Page 37 of Thicker Than Blood

“Amari, I have tried, baby. Please, tell me what’s wrong,” my mother said, reminding me I wasn’t alone at the table.

I avoided looking at her eyes and put a spoonful of my breakfast into my mouth, taking my time in chewing the creamy, fruity oat mixture.

“It’s nothing, Mum. I’m fine—I will be fine,” I said, correcting myself because my mother wasn’t a fool.

“Christos loved you, Amari,” my Mum said, looking away from me uncomfortably before raising her eyes to look me in the eye. “He would often remark that Stefanos should settle down with someone like you.”

I stared at her, unblinking, shocked at her words.

“I know something happened with him. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s okay, but know that I am here for you,” she said softly.

I swallowed hard, giving her a brittle smile, but all I could feel was the outrage and fury at the audacity of these men. Christos, leading a double life with a wife and mistress. And his dumbass son, Stefanos, with his misguided vengeful actions.

Fuck all men with a steel poled spiked dildo in their stupid assholes.

Seven million pounds wasn’t enough compensation from this family of dull-witted Greek men.

Chapter 27

Stefanos

My guilt became a slow poison in the first month of Amari’s departure. After visiting my uncle, and rereading my father’s letter, it all made sense. My mother held my father prisoner and over the years he became accustomed to balancing both sides of his dysfunctional life. He never told me for the fear that I would grow to hate him. I was an adult, he could have shared his life with me.

I think after the initial shock I would have listened to him.

After spending weeks of drowning in the numbing comfort of my amber scotch, I cleared up the empty bottles and crumpled up legal documentation that voided every clause and injunction I had weaponised against Amari’s family. The money I funnelled into her account was blood money, a coward's apology. Five million pounds. Enough to buy her freedom in her life, but not enough to scour the guilt from my soul.

I told myself that she was better off without me. The cold silence I used to push her away was mercy. Yet the lie ate away at me each time I caught a glimpse of her through the tinted windows of my car, trailing after her like a wraith. She wandered through parks and her local high streets, her lifeless eyes searching through the sea of people.

I watched her sit for hours in cafés, staring blankly at her book. I would flinch when her fingers would absently trace her collarbone where her collar once bit into her skin—the memoryof tugging on the leash while she crawled behind me disgusted and roused me. The sight of her yearning for her collar carved me open.

Work became an afterthought, conducting meetings in my study or in the back of my Bentley, my attention split between reports and the live feed from the private investigator hired to keep an eye on Amari. My tracking device inside her always told me where she was, but it wasn't enough. There were whispers about my absence, but I didn't care. The only thing that mattered was the grainy footage of Amari pushing her sister on a swing, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

Then came the night she wore red.

She made arrangements to meet her friend at a bar. I waited impatiently outside her house for hours nursing a flask of bourbon. When she emerged from her house wearing a sinful long red dress that clung to her curves like a second-skin, she took my breath away. I’d seen her naked, vulnerable, owned, but this—this was different. This was Amari reclaiming her fire, her defiance, and it made my heart race to see her bright spark of life emerge. My eyes narrowed on her body, she’d lost weight.

Keith followed her taxi through the neon-drenched lights while I relived the memories of my pet. The first time I made her kneel, the raw pain and disbelief in her eyes when I set her free.

After several visits to a bar, the ladies settled for a trendy nightclub. The strobe-lit darkness allowed me to linger in the shadows, hidden with my gaze locked on her. Men swarmed like vultures—suit and tie predators, offering drinks, compliments and hungry stares. Each rejection she issued filled me with relief and a savage fuck you to all the pricks unworthy of her.

When a blonde Adonis, his hand brushing her waist, I almost crushed the glass I held. Amari turned the man away with an icysmile and my relief morphed into shame. I had no right to be jealous, no right to the heat pooling in my veins when she flicked her long black hair back. The hair I once combed. It didn't stop me from watching her dance, the silky red material sliding over her hips as she moved, her breasts swayed, showcased in the low-cut neckline.

Later slumped in the car outside her house, I replayed the night on a loop. The way she’d thrown her head back laughing with her friend, the shadow that flickered across her face when she thought no one was looking. I knew that shadow, it mirrored my own—the hollow where obsession and guilt festered.

I dialled his number, listening to it ring. It was four in the morning, but I didn't care. He picked up on the third ring.

“Double the surveillance,” I said to the investigator with a rough voice. “I want every detail. Every man who looks at her.”

I didn't wait for a response, I hung up, looking at her house before telling Keith to take me home—the empty home which was full of vivid memories ofus. I meant to let her go, to live alone, but my obsession went deeper than the ties of blood. It was time to face the truth.

She was not just my father’s stepdaughter, not a pawn in my twisted retribution. Amari was my ruin and my redemption. Thicker than blood. Thicker than betrayal. She was the one thing that made me feel alive and the only thing that could destroy me.

It was time to make my move.

???

After I knocked on the door, I tugged at my tie before quickly began to fix it when I heard the chain and lock opening. Amari’s mother stood staring at me, her eyes wide and her lips parted.She looked like an older version of Amari, the same eyes, nose and lips.

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