him save Petras Industries, the family company which now teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
‘Ne—and just like your mother you let me down. Once again it has fallen to me to find a way. And I have. So now you will smile and do your duty by this family. You will say your vows and marry Xenakis.’
I bit my lip at this reminder of yet another bone of contention between us. I’d fought hard for the right to leave the island to pursue my arts degree, only returning because of my mother. The small art gallery I worked at part-time on Nicrete was a way of keeping my sanity, even as I mourned my wasted degree.
‘After that, what then?’
He shrugged. ‘After that you will belong to him. But remember that regardless of the new name you’re taking on you’re still a Petras. If you do anything to bring the family into disrepute you will bear the consequences.’
My heart lurched, my fists balling in pain and frustration—because I knew exactly what my father meant.
The consequences being my father’s ability to manipulate my mother’s guilt and ensure maximum suffering. His constant threats to toss her out with only the clothes on her back, to abandon her to her fate the way she’d briefly abandoned her family. But while my mother had deserted her child and marriage in the name of a doomed love, my father was operating from a place of pure revenge. To him, his wife had humiliated and betrayed him, and he was determined to repay her by keeping her prisoner. Ensuring that at every waking moment she was reminded of her fall from grace and his power over her.
The reason that I’d been roped in as a means to that end was my love for my mother.
Eight years ago, when he’d returned home with my absentee mother after the doctors in Athens had called and informed him that she’d been in a crash, and that the man she’d run away with was dead, he’d laid out new family rules. My mother would stay married to him. She would become a dutiful wife and mother, doing everything in her power to not bring another speck of disgrace to the family. In return he would ensure her medical needs were met, and that she would be given the finest treatment to adjust to her new wheelchair-bound life.
For my part, I would act the devoted daughter…or my mother would suffer.
The horses whinnying as they came to a stop at the steps leading to the church doors dragged me to the present, pushing my heartache aside and replacing it with apprehension.
The last of the guests were entering while organ music piped portentously in the air. In less than an hour I would be married to a man I’d never exchanged a single word with. A man who had somehow fallen in league with my father for reasons I still didn’t know.
I glanced at my father, desperate to ask why. His stony profile warned me not to push my luck. Like my heartache, I smothered my rebellion.
My father stepped out of the carriage and held out his hand. Mine shook, and again I was glad for the veil’s cover to hide my tear-prickled eyes.
A small part of me was grateful that my father didn’t seem in a hurry to march me down the aisle because he was basking in the limelight that momentarily banished the shadow of scandal and humiliation he’d lived under for the past eight years. For once people weren’t talking about his wife’s infidelity. Or