Page 52 of Vows of Revenge

Desperate to get away. Away from Damos.

For ever.

Damos watched her go. The universe seemed to have moved into another reality. One he didn’t recognise. He had not given consent to it...given it permission to exist.

He turned. Headed back into the restaurant. He was conscious, with a fragment of his mind, that he was being looked at—the ugly scene at Andrakis’s table had not gone unnoticed, unheard... The table was deserted now, and he could see themaître d’hurrying up to him, his expression anxious.

‘Cancel my reservation,’ Damos said, and walked past him, back out into the lobby beyond. Heading for the elevator.

He needed to find Kassia. Needed to find her, talk to her, explain to her.

It isn’t the way she thinks it is! The way her thug of a father is making her think it is!

He felt his hands clench as he strode into the elevator. Hell, hell and hell! He should have realised that Andrakis would explode as he had. Take his fury at Damos out on his daughter.

He punched the button for the lobby and the lift hurtled down. Urgency filled him. Kassia might have come down in a service lift, but he could surely catch her as she left the hotel. He would wait by the entrance. If he missed her there, he’d find her at their hotel. But find her he must—hemust.

How had he so misjudged the situation? Exposed Kassia like that? Self-castigation whipped through him.

The elevator doors sliced open, and he plunged out into the lobby.

He heard a snarl behind him. With a fraction of a second to spare, he whirled around.

Yorgos Andrakis was lurching up to him, coming out of the cocktail bar opening off the lobby.

‘Looking for mywhoreof a daughter? She won’t touch you—even though being your whore is all she’s good for now!’

Yorgos Andrakis’s face was ugly with fury and venom. Damos wanted to make it uglier still. His fisted hand moved faster than his thoughts. He smashed it into Yorgos Andrakis’s face, his own face contorting, and then grabbed the man by his lapels, hauling him towards him.

‘Don’tevercall her that.’

His voice was a low, deadly blade, thrusting right into Yorgos’s face. He drew back his fisted hand, ready to strike again. To pulverise. Smash to pieces.

He never made contact.

Kassia collapsed into the back of the taxi she’d flagged down when she’d emerged at the back of the hotel via the service staircase. Faintly, she gave the driver the name of the hotel near the airport and he set off. She closed her eyes, her face twisting painfully. She gave a smothered cry that was almost a sob, but she stifled it. She must not break down. Not now. Not yet.

At the hotel she made it to their room, terrified that she would find Damos there. But it was empty. She tore herself out of her gown, threw on some clothes to travel in, grabbed her handbag with her passport and credit cards.

Speed was essential—Damos could burst in at any point.

She made it downstairs, out of the hotel, and threw herself into the hotel shuttle bus. Minutes later she was in Departures, her eyes desperately scanning the board for a flight that had not yet closed. She didn’t care where she went. Just away from this nightmare.

But she knew, with agony inside her, as she finally collapsed into her last-minute seat on a flight to Amsterdam, that she was taking the nightmare with her...

Damos emerged from the police station unshaven, his tuxedo crumpled, into the cold light of dawn. Both he and Yorgos Andrakis had been arrested after hotel security had rushed over, separating the two men, hustling them both out on to the pavement, then summoning the police. What had happened to Kassia’s father he neither knew nor cared—he himself had been discharged with a caution.

The reason for his violent outburst at Yorgos Andrakis had been sympathetically regarded, hence his discharge. But for his night at the police station his phone had been removed from him. Now it had been restored to him he was phoning urgently, hailing a taxi to throw himself into, heading back to their hotel.

Heading back to Kassia.

Urgency drove him. Urgency and so much more.

But it drove him in vain.

His number had been blocked by her.

She had left the hotel.

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