Exotic Nights

Angel couldn’t believe it. Weariness tinged her voice. ‘I already told you. I had no idea where we were headed. I couldn’t have just walked out; I would have lost my job on the spot.’

‘But you lost that job anyway,’ he pointed out silkily.

Angel held in a gasp. How did he know that? Not that it would have taken a rocket scientist to deduce that her behaviour that night might result in that. Did he know that she’d been working as a chambermaid in the plush Grand Bretagne Hotel since then, and was doing regular double shifts? No doubt he’d love to know that she’d felt compelled to find jobs in areas where her name would require the minimum amount of investigation. She’d been conscious of Delphi still being in college, and had not wanted to draw any potential press attention by going for something more high-profile, only to get knocked back because of their name. Humiliation was becoming annoyingly familiar in this man’s presence.

Leo took a sip of the drink he’d carried over. ‘My picture was splashed all over the papers here the week I arrived. Your father has been scrabbling around like a rat in a sinking ship looking for someone to rescue him—and you expect me to believe that you saw me at the pool-side that night and had no idea who I was?’

She shook her head. She truly hadn’t known, having instinctively shied away from reading anything about the Parnassus family and their triumphant return. It had been too close to the bone on so many different levels. Also, she’d been preoccupied with her sister’s news.

Angel sat forward, hands clenched around the glass. From somewhere deep and protecting came a dart of anger at his high-handed arrogance, at how threatened he made her feel. ‘Believe it or not, I had no idea. Aren’t you satisfied that your family has done its level best to ruin mine?’

Leo let out a short, sharp laugh, making Angel flinch. ‘I fail to see where the satisfaction comes when it’s clear, based on the evidence tonight—which, I might add, is recorded on CCTV—that you are intent on re-igniting this feud. No doubt you have something to gain from it—most people would have moved on from the drama of the Parnassus family coming home.’

He sat forward then too, his eyes flashing sparks. Angel wanted to cower back, but held strong and cursed herself for provoking him. For a moment she’d forgotten all about why she was here in the first place. He scrambled her brain that much.

His tone was withering. ‘And do you really want to play the game of apportioning blame?’

Angel felt something cold trickle down her spine when Leo’s eyes turned dark and deadly.

‘We have done nothing to affect your family directly. Your father’s greed and ineptitude has seen to the demise of the Kassianides shipping fleet. All we had to do was merge with Levakis Enterprises, and that in itself highlighted the inherent weakness of your father’s position.’

Angel swallowed. Everything he said was true. She couldn’t really blame him or his father for having done anything concrete. Her father had done it all by himself.

‘However,’ Leo continued, sitting back like a lord surveying his subject, ‘it leaves me with an interesting dilemma.’

Angel said nothing. She’d no doubt that Leo was about to enlighten her.

‘While we’ve managed to get our due revenge in seeing the Kassianides fortune reduced to nothing, lower than even we were ourselves seventy years ago, I must admit that it feels somehow … empty. Since seeing the extent of your sheer boldness, I find myself desiring something of a more … tangible nature.’

Panic struck Angel. She felt as if an invisible noose was tightening around her neck. Desperation tinged her voice. ‘I’d call going bankrupt pretty tangible.’

Leo leant forward again, utterly cold, utterly ruthless. ‘The bankruptcy is for your father, not you. No, I’m talking about something as tangible as my great-uncle being accused of raping and then murdering a pregnant woman from one of the wealthiest families in Athens. As tangible as an entire family forced into exile from their homeland because of the threat of a criminal investigation they couldn’t afford, and the possibility of my great-uncle facing the death penalty. Not to mention the scandal that would linger for years.’

‘Stop,’ begged Angel weakly. She knew the story and it always sickened her.

But he didn’t. Leo just looked at her. ‘Did you know that my great-uncle never got over the slur of being accused of that murder and eventually killed himself?’

Angel shook her head. She felt sick. This went far deeper than she’d ever imagined. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘My great-uncle loved your great-aunt.’ Leo’s mouth twisted. ‘More fool him. And because your family couldn’t bear to see one of their own darlings slum it with a mere ship worker, they did their best to thwart the romance.’

‘I know what happened,’ Angel said quietly, her insides roiling.

Leo laughed harshly, ‘Yes, everyone does now—thanks to a drunken old fool who couldn’t live with the guilt any more, because he’d been the one who committed the crime and covered it up, had it paid for by your great-grandfather.’

Her own family had murdered one of their own and covered it up like cowards.

Angel forced herself to meet the censure in Leo’s eyes even though she wanted to curl up with the shame. ‘I’m not to blame for what they did.’

‘Neither am I. Yet I paid for it all my life, I was born on another continent, into a community in exile, learning English as my first language when it should have been Greek. I saw my grandmother wither away a little more each year, knowing that she’d never return to her home.’

Angel wanted to beg him to stop, but the words wouldn’t come out.

Leo wasn’t finished. ‘My father was so consumed it cost us our relationship. And it cost him his first wife. I grew up too fast and too young, aware of a terrible sense of injustice and a need to put things right. So while you were going to school, making friends, living your life here in your home, I was on the other side of the world, wondering how things might have been if my father and grandmother hadn’t been forced out of their own country. Wondering if I might then have had a father who was present, not absent. Wondering what we had done to deserve this awful slur on our name. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up being reminded that you don’t belong somewhere every single day by your own family? Like you’ve no right to put down roots?’

Angel shook her head. She didn’t think he’d appreciate hearing about how lonely she’d felt when her father had sent her to a rem

ote and ultra-conservative catholic boarding school in the wilds of the west of Ireland. Somehow she didn’t think that even the worst of her experiences there would come close to what Leo had described.