think that will hurt me? Leandro...” Her voice caught, the gulf she had put between her brothers and her a physical ache. “He practically raised me, he loved me when he could have hated me for our mother deserting him and Luca. And I still cut him out of my life because he thought so little of me that he had to bribe you to marry me. In the grand scheme of things that I’ve lost and learned, this marriage and anything I get by dissolving it...they mean nothing to me, Kairos.”
He was upon her in the blink of an eye. The scent of him—a hint of male sweat and the mild thread of his cologne—hit her first. Awareness pooled low in her belly. He didn’t touch her, and yet the heat of his body was a languid caress.
“How will you afford your haute couture and your designer stilettos then?”
“I haven’t touched your credit cards in months. I haven’t taken a single Euro from Leandro or Luca. Even the clothes I wear belong to Nikolai.”
“Ah...” His gaze raked down the length of her body. The edge of cruelty in it stole her breath even as her skin tingled at his perusal. He nodded toward the happily snoring figure behind him on the bed. “Of course, your pimp dresses you now.”
“Nikolai is not a pimp and he tricked me into believing tonight was just a party.”
“I have to admit, only Valentina Constantinou could make a tacky, slinky dress look stylish and sophisticated. But that skill is not really helping, is it? Paris chewed you out and threw you back to Milan after a mere two months. Since then, you’ve been licking the boots of everyone at that fashion magazine. Fetching coffee for those bitchy socialites, when you had once been their queen bee, running errands in the rain for photographers and models that salivated over you for years...” His gaze swept over her in that dismissive way of his. “Have you had enough of reality? Are you ready to return to your life of luxury?”
She wasn’t surprised he knew what she’d been up to in the last few months. “I don’t care how long it takes, I mean to—”
“Is that why you decided to try your hand at the oldest profession in the world?”
“You’re the one who bought me from Leandro, remember? If anyone made me a whore, Kairos, it was you.” Every hurt she felt poured out into her words, all her promises to herself to keep it civil forgotten.
“I did not pursue you under false pretenses. I did not take you to bed, hoping that a good performance would bring me closer to the CEO position of the Conti board.”
A blaze lit up in his silvery eyes, tight lines fanning around his mouth.
He tugged her and Tina fell onto him with a soft gasp. Hard muscles pushed against her breasts, sending shock waves through her. “Believe me, pethi mou, if there is one aspect of our marriage that both of us agree on, it is in bed.”
His fingers wrapped around her nape in a possessive hold, a flicker of arousal and something else etched onto his features.
“You’re the one who broke our marriage vows, Valentina. You’re the one who avowed her love in passionate statements and sensational gestures, ne? Again and again. All I wanted was a civil marriage. Then, the fickle, spoilt brat that you are, you ran away because your little fantasy world where you rule as a queen and I fall at your feet crumbled. You leave no note. No message. You tell my security guard you’re visiting your damned brothers. I imagined you kidnapped and waited for a ransom note. I imagined your body lying in some morgue because you met with an accident. I imagined one of the women or men you insulted with your cruel words may have been pushed to the limit and wrung your pretty neck.”
Heart thundering, Valentina stared.
His fingers dug into her tender flesh with a grip she was sure would leave bruises. She’d never seen him like this, smoldering with a barely banked fire. “Until Leandro took pity on me and informed me that you had simply walked out on me. On our marriage.”
Tina sagged against the wall, a strange twisting in her belly. He had been worried about her safety. Terrified for her. “I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t think...”
“Too little, too late.”
He was right. If nothing else, he deserved an explanation. “I was furious with you and with Leandro. I had just learned that I was not a Conti but a bastard child my mother had with her chauffeur. That you married me as part of a bloody deal. You’ve had nine months to come after me.” The words slipped past her tongue, desperate, pathetic.
And just like that, any emotion she had spied in his eyes was wiped away. He stared at his fingers pressing into her flesh, his other hand kneading her hip.
His eyes widened fractionally before he stepped back. Stopped touching her. “The moment Leandro informed me what you’d done, I stopped thinking of you. I had other matters—urgent, important matters—to deal with rather than chase my impulsive brat of a wife through Europe.”
A fist to her heart would have been less painful.
But this was good, Tina reassured herself. She’d needed this talk with him. She’d needed to hear these words from Kairos’s mouth. Now, she could stop wondering—in the middle of the night, alone in her bed—if she’d made a mistake.
If their marriage deserved another chance.
After tonight, she wouldn’t have to see him again. Never hear those hateful words again. “Bene. You had important matters and I had enough time to think my decision through. I had nine months to realize what I did on impulse was right. I do not care whether you pay me alimony or not because I would not touch it. I intend to make something out of myself.”
“By whoring yourself out to Russian investors? By dressing like a cheap tramp? Admit it, Valentina. You’ve gotten nowhere in nine months except ending up with that buffoon who wants to get in your pants. You have no talent. No skills. Your connections were the only things of value about you.”
“I know that. Believe me, I have learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons in these nine months. The only good thing about this is that whatever connections you thought I would bring you as the Conti heiress are now lost.”
“Your brothers haven’t disowned you.”
“I have cut all my connections with them. With that life. I’m of no more use to you.”
“Ah...so that is your petty revenge? To deny what I planned to get by cutting yourself off from your brothers temporarily?”
“You give both me and your role in my life too much credit, Kairos. I love my brothers. Every day I spend away from them tears my heart. But it is the price I have to pay to face myself in the mirror.”
Finally, it seemed that she was getting through to him. And still, ruthlessness was etched onto his every feature. “This marriage is not done until I say it is done.”
“All I want is a teeny signature on a piece of paper. Ask me to sign away that alimony Leandro set up and I will. I will do anything you ask of me to be released from this marriage. You already wrote me out of your life when you decided not to come after me nine months ago, Kairos. I was nothing but a disappointment to you. So why drag this on? Is it just because your masculine pride is dented? Is it because, once again, I made you lose your rigid self-control?”
“Whether you want it or not, whether you touch it or not, half of what is mine will be yours for years to come. If I’m going to pay through the nose for the mistake of indulging you in your foolish fantasies of everlasting love, for putting up with your temper tantrums, for the pleasure of having you in my bed, I would like three more months of marriage, agapita. And maybe, a little more of you for that price tag.”
“A little more of me for that price...” Tina whispered, his words gouging through her already battered heart.
Her hand flew at him, outrage filling her every pore.
His lightning-fast reflexes didn’t let her slap land. With a gentleness