Bond of Hatred(9)
'Androula would love him as her own. There is neither bitterness nor room for malice in her generous heart. She has had many months to adjust to the knowledge that another woman was carrying her husband's child...'
Sarah was paralysed. Androula. ..her husband's child? Dear God, Damon had got married to another woman while her poor sister had been pathetically pinning her hopes to an eventual reconciliation! He had actually got married! She was sick to the stomach, barely able to move on a stage to the even more staggering assertionthat Callie's no doubt triumphant rival was now most generously prepared to play mother to Damon's illegitimate child...
'Let me g-get this straight.' Sarah formed the plea with an intonation wiped clean of emotion by extreme shock. 'You are asking me to hand over Nicky to Damon and... and this And...'
'Androula,' he filled in obligingly.
'Damon's wife,' she repeated, just to be sure that she could not have misunderstood.
'She is a gentle, loving young woman,' Alex emphasised with unconcealed pride in his freedom to make such a claim.
Not a little scrubber like Callie, Sarah interpreted in a passion of pain. She had not misunderstood. She was so appalled by what he was daring to suggest that only the fiercest discipline kept her nausea under control. That this savage did not even appreciate that he was contravening Sarah's every moral principle underscored how very sick the Terzakis clan was in terms of basic decency.
Dear heaven, had Callie lived, would they have approached her to demand her child from her? Would Alex Terzakis have accused Callie of spitefully denying her son the wealth and material advantages which Damon alone could supply? Very probably. This was a male who had treated Callie like dirt from the outset, who had never for a single second even considered the possibility that she might be fit to marry his kid brother...no matter that she was already pregnant with his child. Self-evidently, Alex Terzakis did not even allow for the fact that such a low-class, common person as Sarah Hartwell could even have finer feelings!
Callie would have died sooner than hand over her son to Damon's wife. The acrid taste of bile in her dry mouth, Sarah walked over to the phone. 'If you don't get out of this house right now, I intend to call the police,' shetold him unsteadily. 'After all, you did force your way in.'
'Is this all you have to say to me?' Alex raked at her incredulously. 'Are you completely without shame? I tell you of Androula's generosity-----'
'Generosity—th-that's a good one!' Sarah lifted the receiver, fully prepared to carry out her threat. 'What you have just dared to suggest is so frankly obscene it does not require any further discussion, Mr Terzakis. It is the sickest, most vile proposition I have ever heard.'
'Obscene?' He made it sound like a strange word.
Reluctantly, Sarah forced herself to look at him. Perceptibly she shuddered as she clashed with black ice eyes of enquiry. 'Get out!' she told him ferociously.
'I have no intention of departing before we reach agreement.' Rock-like resolution emanated from him in teeth-clenchingly arrogant waves.
'If you don't get out,' Sarah swore between clenched teeth, abandoning the phone to employ a far more realistic form of intimidation, 'I'll approach the dirtiest tabloid available and tell all...'
Absolute outrage paralysed him. Violence shimmered rawly in his brilliant golden stare. 'You would do that to Androula?' he prompted very, very quietly.
A shiver ran down her taut backbone but she stood
tall in spite of it. 'I don't give that-----' she snapped her
fingers with a sharp crack '—for your precious, saintly Androula!'
'Were you of my sex, I would break every bone in your vindictive body... slowly,' he told her wrathfully.
'You'd get your fingers burnt,' she derided. 'You can't touch me and you know you can't—that's what's making you so angry. If either you or your brother approaches me again, I go to the Press. Damon could have had his child, Mr Terzakis. He had his chance and he blew it. My sister gave her life to bring Nicky into the world.That's how precious he was to her and that's how precious he is to me!'
'You have no right to keep Nikos!'
'Watch me... or fight me in court... where all will be revealed,' she reminded him with satisfaction, now that she had established his Achilles' heel. He was too proud to face the washing of the Terzakis dirty linen in public. 'Damon and his wife will never ever take possession of Callie's child. Accept that and stay out of our lives.'
He was white beneath his sun-bronzed skin, white with savage anger that he was visibly fighting to rein back. 'This, then, is your revenge-----'
'It is not one atom of what I would like to do to you and your family,' Sarah admitted, powered by a surge of helpless aggression. 'Damon was a wimp but vow are the one who destroyed my sister's life. Why? Because she wasn't good enough... she didn't meet your snobbish standards and she was poor-----'