The most important of it being the funds she required to source raw materials… There were a hundred things she needed and it was all sitting in that bank.
She dialed the number for the bank manager she had spoken to just two days ago.
Her heart hammered painfully, thudding faster and faster, an ominous pounding she couldn’t breathe past. There could be only one man behind this. Her stomach twisted as the bank manager coughed on the other end of the phone. His answer was curt, immediate as though he had been rehearsing the explanation, waiting for Leah to call.
They couldn’t use the trust fund as security to approve her loan because—Leah could hear the hushed reverence in the manager’s voice as he uttered the name—the trustee overseeing her fund had denied the use of the trust fund, her trust fund, as security.
Stavros.
Leah threw the handset across the room, every inch of her shaking. She kicked the chair aside, the impact of it jarring up her leg, every nerve cell in her humming with outrage.
How much more was he going to punish her? How long was she going to let him?
She picked up the phone again, her vision blurry now with unchecked tears. Her throat burned as she took a deep breath, her thumb hovering over the numbers on the handset.
She wanted to demand an explanation, she wanted to…
But what was the point? His secretary would politely tell her that he was not available. It was the same answer she had received over the last year every time she had tried to contact him. Even though they both lived in Athens, they might as well have been living on the opposite ends of the planet.
She bit her lower lip, her nails digging into her skin. A sob built inside her chest, fury rising through her like a storm that could swallow her in its clutches.
She had to put an end to this. She had to break free of the leash he bound her with, controlling her every step, every choice, while he enjoyed his life. She had let him do it for five years.
Five years of a sterile life, five years of being his prisoner—that she had accepted out of guilt and fear.
Scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, she pulled up the society feature she had purposely clicked away from this morning on her laptop.
Stavros’s business partner and her grandfather’s second godson, Dmitri Karegas, was throwing a party aboard his yacht.
Stavros and Dmitri were cut from the same cloth—breathtakingly gorgeous, built their empires from nothing under her grandfather Giannis’s guidance, and considered themselves gods, their will law for the normal mortals they walked amongst.
Stavros hated parties with an intensity Leah had never been able to understand, but Dmitri would be there.
She just had to make sure the decadent playboy, who apparently was always surrounded by a group of willing women, noticed her presence aboard his latest toy.
Had to, somehow, gain his attention.
Her stomach clenched as she shoved the bedroom door open and walked toward the closet.
Every step toward it, every thought in this direction—was like walking to her own doom.
But Stavros had left her no choice…left her with no way out.
She dialed another number on her phone and booked a taxi. A shiver traveled over her spine as she viciously pushed the cotton tops and skirts in her closet away until she reached the end.
She pulled the gold silk dress, the one designer label she had kept, her fingers shaking violently as she realized how little fabric there was of the dress. Her back would be totally bare, which meant she had to go without a bra.
And it would leave most of her legs, her thighs bare too. So no underwear either.
Five years ago, she hadn’t even blinked when she had worn it. Had thought it nothing to parade around with Alex and Calista, showing every bit of skin she could expose, barely looking decent…
And she had been almost twenty pounds heavier…
Just thinking of how she must have looked then made her cringe.
What the hell had the designer been thinking? What the hell had she been thinking?
She had been trying to please Calista, who had decreed she wear it that night… That’s what she had been thinking.
Yet nothing else in her closet would do for tonight.
Of all the things to think about when her life was eternally stuck in this rut, when the very walls of this apartment were closing in on her…
Her palms were sweating as she pulled the dress to herself. The dress would fall scandalously above her knees, just about covering her buttocks.
It was the most outrageous dress she owned, the sartorial equivalent of a tramp and she had worn it the night Stavros had decided her fate. Fitting then that it was the one that would at least get her an audience with the man who was her jailor.
Every muscle in her trembled, and her mouth was coated with bitter fear as she walked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face.
He was going to explode, he was going to despise her even more, if that was possible. But she couldn’t bear this…this isolation anymore.
She couldn’t bear to continue like this. Something had to give.
Leah clutched the leather seat of the taxi, holding onto it a like a lifeline, the curious glances the cabbie threw her way doing nothing to propel her out.
She took a deep breath and looked out the dirty window. The marina was busy, a few of the yachts moored there highlighted by the setting sun. But even amidst the loud luxury, one yacht stood out, its gleaming white exterior splendid in the setting sun’s light.
She took the bills out of her gold-lined clutch and handed it over. This was it.
She didn’t let herself think, she didn’t let herself even look around over the next few minutes. Keeping her shoulders straight, head held high, she reached the security personnel guarding the planked entrance. Except for the glimpse of recognition in his gaze, the six-footer didn’t budge a muscle.
Leah raised a brow haughtily, the gesture taking everything she had.
Yes, she had spent the past five years working as an apprentice in a mid-level fashion house, away from the spotlight, locked up in a bubble where no one knew who she was, where no one cared except that she didn’t put a toe out of line.
She slept, she woke up, went to work, went back to her apartment, ate dinner and fell into bed again, while Stavros’s minion, Mrs. Kovlakis, her housekeeper, watched her, made sure she didn’t comit any further scandalous acts. But that didn’t mean anyone had forgotten what she had done, or what Stavros had done to her as punishment.
Especially in this crowd that hung on to every word from Stavros’s lips as if it was the Holy Bible. It felt like an eternity but only a few seconds passed before the man stepped aside. Taking his proffered hand, Leah stepped onto the deck, her guts twisting into a gooey mess.
For a few dazzling minutes, she forgot why she was there as she ventured further. Uniformed waiters passed around champagne. The party was in full swing on the deck, inebriated, sweaty bodies pressing against each other…
Excitement and an electric energy touched the air, and she swayed automatically to the music.
So everything she had heard of Dmitri’s parties was true…and strangely the antithesis of everything Stavros was. So he wouldn’t be here. But she needed to be recognized, which meant she had to grab Dmitri’s attention, especially if he was busy ravishing his latest arm candy.
Smiling