Page 55 of Vows of Revenge

‘My daughter has nothing to say to you, Mr Kallinikos,’ Kassia’s mother said crisply.

Damos’s mouth tightened. ‘But I have things that need to be said to her. Kassia?’ He addressed her directly now. ‘Please let me simply talk to you—that is all.’ He paused. ‘We can’t leave it like this.’

He saw her whiten even more, but hesitate. Her mother murmured something to her and she seemed to tremble. Then, lifting her chin, she looked at him.

‘Outside. At that café over there.’

She nodded towards one of the many cafés and restaurants lining the busy marina. It was the one closest to the yacht—her mother would be able to see them if they sat outside, Damos realised.

He gave a curt nod. Tension was racking through him.

He watched her walk down the gangplank, step past him. He caught a faint scent of her perfume and memory rushed back. Memory he had to thrust away. Not indulge...

She walked swiftly to the café across the cobbled stones of the quayside, and sat herself down at a table. Damos did likewise. A waiter came by and Damos ordered black coffee for himself and white for her. He knew her taste in coffee. Knew so much about her.

But not how she was going to respond to him now.

She wasn’t looking at him—wasn’t making eye contact. Her breathing was laboured, he could tell, and her expression tense.

The coffee arrived...the waiter disappeared. Damos began.

‘We can’t leave it the way it is, Kassia,’ he said. His voice was low, intense. ‘I have to try...try and make my peace with you.’

He sounded stilted, he knew. And he knew the words were inadequate. But they were all he had now...the only way he could express what he wanted to achieve. And so much depended on them—on what he was going to say now.

He felt emotion trying to rise up in him, but he crushed it back down. It would get in the way—complicate matters. And right now the matter was very simple. Brutally simple.

I want her back.

But even as he thought it he changed it. No, he did notwantKassia back.

I need her back—because without her my life is...

Unthinkable.

That was what these frantic days of trying to find her had shown him...shown him with all the tenderness of a fist slamming into his solar plexus. Over and over again.

‘Peace?’

There was incredulity in her voice. She was staring at him. Now she was making eye contact—and he could almost wish she was not.

‘Peace?’she said again. ‘You did what you did to me and you think we can makepeaceover it?’

‘I have to try, Kassia—’ he began.

But she cut across him. ‘Try what? Try to tell me that youdidn’tuse me to get at my father? Try to tell me that everything that happened between uswasn’ta lie from the very first? Are you going to try and deny that? You lined me up from start to finish! Knowing exactly what you were doing!’

He tried to interrupt but she would not let him. Vehemence was in her face, in her voice.

‘You turned up at the excavation deliberately—are you doing to claim you didn’t? And you got me to come to dinner on your yacht deliberately—are you going to deny that too? As for Oxford...’ A choke broke from her. ‘I thought it was a coincidence! Bumping into you like that. But it wasn’t, was it?Was it?’

He drew a breath, his face as tight as if it were made of wire. ‘No. But—’

She wouldn’t let him speak.

‘And after that it was easy, wasn’t it? So damn easy. Spending time with me...coming up with one reason after another to do so. Reeling me in until you had me exactly where you needed me to be.’ Her face contorted. ‘In your bed.’

The bitterness in her voice was acid on his skin. Her eyes like knives plunging into his flesh.

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