“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.”
A cold finger climbed up Nikos’s spine. He knew what was coming; he finally understood what Lexi had meant when she had said it was Savas that demanded a price from Nikos. A price he had paid willingly, crushing his own heart in the process. He licked his lips, pushing the words out through a raw throat.
“What were the conditions?”
“I told him I would give her medical care, enough money to live out the rest of her life in comfort. In return, he had to walk away from her. And instead of taking what I offered, your father decided to remain a fool.”
Exactly what Nikos had thought him to this day.
A sudden chill settled deep in Nikos’s chest, filling his veins with ice. All his father had needed to do was to walk away from his mother. And her last days would have been in comfort.
And yet, he hadn’t been able to make the ruthless choice, hadn’t been able to leave the woman he loved.
Had the guilt been too unbearable to live, knowing that his love for her had caused her suffering? Powerlessness transformed to rage, and Nikos turned toward Savas. They both knew he had been a weak man. “Why? Why did you ask that of him?”
Savas rocked where he stood, his head erect, his gaze direct.
“She stole him from me. My only son, the heir to my empire, and he ran away the minute he met her. She weakened him even more. And what did she gain in return? Poverty, starvation, failure?”
“She did not weaken him, Savas. He was already weak.”
Savas flinched. The tiredness he must have held at bay, the pain he must have shoved aside, crept into his face. There was unrelenting grief there, and to Nikos’s shock, regrets. Savas had never meant to push his son to that bitter end he had finally sought. It had been nothing but stubborn pride that had motivated Savas.
Instead, in the blink of an eye, Nikos’s father’s cowardly step had shattered so many lives.
“Eventually, he let her down just as he did me. And I could not let you make the same mistake. I held you at arm’s length. I put you through so much—my own blood. I could not let you become weak like him, incapable of doing your duty.”
And it had cost Savas to see Nikos suffer as much as it had cost Nikos himself. Nikos shuddered at the weight of that realization. “So you manipulated Theo into making a deal with me. My marriage to Eleni Katrakis—that was your idea.”
“Yes. I heard about that American woman, about how wrapped up you were in her, about how she had changed your mind even about Venetia. This time, I couldn’t not act.”
And as before, Nikos had walked right into his own destruction. “Neither of you was right. Do you understand, Savas?
“If he was irresponsible, weak, you were bitter, abusive. When he died, Venetia and I needed your love, we needed your support. Instead you turned my anger for him to your advantage. You made me loathe my own father. But I am not weak like him or bitter like you.”
And neither would his love for Lexi weaken him.
His body shuddering at the realization, Nikos sank into his chair.