A Deal with Demakis

Pulling his hands from her, he stepped back, a vein pulsing in his temple. “I’ve told you things that I haven’t told anyone. This is not about ambition or greed. You have to understand...”

She wanted to shake him; she wanted to hit him for not seeing the truth that was right in front of his eyes.

“You still think this is victory over your father? Because it’s not.”

He flinched. The flash of pain in his eyes would have stopped her before, but now, she was filled with pure fury. He had shown her what it was to live and then he wanted her to go right back to being half-alive.

“This agreement you have made, it’s your victory over your fear that you are like him. Because you are, despite your every effort to not be. You are his son...you feel something for me.” She poked him in the chest. “You feel it here. You’re getting attached to me. And it terrifies you.

“It terrifies you to realize that you might be exactly like your father, that you have the same weakness as he does, that if you let this small thing for me take root, if you accept it and let it grow, it will devour you from the inside, and that you will have no control over yourself.

“And your grandfather offered you the best way to beat it back, to keep it in its place, didn’t he?”

“For the last time, Savas had nothing to do with this.”

“Savas has everything to do with this. You and he are both terrified of the same thing. This way, you can tell yourself that I’m secondary to something else in your life, that your emotions have no power over you.

“You are breaking my heart and burying yours. And I hope to hell you’ve just as miserable a life ahead of you as I do.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NIKOS SAT IN the leather chair in his new office in the Demakis International tower in Athens. He had been in this room countless times, stood on the other side of the vast desk as Savas spelled out more and more conditions that defined Nikos’s survival.

And he had conquered every obstacle Savas had thrown his way. This moment, this chair was his prize after years of painstaking hard work.

Except it didn’t feel like a moment of triumph. It felt hollow...it felt tainted. Frustration boiled inside him. He didn’t want to think of Lexi.

He had thought she understood why he needed this. He didn’t need her any more than he needed her analysis. Wherever she went, or whatever she did, she would be loved. It was a matter of comfort and intense envy inside him.

He picked up the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and popped the cork just as Savas walked in. Curiously, he had stayed away from Nikos since the party a week ago. As if he knew that Nikos had been like a wounded animal, rearing to attack anyone who ventured close.

But he couldn’t. Savas understood nothing of emotions. He shouldered enormous responsibility without complaint. Nikos’s father had been a late child, and by the time he had turned his back on this wealth, Savas had already been close to sixty. But Savas had gone on with his life, with his duty, shouldered his company, his family.

“Congratulations,” Savas said, taking the champagne flute from Nikos. “You’ve proved yourself worthy of the Demakis name.”

Nikos nodded and took a sip. But one question lingered in his throat, clawing its way to his tongue, refusing to be silenced. He had never before asked Savas about his father. Ever.

There was no need to do so now. Yet the words fell from his lips and he didn’t stop them. Maybe if he asked, maybe when he knew, there would be no more wondering. He could put all the dirty questions Lexi had raised to peace finally.

“My father...did he come to you for help when my mother was sick?”

His eyes widened under his dark brows for an infinitesimal moment before Savas could hide the flash of emotion. But Nikos had seen it. “You gain nothing by delving into the past, Nikos. You have done remarkably well until now, beyond my expectations. Don’t look back now.”

Nikos dropped the flute onto the table, his heart slamming against his rib cage. Savas turned around, leaning heavily against his cane.

Panic robbed his breath from him; his gut heaved. Nikos planted himself between Savas and the door. “Answer my question. Did he come to you for help?”

This time, there was not a flicker of doubt in his gaze. “Yes, he did.”

Nikos exhaled a jagged breath, pain twisting hard in his gut. Everything he had assumed about his father, it had been colored by the excruciating hurt that he hadn’t hung on for him and Venetia, that he had been weak.

“What did you do?”

If he felt anything of the vehemence in Nikos’s question, Savas didn’t betray it by even a muscle. “I presented him with a set of conditions, just as I had done with you.”