interest. Of course not. Every damning word her father had spoken had its proof in this moment.
‘I wanted to see you,’ Iolanthe said in a low voice. ‘I wanted to know if...if...’
‘If what?’
She stared at him miserably, fully aware of how foolish and pointless this mission had been. It had been one last desperate act before the noose tightened around her neck. ‘If there was anything real between us,’ she whispered, the words like bile in her mouth. She knew now there wasn’t.
And as for their child? Could she really tell him about their pregnancy now? Even if Alekos agreed to marry her, Iolanthe didn’t know if she could stand a union based on convenience and built on the foundations of hatred.
‘Anything real?’ Alekos repeated incredulously. ‘You can actually ask that, after your father burst into my hotel and dragged me away like some thug?’
Iolanthe stared at him, her eyes wide. ‘He...he was protecting me.’
‘And you’re defending him.’ His unyielding gaze raked over her, dismissing her in an instant. ‘Get out, Iolanthe. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.’ His eyes glittered, but with malice rather than the desire she’d once thrilled to see there. ‘Unless there were consequences?’
Iolanthe stared at him, appalled and more than a little frightened by the anger she saw in his eyes, felt in his taut body. It radiated out from him, a malevolent force.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Are you here because you are carrying my child? Because if it is for any other reason, then I advise you to leave. Immediately.’
Iolanthe tasted the acid sting of bile in the back of her throat. His words sounded and felt like a threat. How could she tell him she was pregnant now? Was this cold, forbidding man, a man bent on some kind of sick revenge, the one she wanted as the father of her child?
And yet even now Alekos surely had a right to know.
‘What would you do, if there were consequences?’ she whispered.
‘Hedging your bets?’ Alekos scoffed. ‘I saw the announcement that you were marrying Callos.’ His gaze darkened and he reached for her, one powerful hand encircling her wrist. ‘Don’t lie to me, Iolanthe. Are you pregnant?’
His fingers felt like a vice on her arm. Terror clawed at her insides. Where was the gentle, funny, charming man she’d fallen for? Evaporated, like the mirage he’d been all along.
‘No,’ she managed to get out of her too-tight throat. ‘No, I’m not pregnant.’
Alekos released her, contempt twisting his mouth. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then leave.’
Iolanthe blinked back useless tears. She would not cry now. Not in front of this cold, hard stranger.
Alekos waited, his arms folded, saying nothing, impatience radiating from him. Iolanthe drew a ragged breath and then, swallowing the sob that threatened to escape, she turned on her heel and fled.
Outside, the air was warm and sultry, the stars like diamond pinpricks in the black velvet drop cloth of the sky. Iolanthe tipped her head to stare up at the sky and willed the tears back. No more tears, not ever again. She’d grown up tonight. She’d truly put her childish ways behind her, for better or for worse, and she would not go back to them.
She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, and then began the long walk back to her father’s villa. Hopefully no one would have noticed that she’d gone; she’d told the housekeeper, Amara, that she was going to bed early, and then slipped out when her father had been enclosed in his study.
In the Plaka, people were filling up the bars and cafés, and amidst the mingled laughter and chat Iolanthe heard the strains of rebetiko, the folk music popular in such establishments. All the sounds and sights combined together to form a picture of carefree happiness that felt a million miles from her reality.
Iolanthe knew she had no choice now. Alekos Demetriou’s attitude had made that clear to her. She was pregnant, dependent on her father’s charity, without friend or resource, damaged and desperate.
She would marry Lukas Callos.
* * *
Two weeks later Alekos saw the marriage announcement in the Athinapoli.
Heiress Iolanthe Petrakis marries Petra Innovation’s Lukas Callos.
There was a photo; Iolanthe looked lovely, if pale, in a sheath dress of off-white. She clutched a posy of lilies; Callos’s face was bland, almost indifferent. It had been a small affair.
Acid churning in his gut, Alekos tossed the newspaper away and vowed never to think of Iolanthe Callos again. All he would let himself think about was success—and revenge.
Ten years later
‘I’M SORRY TO say your position is...difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ Iolanthe straightened in the club chair that her husband’s solicitor, Antonis Metaxas, had ushered her into moments ago to discuss Lukas’s financial position. Her husband of nearly a decade had died in a car accident a fortnight ago, leaving Iolanthe alone in the world save for her nine-year-old son Niko. Her father had died two years earlier, and Petra Innovation now belonged to her—and was Niko’s legacy.
Metaxas steepled his fingers together, his expression a little too compassionate. The nape of Iolanthe’s neck prickled with alarm. She hadn’t involved herself in her father and husband’s business these last ten years; she hadn’t been asked to. She’d focused on her son instead, on nurturing and protecting him, and on trying to be happy, or at least content with the way her life had turned out, a loveless marriage to a near stranger and a son she adored. It could have been worse.
Even as she’d carved out a life for herself, virtually separate from Lukas, she’d always thought she’d have Petra Innovation, for Niko’s sake. Niko was the only heir of both Talos Petrakis and Lukas Callos. The company was his birthright.
‘Petra Innovation has had some financial setbacks in recent years,’ Metaxas explained carefully. ‘I’m afraid it leaves you in a rather precarious position.’
Iolanthe’s nails dug into her palms as she clutched her hands tightly together in her lap and took several even breaths. This was news she really did not need. ‘Why don’t you speak plainly, Kyrie Metaxas? How precarious is my position?’ She lifted her chin and met the solicitor’s gaze firmly. ‘Is Petra Innovation solvent?’
‘Solvent, yes.’ He hesitated, his grandfatherly face pulled into a reluctant frown that made Iolanthe battle both impatience and anxiety.
‘I can handle whatever it is you’re going to tell me,’ she informed the older man crisply, although in truth she didn’t know if she could. At least she would try. ‘What is it?’
‘I fear your husband was not as financially savvy as your father,’ Metaxas explained. ‘He was a genius when it came to technical innovation, of course,’ he added quickly.
‘Yes, I know.’ Lukas had spent far more time at work than he had at home. His first and only love had been computers, and Iolanthe had long ago accepted it. Long ago stopped looking or hoping for love or even affection. How could she, when she had never loved him back? Their marriage had been nothing but a convenient match of expediency, on both sides.
Now she met Metaxas’s gaze directly. ‘So what has happened to the company since Lukas took over after my father’s death?’
‘Six months ago he offered the company’s shares on the open market. Your father had always been reluctant to take such a step, wanting complete control.’
Which sounded very much like her father. Iolanthe knew that Talos and Lukas had split the