“You’ve proved to the whole world what an honorable man you are by marrying the disreputable Katrakis heiress. You’ve kept your word to Giannis. You’ve punished me for five years for my sins and more. Now...please, cut the leash on my life, Stavros.”
Her gaze held steady when he looked up, the fluttering pulse at her neck the only sign of her desperation. She linked her hands in front of her, and for a moment, Stavros couldn’t help but be impressed by her determination to keep a lid on her temper.
It was like watching a volcano trying to contain the lava within.
“Did you think for a second what you did would completely defeat your goal, Leah? How could finding you drunk and plastered over someone persuade me to let you go? Within the month, you will be back to it all, the drugs, the parties. And I can’t let that happen.”
Every drop of blood fled from her face. “You cut me off from the entire world. You cut me off from my friends. You have your goons watch over me night and day. You... And that’s fine too.
“But...you’ve been ignoring my emails, your hateful secretary is forever deflecting me. You...you can’t just take me on as a responsibility and then...just lock me up. I’m not a possession to safeguard. You left me no choice.”
“There are always choices. It’s a pity that with everything you have in the world, you never learned to make the right ones.”
“I’m not interested in discussing the past or the present.” If she did, she would crumple to the floor in a helpless heap. Like she had been for the first couple of months after Calista had died. “All I care about is myself and my future.”
“Of course.” His jaw tightened. “So you have nothing to say to me, nothing to ask?”
She shook her head. “I have a hundred things to organize for my collection. I’m already behind. All I want is a phone call authorizing the release of the...”
He prowled toward her in a slow gait that sent her heart thumping like a bass drum.
“You haven’t seen me, or anyone for five years. Aren’t you even remotely curious, Leah?”
“About what?” she managed to whisper, under the thrall of his mesmerizing gaze.
With a smooth flick of his wrist, he tugged her and she fell into him with a gasp. Every muscle in her body sighed at the contact with his hard one. A little more pressure and he had her locked in his arms with their faces only inches apart. Leaving her with no choice except to look into the anger that turned his eyes into dark gold. “About how your grandfather is doing, you ungrateful little brat.” At her gasp, his hold tightened further, this short of hurting. Sinuous heat burst in her belly and Leah struggled. “Is it too much to hope you would care about the man who took care of you when your father died?”
With a grunt, Leah pushed him back, hating the fact that he had muddled with her head with so little effort. She couldn’t let on how rattled she was by his presence, how out of balance she felt when he touched her, even innocently.
She breathed in roughly, gritting her jaw so tight that she would need to see a dentist soon. There should have been smoke coming out of her ears too. “First of all...I’m not sixteen anymore so stop calling me a brat.
“Secondly, not that I have to explain myself to you, I know how Giannis is doing. I speak to his nurse every day.”
She instantly regretted her words when she saw the disbelief in his gaze.
Turning away from him, she walked to the mini fridge in the corner, needing the time away from his scrutiny to compose herself. Grabbed a bottle and gulped the water down so fast that her throat burned at the chill.
And yet she could feel the heat pooling under her skin as he watched her from the other side of the room, could feel an unnamed charge building up in the room...
This slicing awareness of him, this reaction to his nearness...it was intolerable and utterly frightening. Stavros had only wreaked destruction on her life—why didn’t her body understand that?
“You haven’t visited him once in five years.”
Her chest ached at the thought of seeing Giannis. God, how she wanted to see that kind smile... Even through his heart attack and triple bypass surgery five years ago, Giannis had survived. She wouldn’t risk it by seeing him now.
“My relationship with Giannis is none of your business.”
His mouth stretched into a smile, the straight upper lip losing its severity in the process. “I’m making it mine.”
“And I’m saying ‘No more.’ I have spent five years living a life you dictated, Stavros, down to the food I ate, the clothes I wore, the people I spoke to. Whatever you think needed fixing in me, it is fixed now. I want to lead my life, I want to build a career...” Frustration filled her throat with tears. “What more do you need to be convinced that I can lead my own life?”
“Not getting a phone call from Dmitri that you are drunk and plastered over some boy would have been a start.”
“I told you why I did that. If I hadn’t, you would have gone another decade without answering my phone calls.” She hated that her every action was being driven by him. That even in her own mind, she had no freedom. And it could not continue.
“I have spoken to a friend of mine. Philip is a lawyer.” She stepped back from him, willing herself to stay strong. “I’m aware of my rights, Stavros. There are a hundred different reasons that could be cited and accepted by the court for a divorce.”
“A divorce?”
“Yes. I want a divorce. I want to never see you again. And I’m sure the thought of being rid of me forever fills you with happiness. So give us both what we want.”
A small smile touched his mouth but didn’t reach that compelling gaze. Again, Leah had a feeling that it hid so much she didn’t know. “You have rights and lawyers. But it could take years if I didn’t agree, Leah. We could be celebrating a ten-year anniversary before we even get through the preliminaries.”
“Is this what I have become for you?” Leah grabbed the edge of the desk to hide the trembling of her hands, a scream building away in her chest.
Hot tears prickled behind her eyelids. “Someone to punch, something to punish eternally so that you can feel better about what happened to Calista? Believe me, I wish it had been me that ended up dead that night and not her. But you know what? Wishing doesn’t make anything come true.”
Because even though she had never touched drugs in her life, she had enabled Calista that night. And that guilt choked her.
For the first time that evening, or maybe in forever, he looked so shocked that Leah would have celebrated it as a victory if not for the gnawing in her gut.
Slowly, he recovered, those long lashes hiding his expression. “I have never wished that you had died instead that night, Leah.”
She didn’t want to believe him. But Stavros was never less than honest.
Of course he wouldn’t have wished Giannis Katrakis’s granddaughter’s death. His control, not only over his actions, but even his very thoughts had always disconcerted and fascinated her in equal measure.
He lived by such a stringent code of his own rules, and applied it to everyone around him that no one could really hold up to it.
Not Dmitri, not Calista and definitely not her.
Recovering from the memory, she shook her head. “Right. You didn’t wish my death because who else will you take out your sadistic side on if I were gone?”
“You call the last decade of your presence in my life sadism. I call it masochism.”
She knew, had always known, what he thought of her. But hearing it in his own words... Her fingers pressed into the glass in her hand, the urge to throw the glass, water and all, at his head bubbling up inside her.
His amused gaze followed her shaky movements. “Try it.”
The utter satisfaction in his voice got through to her like nothing else could.
He expected this of her. He expected a juvenile tantrum and she had already catered to him today and for years. Every time he had warned her to not do something, she had done that and more. Had lashed out against him from the moment she had landed in Greece.
Hating Stavros, especially when he had continuously given her ample reasons, had been easier than dealing with the grief and fear inside her.
No more, Leah.
There was power in that choice, power in saying she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right about her anymore.
Instead, she took a deep breath, reminded herself why she was here. It would be great if Stavros released those funds to her. But she had known it wouldn’t be that simple.
Any other man would have sent the woman he thought responsible for his sister’s death to the other end of the world.
Instead, hours after he had buried Calista, he had bound her to him in the most sacred of bonds.
She didn’t even care about the divorce. The mockery of her marriage had never meant anything to her. All she wanted was to succeed, to give her life meaning, to take the joy she had always found in designing and creating to the next step.
“What do I have to do that you will release those funds?”
“Will you do anything I ask of you?”
Something in the silky tone of his voice—a flicker of interest maybe, nudged her into panic zone again. “My personal life is my own. Even with the shackles you bound me with, I have friends who mean something to me. If you order me to cut ties with them, I won’t.