Page 183 of Love Among the Ruins
“I’ve missed you. I … was worried about you.” Not only did he look somber, but there were tiny lines at the corners of his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before.
She sat, feeling wooden and stiff, trying to reconcile the warm feeling in her stomach before she’d knocked on his door, to how she felt now.
“Hector Galatis is my father.”
He let out a sigh. “Jesus. It’s true then?” He leaned over and took her hands in his, asked her a million questions about how she was, was she okay, how her mother was, what her mother said. She recounted it all like a robot reading a speech from a teleprompter.
It hadn’t taken a lot get the answer. Eleni had simply asked her, “Is Hector Galatis my father?”
When her mother had replied, “How do you know?” She’d gotten her answer. They talked for hours, first her mother, reliving that time in her youth when she had been in love with the monster, and then Eleni had told her mother everything, about Dominic, the son of a billionaire, how they had met, and how good he’d been to her. About how he’d captured her heart, about how she was falling in love with him, and how she was forgetting Jonas. She’d told her about the fake date for the wedding, and how she’d gone away with Dominic to Santorini. It had all come hurtling out, the things she’d kept inside her, the things she’d wanted to tell her friends, but hadn’t been able to.
She’d cried in her mother’s arms, talking about Dominic, blurting out all the ways in which he made her angry, and irritated, and happy, and all the ways he’d shown her kindness. How he always seemed to want the best for her.
Her mother had listened, stroking her hair and holding her. It seemed at last as if her mother had become the mother Eleni had always wanted.
News of Hector Galatis had fallen to the wayside.
Eleni didn’t know the man, except what little she had seen and heard from Dominic, and the little she had seen at the wedding. Now she felt sorry for his wife, the lovely woman he had cheated on.
She also had half-siblings, but she would never know them, had no desire to know them, or be a part of that world.
She didn’t tell Dominic about her confession to her mother, only what he wanted to know, the confirmation about Galatis.
And now she was coming to terms with what she’d heard Helen say. It was one shock after another. Galatis being her father meant nothing to her, and she’d been eager to come and tell Dominic, only, now she wasn’t sure what to make of this new revelation.
“You’re upset, I know this must come as a huge shock to you.”
She was barely cognizant of Dominic’s hands on hers because her mind was trying to work it all out. She wanted to catch him red-handed. “You said you didn’t own a yacht.”
His brow creased. “I don’t.”
“Then why did Helen ask you to throw her an engagement party on your yacht?”
He looked confused. “How many times do I have to tell you that Helen and I don’t have anything? We’ve never had anything.” He wiped a hand over his face, understanding dawning in his expression. “That night when I told you I was going to see her, that night you’d sprained your ankle and you stayed at my place—I lied. I went to the office to work, maybe get some sleep. I lied because I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, and I sensed you might feel that way spending the night at my house if I stuck around.”
He did what? Now she was confused. “You lied about going to her place?”
The skin around his eyes tightened. “Men hit on you, Eleni. They make advances. I’ve seen it. I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable. You didn’t want to stay at my place, but I thought you should, it was the right thing to do given…” he gestured at her foot. “I did it because I didn’t want you to be uneasy.”
So, he’d lied about going to Helen’s.Okaaaay.“I asked you once, and you told me you didn’t have a yacht.” She wasn’t going to let this go.
Just when she thought there might be a way for them to be together, he’d gone and messed it up. She hated people who lied even more than she hated billionaires with yachts.
Dominic’s gaze shifted to the floor, the surest sign yet of his unease. “She said it was a shame I couldn’t host a party for her. Meaning, I don’t have a yacht, not now.” He gave her a peculiar look and she prepared for it, her muscles hardening, getting ready for the hit.
“My family used to have a yacht. It was called The Dream Princess.” His gaze held steady as the name reverberated somewhere deep in the dark basement of her memories.
She knew that name.
The Dream Princess.The mere mention of it made her nauseous. The memories rushed back like a tidal wave and she struggled to breathe, her chest seizing up, her lungs filling with rage.
And then, like a thunderbolt … she understood.
Thatwas Dominic’s family’s yacht. “You knew?” Eleni’s breathing turned shallow. The Dream Princess had been the yacht where the party had taken place, the one where the drunken guests had gone into the water on jet skis, and crashed into Jonas, killing him.
“Stefanos told me.”
“When?”
