Page 58 of Vows of Revenge

‘I have done this because you told me in Spain that I had used you to make money for myself.’

His face contorted suddenly. Something broke inside him.

‘Oh, God, Kassia, if only I could undo what I did to you! I regret it so, so much! But I can’t undo it. All I can do is live with the consequences. Live with what I have lost.’

His voice dropped. There was a stone in his throat, making it impossible to breathe. To speak. But he must speak. Must say the most agonising words in the world.

‘You,’ he said. ‘I have lost you.’

He turned to go. She was still motionless, still unspeaking, not reacting. There was no point in him staying here. No point at all...

But as he started to turn away he saw something happen to her face. Rivulets of tears were running down it...

The tears were spilling. She could not stop them. No power on earth could stop them.

‘Kassia—’

Her name was on his lips. And then his arms were around her.

She should pull away—push him away, drive him away, force him away. For he was the man who had lied to her from the very first moment she had ever seen him, standing right here. Standing here, planning to lie to her, to make use of her, to make her the gullible, stupid fool her father had called her in his rage.

She should push him from her—but she did not. Could not.

His arms were holding her, cradling her. She heard his voice.

‘Don’t cry. Don’t weep. I beg you! I can’t bear that you should weep. I can’t bear that I did to you what I did! It’s an agony to me.’

She was clinging to him—but why she was, she didn’t know. How could she? How could she cling like this to a man who had used her as he had? Lied to her as he had?

‘You lied to me Damos! You lied and you lied and you lied! Everything was a lie—all a lie! Every day we had together. Every hour. Every night in your arms.’ Her voice choked, sobs racking her. ‘It was all alie!’

She felt his arms stiffen. Then they fell away, dropping to his sides. He let her go and looked away, out over the deserted trenches to the olive trees beyond. Then his eyes came back to hers. Held them fast.

‘It started as a lie,’ he said.

He paused, and the silence between them stretched like a chasm. Then he spoke again, his eyes still holding hers fast.

‘But it became the truth,’ he said.

He heard the words he had said. The words that were the most important words in the world.

‘It became the truth,’ he said again.

His eyes searched her face. He could read nothing there. Nothing to help him. But he did not deserve help.

After all that had been a lie between them she deserved the truth. The truth about the truth.

‘The truth is brutal. Everything you threw at me in Spain—that I engineered meeting you, feigning an interest in sponsoring the dig, and invited you on board my yacht on that pretext...that I found out you were attending a conference in Oxford, so I turned up there myself, letting you think it was just by chance. I kept our acquaintance going, knowing exactly where I wanted it to lead. Knowing exactly why I was doing it. But then...then it changed.’

He knew his face was stark.

‘It changed, Kassia. I realised I was enjoying your company...that I wanted more of it. That I wanted Kassia—you. Not Kassia Andrakis, who was going to be the means by which I would outmanoeuvre your father, but you. Just you. For who you were yourself. I wanted you—I wanted to spend time with you—I wanted to be with you. And above all...’ his voice changed now, and there was a husk in it that he could not hide ‘...I wanted you in my arms.’

He shut his eyes for a moment. Then flared them open.

‘Oh, God, Kassia, how much I wanted that! And I wanted you to want it too! And the more I found out about you—how you lacked any confidence in your own beauty, which you could not see—the more I wanted to reveal it to you. And I did—I did just that! And when...when we came together that night, I knew I had found someone.’ His voice dropped, ‘Someone I did not want to lose.’

He drew a breath. Words were still coming—the truth was still coming.

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