Page 63 of Slightly Married
We found Stella collapsed beside her father’s body in his messy study. Giorgos lay on his side, his fingers curled around a pistol, a pool of blood spreading beneath his head.
I kneeled beside him, ignoring the warm blood seeping into the fabric of my trousers, and pressed my fingers to his neck. Nothing. His skin was still warm, but life had already fled.
The bullet had done its work effectively. After several minutes, I sat back on my heels.
Stella’s high-pitched keening filled the room, a sound that should have evoked sympathy but didn’t. This was the culmination of years of deception and manipulation.
The wail of approaching sirens cut through Stella’s cries. Within minutes, the villa was swarming with emergency responders, who quickly assessed the scene.
I watched with detachment as the police called for forensics and led Stella away in handcuffs, reading out her charges for conspiracy, extortion, wire fraud and accessory to felony death.
Her eyes sought mine as they escorted her out, still pleading, still attempting to maintain the fantasy she’d constructed. I turned away. Nothing remained between us now but the cold and unforgiving truth.
I surveyed the room, taking it in. Everything that had once been beautiful in this house had been corrupted, just as the Pavlou family had been destroyed by Giorgos’s weakness.
I gathered the evidence I’d brought, placing it in a small pile on a metal trash can. My brothers stared at me, confused.
The police had everything they needed. These copies were superfluous. I reached into my pocket for my lighter.
The flame caught instantly, hungrily consuming the papers that documented the Pavlou family’s betrayal. I watched as the edges blackened and curled, devouring the tangible proof of how weakness had destroyed a family.
As the last of the evidence turned to ash, I felt a sense of finality settle over me. Not completely—Theo was still gone, and nothing could change that—but the poisonous uncertainty clouding everything since his death had finally cleared.
“Let’s go,” Dimitrios said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You need to get home.”
Home. The word resonated through me, cutting through the fog of this nightmare.
Home meant Kayla now—her laughter filling silent spaces, her belongings intermingled with mine, her scent on my pillows. Our marriage had begun as a business transaction, but somewhere between reluctant vows and unexpected confidences, between arguments and reconciliations, it had transformed into a connection that had become my foundation.
The truth had cost more than I could have imagined, but it had also freed me from the chains of misplaced guilt and obligation. Now unburdened by the weight of that unresolved past, I could finally turn fully toward a future with Kayla.
21
“K, where have you been? You’ve been gone for two days. I was starting to wor—” The words died on my lips as I spotted the dark stains spreading across his white shirt.
I scrambled off the bed, my laptop forgotten as I rushed to him. “What the hell happened to you?” My hands hovered over the stains, afraid to touch yet desperate to help. “Please tell me that’s not your blood.”
K glanced down at his shirt as if noticing the blood for the first time. “It’s not mine.”
“Then whose is it?” I asked, tugging at his jacket. My heart was racing a mile a minute. “And don’t you dare give me a vague non-answer.”
“Giorgos Pavlou. He took his own life.”
“Stella’s father?” I stepped back, studying his face. Despite his calm tone, the muscle ticking in his jaw told me everything I needed to know about his emotional state.
When he nodded, I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my face against his chest despite the metallic scent of drying blood.
“You need to get out of these clothes,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I pulled back. “That shirt is definitely going in the trash. No amount of stain remover is saving that designer piece.”
As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, I heard the shower start. I turned my attention to the mess across our bed—laptop open to the interior design plans I’d been working on for the Thalassía villa, fabric swatches, and color samples scattered beside it, and half a dozen design magazines spread across K’s side of the mattress. I’d been so caught up in my vision boards I hadn’t even realized how late it had gotten.
I gathered everything, carefully placing the fabric swatches in their folder and saving my design files before closing the laptop and setting it on the desk in the corner.
By the time the water shut off, I’d dimmed the lights and was sitting against the headboard. K emerged a few minutes later with a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still damp.
“Feel human again?” I asked, patting the space beside me.
“Much improved,” he replied, retrieving a pair of boxers from his drawer before dropping the towel and slipping them on. He joined me on the bed, immediately pulling me flush against his side.
