One Reckless Decision

“Where will we go?” Vivienne asked, like a child, her voice soft. Weak. It only hardened Tristanne’s resolve.

“You will go directly to Salzburg,” Peter ground out behind her. “Or I will cut you both out like the parasites you are. Do you hear me?”

“Do what you must,” Tristanne said offhandedly—only to gasp when he reached over and grabbed her arm, hauling her toward him as he had many times before, his fingers digging into the flesh of her arm.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Your pathetic life in Canada? You are useless and she makes you look industrious! Do you imagine you can both work on your backs?”

Tristanne heard Vivienne’s shocked exclamation, but she focused on Peter’s hard, cold eyes, and let all of her pain and rage build inside of her.

“I doubt my imagination is half so vivid as yours,” she spat at him. She jerked her arm out of his grasp, shoving back from him with a force that surprised them both. He was stronger than her—and a true bully—but he did not expect her to push back. He dropped his hand. She moved around him, heading for the dressing room door.

“This is all very impressive, but we both know you’ll come crawling back to me within the month,” he snarled. “Don’t think I will be as generous with you as I was this time.”

“Believe me,” she threw over her shoulder, her sarcasm practically burning her tongue. “I am well aware of the limits of your generosity.”

He laughed at her. “And what exactly do you think will become of you, Tristanne?” he taunted her.

She looked back then. For the last time. She knew in that moment that she would never see Peter again. And in the midst of all the rest of the pain, the horror, that she was not certain she would ever sort out, it ignited one small flare of hope.

“I will survive,” she told him, and she knew, somehow, that she would. “No thanks to you.”

All she had to do was keep standing.

Chapter Sixteen

NIKOS sat in his favorite small bar in Athens, drinking the most expensive liquor available, and told himself he was celebrating.

He had been celebrating in this manner for weeks now. He had so much to celebrate, after all. He should be overjoyed. The pictures of his aborted, abandoned wedding were in all the papers, the humiliation for the Barberys as extreme as he’d anticipated. He had it on excellent authority that Peter Barbery’s investors had abandoned him, and the Barbery fortunes were in free fall. Peter was expected to declare bankruptcy before the year was out, whether he had faced this truth or not.

At first, Nikos told himself that the odd feeling that claimed him was no more than the usual letdown after a particularly long campaign. One should expect to feel the absence of focus after living with such a specific goal for so long. It was natural—logical, even. And that was all that it was. There could be no other explanation.

So he told himself while he closed other deals, racing through them like a madman. A chain of hotels in the Far East. A thoroughbred race horse considered highly likely to win the Triple Crown. A boutique inn on the French Riviera that catered to a very elite, very private few. All deals that should have made him feel that his position—his global dominance—was cemented. Unassailable and assured. All deals that would have had him truly celebrating not so long ago. With the prettiest women, the most expensive wine, in the most glamorous places he could find.

Instead he found himself on the same bar stool in this same hidden-away bar that he had once worked in, in another lifetime, bussing tables for the actors and actresses who frequented the place. Tonight he swirled a fine whiskey in his glass and stared at nothing, unable to avoid the truth any further.

He had achieved his ultimate revenge—made all of his dreams come true—and he simply did not care. He had stood at his father’s grave, laid flowers for Althea and her lost child and he had not felt a thing. What a pointless exercise, he had thought, staring down at a stone marker that commemorated the man who had never cared overmuch for him, the girl who had hated him and the baby who had never had a chance. He had become the man his father would be proud of, finally. He knew this was true the moment he realized he simply could not bring himself to care about the family name he had taken all this time to avenge. It was as if he had turned to stone himself.

He motioned the bartender toward his glass, and stared down at the amber liquid. That emptiness had been the first feeling, and he had denied it, but he had never expected what came behind it. He had never imagined that he, Nikos Katrakis, could hurt.

Because he knew that was the only word to describe the agony in his chest, the heat of it, the impossible weight of all that he had lost. He was not ill, as he had first assumed. He simply ached. He could not sleep. He was irritable by day and his head was a vivid mess—and she was the only thing he saw. He imagined what she must have done that day, how she must have felt. He imagined how she had received the news, and how soon she had accepted what, he knew, she could not have wanted to believe could be true. How long had it taken? What had she felt? He tortured himself with images of her tears—or, worse, her bravery. Then, even more insidious, he imagined different endings to the same day. What if he had not left her there? What if he had chosen to marry her despite everything? What if he could lay beside her tonight, smelling the sweet scent of her hair, the faint musk of her skin?