Page 46 of Vows of Revenge

They were descending now, towards the valley in which their own loch lay. Soon Damos swung into the driveway of their castle. As he did so, Kassia heard her phone beeping from her handbag. She reached down to fetch it out, but as she glanced to see who the message was from her happiness collapsed like a punctured balloon.

It was from her father.

Summoning her to Athens.

Damos stood by the edge of the loch, its dark water lapping near his feet. Kassia stood nearby, hands plunged into her jacket pocket, her face grave. He stooped to pick up a pebble, flat and thin, and stood up to skim it across the loch. The late sun, still high at this latitude at this season, despite the hour, had gone behind a cloud.

‘You don’t have to go,’ he said.

He didn’t look at Kassia. But he could tell from her tone of voice that she was troubled.

‘I think I do, Damos. He isn’t asking much—just that I show up for some dinner or other. You know that he does that from time to time. I turn up and be his docile daughter, and then he goes on being patron of the museum. It’s...it’s worked so far. And I suppose, in a way, I don’t want to break with him entirely. I just wish, sometimes, that he—’

She broke off, then spoke again.

‘That he wasn’t always so dismissive of me. I know I disapprove of so much about him...how ruthless he is in business...but, well...’ She swallowed. ‘He’s still my father, and it would be nice if sometimes...just sometimes...he might think something good of me.’

‘Do you?’

He looked at her now. Her face was troubled. But then his thoughts were troubled too. He knew the reason for Andrakis’s summons to his daughter. He was going to parade her in front of Cosmo, present her as a suitable bride, and set his scheme in motion.

But that was never going to happen.

Cosmo himself would to reject it out of hand.

The moment he knows what is between Kassia and myself.

On the short walk from the car down to the loch’s edge thoughts had been marching through Damos’s head. Now that the moment had come—now that Andrakis had shown his hand, made his move, set the timetable—Damos knew he had to react just as he’d always planned to do.

But do I have to do it in that way?

That was the question incising in his head now. What if he and Kassia simply flew back to Athens and went out and about together? Let word get out that they were an item? The trouble was, time was tight. Kassia had relayed, with reluctance in her voice—both at the summons itself and the high-handed short notice afforded her—that her father had demanded her presence the evening after tomorrow. The very day they were leaving the Highlands. And he had told her to present herself at, of all places, the Viscari Athena.

The irony was not lost on Damos.

The venue itself was a giveaway. It was newly opened, to great fanfare, and tables at the rooftop gourmet restaurant were like gold dust. Andrakis was clearly wanting to impress Cosmo.

Thoughts churned in his head. Unless Kassia refused the summons—and she seemed to be disinclined to do so, as she’d just said—there wouldn’t be time for word to get out that he and Kassia were a couple. Which left only—

Only the way I originally envisaged.

And besides...

His question to her just now echoed in his head. Kassia’s father had always sneered at his own daughter, castigating her cruelly for what he considered her lack of looks, condemning her to think so little of herself.

But now that is all changed!

No one—not even her cold-hearted father—could dismiss her now. Not any longer.

Kassia was speaking, answering his question. There was a sad, plaintive quality to her voice.

‘But he never will, I know,’ she was saying.

Damos’s expression changed. Decisiveness fired in him.

He met Kassia’s eyes full on. ‘Oh, yes, he will,’ he said, and there was something in his voice that only he himself could hear.

He stooped, picked up another flat pebble, straightened, and hurled it out across the loch. Then he took Kassia’s hand.

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