Painted the Other Woman

Not mine. Never mine. Never—

‘Eva—’

Ian’s voice jolted him. It was thin, but resolute. Athan stood beside his sister, waiting for the axe to fall so he could pick up the pieces when it did. His face was still, like granite. Marisa’s had no expression in it at all.

She would not meet his eyes. Well, that was understandable …

‘Eva—’ Ian said his wife’s name again—stronger this time. He squared his shoulders. ‘I’ve got something I have to say to you,’ he said.

The puzzled look on Eva’s face deepened.

‘I’ve got to tell you something you will not like, that will be upsetting, but it has to be said. I asked Marisa here tonight for a particular reason. To tell you about her.’

Athan could keep silent no longer. He started forward, placing his hand on his sister’s wrist, intending to speak Greek to her. He had to tell her himself—he could not let her bastard of a husband proclaim it.

‘No!’

Marisa’s sudden interjection silenced him before he had even started. His head swivelled to her. For a moment he reeled. The expression blazing from her eyes was like a hundred lasers.

‘Ian will tell her,’ she bit out. Her face snapped round to the man at her side. ‘Go on! Tell her. Tell him.’

There was something wrong with her voice, Athan registered. She had never spoken like that before. Even when she’d been ordering him from that tumbledown cottage of hers. This was like ice—ice made from the coldest water.

Ian’s expression flickered, as if he was taken aback by her tone. Then he looked straight at his wife again.

‘There is no easy way to tell you this,’ he said. ‘So I’m just going to say it straight out. Marisa—’ he said, and as he spoke he reached for her hand.

She let him take it, curled her fingers around it, warm and familiar, stepping forward slightly, aligning herself with him. A couple. Together.

Like a guillotine cutting down, Athan spoke. Contempt was in his voice, harsh and killing.

‘Marisa is his mis—’

‘—is my sister.’

The words fell like stones from a great height, crushing Athan dead.

Marisa looked at Athan, her face still completely, totally expressionless.

‘I’m Ian’s sister,’ she said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HAD the world stopped moving? It must have, thought Athan with what was still working in his brain, because everything else seemed to have stopped. Including his breathing. Then, explosively, it restarted.

‘His sister?’ Shock reverberated in his voice.

Marisa’s gaze was levelled at him, still expressionless. Like a basilisk’s gaze.

She might have laughed to see the shock on his face—but she wasn’t in the mood for laughing. She was in the mood for killing.

Anger—dark, murderous anger—was leashing itself tighter and tighter around her. She had to hold it down—hold it tight down. Because it if escaped …

‘Ian’s sister?’ The voice this time was Eva’s, and all it held in it was complete bewilderment. ‘But Ian hasn’t got a sister.’

Marisa’s eyes went to Ian, knowing that this was the moment they had dreaded but now had to face. She saw him draw breath, then open his mouth to speak.

‘I didn’t know—I didn’t know about Marisa. Not until very recently.’ He took another breath. ‘Look, maybe we should all sit down. It’s … it’s complicated, and it’s going to be … difficult,’ he said.