Or it was the delusion she really wanted to cling to, she thought pitying herself.
“There’s nothing binding you to me or to Katrakis Textiles now.”
Her breath whooshed out of her in a painfully long exhale. Legs shaking beneath her, Leah grabbed the table. Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled over. Just breathing became a chore. “You’re punishing me again…”
“Punishment, pethi mou? No. I’m finally freeing us both. Giannis is gone, and you’ve proved beyond doubt that you can take care of yourself, ne? What is left of our relationship, if it could be called that, if we take away my duty and your lies, Leah?”
“The last month—”
“Last month has been nothing but sex. Five years of celibacy and you…it would mess with any man’s head, even a stone like me.”
That he would reduce the last month like that, that he would cheapen what they had shared so easily…she couldn’t even breathe.
Fear stole coherence from her. Slowly, she thought back to how the dreadful afternoon had begun. “What did Alex say?”
“Threatening to go the media with a colorful story about Calista and her monster of a brother who neglected her and then married the heiress… The pictures he has of her, the horrible things he’s threatening to say about her…” Restrained violence simmered in him as he moved away from her. As if he didn’t trust himself to be near her. “The parties, the drinking, the men… Cristos, I didn’t know my sister at all, did I? And you knew it all along.” He turned toward her again, accusation and pain in his eyes.
“She begged me not to tell you, Stavros. Every time you found us at some party, she would beg me to leave her out of it. She asked me to cover…just once more. When she saw you, when she was with you, she…she wanted to be perfect. She was desperate to not lose you. Desperate to not lose your love. She was afraid that you would…”
“All your arguments with me, if you had thrown it once in my face that she was the one—”
The calmer he got, the more she panicked. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until that night. Stavros, I was immature, foolish. I told you, I didn’t know that she was using. I feel sick to my stomach when I think I could have helped, when I could have—”
“What about the last few weeks, Leah? What about when I begged you for the truth about her? What reason could you possibly have to lie after all these years? Were you afraid that I would punish you for her actions? Even after these few weeks, were you just looking out for yourself?”
Her heart hammered away in her chest, her knees trembled beneath her and all she wanted was to be held by him, to see him smile, to do whatever she could to remove that betrayal, that pain from his eyes.
And just like that, the truth struck Leah. In that dark-paneled study in a majestic hotel in one of the loveliest cities in the world, with Stavros looking at her with utter resignation, it came to her.
She was in love with Stavros. A few months ago, she would have cackled hysterically at the prospect. And yet, had she ever truly stood a chance against the man she had discovered him to be?
Despite all the wrongs done to him as a child, he had done his duty. He could cajole and love and support as fiercely as he followed his duty, he could care, even though it was through actions and not words…
Calista had been so wrong in not trusting him, in doubting his love, so painfully unknowing of her own brother…But Leah understood him finally, she knew what a complex and honorable man her husband was.
And knowing Stavros meant loving Stavros, loving his generous heart, his sense of duty, even his rigidly autocratic dictates.
Why else had she risked everything she had always been scared of, this past month, how else would she have thrown herself into this madness with such relish… “After all these years, I didn’t think the reasons for Calista’s death mattered anymore. Not when I was finally…”
“When you were finally getting what you wanted,” he finished and utter fury filled her.
She gasped as it unfurled inside her, this new feeling, sinuously breathing courage into her very veins, filling her with a tremendous energy.
Reaching him, she refused to let him dismiss her so easily. “When, finally, you saw me for what I was, and let me see what kind of a man you were. I thought I should leave the past where it was. I thought…I could have—”
“Your wants, your needs—it’s all about you, isn’t it, pethi mou?”
“For years, it has been, yes. All I thought of since stepping in Athens was protecting myself from pain, from ever having to mourn another loved one again. But not anymore. For the first time in my life, I lied, not for myself, but for you. I lied to protect you, to spare you from this pain of knowing Calista’s reality.
“I lied because I…care about you. I lied because, somehow, you gave me the courage to live without fear, I lied because you made it impossible to not love you.”
His skin pulled into a taut mask, he looked as if she had dealt him an invisible blow. Everything in her scrunched into a painful ball as Leah realized that her words, somehow, had only hurt him even more.
“Say something, Stavros,” she said desperately.
“I didn’t realize until today how ill-suited we are for each other, pethi mou. Even if I continue this charade in the name of Giannis, it won’t be long before we rip each other into shreds. Before there’s nothing but pain left.”
The bridge of his nose, the sculpted planes of his face, the stubble that was already coming in…it hurt to look at him. “Is that any worse than what you’re doing now?” A shuddering gasp left her. “Somehow, I doubt that you can get any more cruel, any more heartless, Stavros.”
“Then you know why our farce of a marriage needs to end,” he finally said after what felt like an eternity of hell. “You have your freedom. Goodbye, Leah.”
For the first time since Giannis had brought him to Athens years ago, Stavros did not return to work after Leah left.
He let Dmitri’s calls go unattended, told his assistant to cancel everything indefinitely, heard from his head of security that a particularly treacherous board member, a distant cousin of Giannis who had always resented that Stavros and Dmitri were the topmost shareholders on the Katrakis board, was planning a coup to take over.
Rumors swirled about that Dmitri and he had fallen out, causing the stock for Katrakis Textiles to sink.
But Stavros, try as he did, still clinging to his wretched sense of duty, couldn’t give a damn. He and Dmitri had slaved night and day to build it into a multimillion dollar industry for over a decade, given it their all because they had wanted Giannis’s legacy to mean something…because they had both wanted something to anchor their lives.
And yet, he did not care if it all crashed and burned. All he wanted to do was shrug off the world and retreat. And he did.
Yet, wherever he turned, there were signs of Leah at his estate.
From the workers at the vineyard to the seamstress who asked if Leah was taking New York by storm, from the trails she had loved running through to the small, inconsequential things she had left lying around the house, like her iPod. She was everywhere.
She was under his skin,