Stolen Lies (Truths and Lies 2)

I notice a few men following us, and Kostas notes they’re our guards. I still can’t help but glance around. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all. But I still keep walking toward the beach. After a year of being held prisoner, I think I just need a moment to feel free.

Kostas has one of the cabana boys set up lounge chairs and umbrellas for us. I throw a blanket down, and Kostas sets Zoe down on it. We watch as she crawls to the end and reaches for the sand. She fists a handful and is bringing it up to her mouth when Kostas swoops in and saves her.

“No, no, agapiménos,” he says softly. “That will taste bad.”

Zoe’s face scrunches up in confusion, and Kostas laughs. It sounds so carefree, so unlike Kostas. Being a father really does bring out the best in him. All she has to do is look at him and he transforms from hard to soft. “So curious, just like your mother.” He taps her nose with his finger and she giggles.

Grabbing his phone from the blanket where he tossed it along with his shirt, I open the camera and take a photo of the two of them. When Kostas leans in and kisses her cheek, I snap another one.

I don’t realize I’m crying until Kostas looks over at me and frowns. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I wipe the falling tears. “Everything is perfect.” I step toward the two people who are my entire world. “Every day when I was stuck in that house, I would imagine what it would be like when you found us. But my imagination didn’t do it justice. Getting to see you hold our daughter in person is better than anything I ever dreamed of.”

When I click on the photos I just took, I notice a tattoo I didn’t see before. Glancing from the phone to Kostas, I spot it on the side of his ribcage. “That’s new,” I point out. Dropping the phone onto the blanket, I step toward him and bend so I can get a better look at it.

“I got it a few months after you disappeared,” he says. The tattoo is of a grenade, cracked open at the seams, and inside of it are bright red beads…no, not beads. Seeds. From a pomegranate. “I thought you left me,” he admits, and I stand back up.

“What?”

“We were fighting that morning and then you disappeared. I thought you left me.”

I glance back down at the tattoo. I’m almost positive the seeds symbolize Proserpina—me—being forced to stay in the Underground, but… “What does the grenade mean?”

“My world being blown apart.” Kostas swallows thickly. “The day you went missing my entire world exploded.” And just like that, I fall even deeper in love with my husband.

The day is spent playing in the sand and swimming in the ocean. We order lunch to be brought down, and only when Zoe is so exhausted, she can’t keep her eyes open, do we go back up to our villa.

After laying her down in the new crib—yes, while we were at the beach, my crazy husband somehow had an entire nursery of furniture brought in—I find Kostas on the phone in his office. It reminds me of the time he fucked me on his desk, and that thought has me wanting him to take me there again. We’ve lost so much time together. All I want is to spend all my time with him. Create new memories to push away every memory that was created this past year.

When he spots me in the doorway, he abruptly ends his phone call.

“That was rude,” I joke. “Won’t whoever you were talking to wonder why you hung up on him?” I saunter over to him and he spreads his muscular thighs to let me in. He’s still in his swim trunk sans shirt, and I take a moment to memorize every hard ridge, every tattoo on his body, including the tattoo he got while I was gone.

“I’m the boss,” he says, running his hands up the sides of my hips. “I answer to no one.”

“Do you answer to me?” I ask, my voice flirty.

His fingers find my pebbled nipples through my thin bathing suit top and he pinches them roughly. Waves of pleasure shoot through my entire body.

Kostas lifts me up and sets me on his desk. Papers crinkle under my weight, but he doesn’t seem to care. “You and me aren’t business,” he says, pushing the material aside. He leans in and wraps his lips around my nipple, and the coolness of his breath sends a shiver straight down my spine. “But yes, zoí mou, I answer to you.” He bites down on my nipple, then darts his tongue out to lick it, as he continues to pinch and pull at the other one. When I let out a low moan, tugging on his messy hair, he glances up at me with a wicked smirk. “I may not know a lot about this whole marriage thing, but I do know one thing…”