Vows of Revenge

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

K ASSIA ’ S NERVES WERE stretched to breaking point. Oh, could she really go through with this? Inside she was trembling like a jelly. She had never enjoyed the times when her father summoned her, but she’d learnt to get through them with minimum stress. Simply by staying quiet and meek and docile, as she’d told Damos. By being as inconspicuous as possible.

But tonight...

Tonight was going to be totally different.

She felt her nerves jangle again as they made their way into the palatial lobby of the Viscari Athena. Given their early-evening arrival from the UK that day, Damos had booked them into a hotel that served the airport, to give Kassia the maximum time possible to get ready for the evening ahead. Even so, it had been a rush.

She’d had to shower, wash her hair, and then a hairstylist and beautician had arrived—Damos had seen to it—to style her hair, make up her face, do her nails, and then help her into the close-fitting bias-cut silvery dress she’d worn at the Viscari St James that unforgettable evening.

When she was finally ready, Damos’s eyes had lit up.

‘Sensational...’ he breathed. ‘Just sensational.’ He came forward to take her hands, press them in his. ‘Your father is going to be stunned !’ He raised each hand to his lips in turn, then lowered them, holding them warmly still. ‘Never, never again will he be able to say the slightest derisive thing about your looks! Every head will turn when they see you!’

They were turning now, Kassia could tell as, nerves pinched yet again, they crossed the foyer heading to the elevators. If it hadn’t been for Damos at her side, and her hand clutching the sleeve of his tuxedo, she would have cut and run. Not that running in these four-inch heels was possible...

But I won’t run—I won’t!

Resolve lifted her chin. All her adult life her father had disparaged her and belittled her for being plain and unlovely. Tonight she would show him.

It had been Damos’s idea, out by the loch.

‘It’s the perfect opportunity to show him how fantastic you can look!’

And she did look fantastic—she knew she did. Her father would have to acknowledge it. It would be impossible for him to deny it. All the same, she knew that even with her new confidence about her looks she wouldn’t have had the courage to look this incredibly glamorous for her father without Damos at her side.

As they stepped into the elevator she glanced at him, expecting to see a reassuring smile on his face for her. But he was looking ahead, not at her, and there seemed to be a tension across his shoulders. She wondered why...

Surely, she thought, he could not be apprehensive about turning up with her this evening? Whatever the reason her father wanted her to dine with him tonight, whoever he was entertaining, what did it matter if Damos was with her? They were a couple now—and it was something her father would have to accept.

Damos had said as much.

‘If your father is happy with my joining the party, then fine—but if not... Well, there’s no reason we need stay,’ he had told her. ‘We’ll have dinner together, by ourselves, and then why don’t we hit a nightspot? I can’t wait to start showing you off.’ His voice had been warm. ‘I want all of Athens to see you with me!’

The elevator was slowing, gliding to a halt. The doors were opening.

And now Damos did look at her. With her heels she was almost at his eye level, but not quite. Was it that slight angle that suddenly seemed to make his eyes look veiled...unreadable?

Then her nerves pinched again, and she tightened her grip on his sleeve.

He patted her hand briefly. ‘You can do this,’ he said, nodding at her.

She drew a breath, nodding wordlessly in reply and wondering, as they stepped out into the restaurant lobby, whether she had just imagined that she had heard him murmur, low and almost inaudibly, ‘So can I...’

Damos led her forward. His shoulders were as tense as steel. Doubt knifed through him, but he thrust it aside. No time for that now. Whatever questions he’d put to himself about what he was doing had been set aside.

Out by the loch, with Kassia telling him of her father’s summons, she had given him an opening he’d realised he could use. So she longed for her father not to deride her appearance as he habitually did? Well, tonight would be her chance. She would look as sensational at the Viscari Athena as she had at the Viscari St James.

And it’s what I want too.

It would play perfectly to his own agenda. With Kassia looking such a knockout there could be no mistaking his interest in her—his involvement with her. And Yorgos Andrakis and Cosmo Palandrou would not mistake it either...

On his sleeve, he felt Kassia’s fingers tighten. Well, there was no need. This would not take long. Oh, he’d told her that he’d be happy to join her father’s party, if invited—but that was not going to happen. His presence would most definitely not be welcome, he thought grimly.

No, he would be whisking Kassia away the moment Cosmo and Yorgos got the message. He’d made a reservation for himself and her, requesting a table far away from Yorgos Andrakis. As far as anyone else would see, he and Kassia would simply be greeting her father and his guest, then dining à deux on their own. Reinforcing to all who saw them the fact that he and Kassia were together.

He paused by the desk, giving his name, and telling the clerk that they would be meeting with Kyrios Andrakis first. Then, with Kassia on his arm, he walked into the restaurant, raking his eyes over the tables, looking for her father.

He saw him immediately.

His mouth tightened. Yorgos had only one dinner guest with him.

Cosmo Palandrou.

Damos’s eyes hardened. As they headed towards them he could see heads turning—Kassia, looking as sensational as she was, was drawing all eyes. But there were only two pairs of eyes he wanted to see her.

And see her they were...

He saw it happen. Saw her father, deep in conference with his dinner guest—his only dinner guest—glance up. Saw his eyes focus on who had just come into the restaurant. Saw, for a moment, complete blankness in them, as if he had no idea who the woman walking towards him was. Then, as they approached, the blankness changed to incredulous recognition.

In one slow-motion movement, his incredulous gaze took in Damos, at Kassia’s side. And his recognition changed to something else...a different expression taking hold of his face.

They reached his table, and Damos could feel Kassia’s hand gripping his sleeve. But right now he had no spare attention for her. No attention for anything except what was happening.

Tension speared through him. So much was at stake.

And yet...

I want this done. Over and done with. So I can get the hell out of here with Kassia. I want Andrakis and Cosmo to get the message I am sending them, and for Andrakis to know his plan is now impossible. That I have made it so, and that now Cosmo will be looking elsewhere for a bride. And for a buyer...

It would not take him long to achieve all that—it was happening right now...

Cosmo Palandrou had looked up too.

Damos’s eyes went from Yorgos to him. Then back to Yorgos. Then he smiled.

It was a smile, he knew, of victory.

Checkmate.

It was a sweet, sweet moment.

Kassia’s grip on Damos’s sleeve was rigid. Her father was staring at her as though he could not believe what he was seeing. Kassia could understand why.

Her eyes flickered for a moment, taking in the man dining with her father. Dim recognition plucked at her. It was Cosmo Palandrou. She’d met him before, at a larger dinner party a year or more ago, when her father had summoned her there. She took in the fact that the table was only set for three—which seemed odd. What was so special about Cosmo Palandrou that he was her father’s only guest? And why would her father want her here as well?

She hadn’t liked Cosmo Palandrou the first time she’d met him—he’d been as dismissive of her as her father always was, and he was physically repellent—overweight, with heavy jowls and small, pouchy eyes. His manner had been rude and abrupt, and she knew his company had often been in the press over a number of strikes and industrial disputes, as well as breaking environmental standards.

But she had no attention to give him now—all her focus was on her father. A tremor of trepidation went through her, and the sudden cowardly wish that she’d simply worn the unflattering green dress she’d bought in England and done nothing to her face and hair. Then she rallied. This was her golden chance to show her father that she was no longer the Plain Jane daughter he’d always castigated her for being. Maybe even finally to win his approval...

A stab of longing went through her, which she knew she should not allow. She had long ago given up on doing something right by his endlessly critical and dismissive standards...

But surely tonight there would be something different from the offhand way he usually noted her arrival? Surely this time he couldn’t help but react differently, given her stunningly altered appearance?

But he was still staring at her—just staring—so she decided to make an attempt to break the moment, to give him some kind of greeting.

She never got the chance. Abruptly, her father was thrusting himself to his feet, his bulk considerable. Colour was riding up in his cheeks, his face working. Alarm speared in Kassia as he saw her father’s beefy hands fist on the table.

Then words spat from him. Words that made her blench. Crude and explicit.

But they were not directed at her.

It was Damos who got them—full in his face.

Kassia’s head shot round, She was appalled at what her father had hurled at Damos.

But Damos’s mouth had merely tightened, his features steeled. There was a sudden hollowing in her stomach. He looked like a stranger to her. His face hard, his eyes harder.

Then Cosmo Palandrou was lurching to his feet as well, his expression ugly. He twisted his head, ignoring both Damos and herself. His focus was entirely on her father, and he was glaring at him with malevolence—a fury that contorted his ill-favoured features.

‘What the hell are you playing at, Andrakis?’ The question was a hiss, like a venomous snake.

She heard Damos’s voice. Cutting across him like a knife. Answering him.

‘Cool it—Andrakis is playing at nothing.’ His voice was dismissive.

Cosmo’s eyes flashed back across the table to Damos. He opened his mouth to speak, but Damos cut in again. His expression was still steeled, and there was a glint in his eyes too, a hardness in their depths.

His mouth twisted, and his voice changed as he spoke again. There was open mockery in it now. ‘Relax. Andrakis’s deal will still be on the table, Cosmo—if you still want to pick it up now, of course.’ He paused, holding the other man’s glaring gaze. ‘ Do you?’ he asked. It was a taunt—open and derisive.

Cosmo Palandrou surged forward across the table, rage in his face, mouthing expletives.

A cry broke from Kassia. What was happening? Dear God, what was happening? Nothing made sense—nothing at all.

Then her father was speaking. More than speaking. He was all but yelling, his features livid. And now it was not directed at Damos. It was coming at her. Right at her. Ugly and vile.

‘Slut! You shameless, whoring slut!’

She gave another cry, horror and disbelief ravening across her face.

Her father’s fisted hands slammed down on the tablecloth. ‘ Thee mou! Cristos! How stupid can you be? Letting yourself be used by this...this...’

He used another word that made Kassia cry out again. But her father was storming on, his face filled with fury.

‘He’s used you—and you’re too cretinously stupid to see it!’

‘Enough!’ Damos’s voice was like a blade, slashing down. ‘You will not speak to her like that!’

Her father’s fury turned on him. ‘I will speak to my whore of a daughter any way I want! The whore you’ve made of her!’

His lashing fury moved back to Kassia, his face enraged and twisting.

‘You stupid, gullible, brainless idiot! You stand there, looking like the tart he’s made of you... But do you really think that Damos Kallinikos would have looked twice at you if you hadn’t been my daughter?’ His scorn lashed at her. ‘He wouldn’t have given you the time of day, let alone warmed his bed with you! He’s used you—made a whore of you—to get at me. Just to get at me! Attack me! Do you understand that? You imbecilic, whoring slut—’

She broke away from him, stumbling. A nightmare was enveloping her. She saw glass doors, staggered towards them blindly, hearing voices, harsh and ugly and raging, behind her. Her father’s, Cosmo’s—and Damos’s too. Slicing through the air.

She had to silence them.

But they could not be silenced. How could they?

She reached the glass doors, pushed them open, plunged forward. She was out on some kind of paved terrace, set with tables. There were a few diners only, for the evening had turned chilly. The roof garden stretched beyond, framing the distant Parthenon, illuminated as it always was by night.

A path to the right opened up between high bushes and she stumbled along it, her ankles turning in her high heels. There was a voice behind her—urgent, calling her name. She reached a little clearing set with benches and lit with ornamental lanterns. Several more paths opened up. She paused, catching her broken breath, desperate still to get away...just get away...

‘Kassia!’

Damos strode up to her. In the dim light his face looked stark. Like a stranger’s.

But he was a stranger—a complete stranger—someone she had never known...

Till now. Till this nightmare.

He tried to reach for her arm, but she jerked away.

‘Get away from me!’

His eyes flared. ‘Kassia—I have to speak to you.’

‘Get away from me!’ she cried again.

She tried to plunge forward again, down a path—any path. Any path that would take her away from this nightmare. But she felt her arm taken in a grip she could not shake.

‘Kassia, listen— listen !’

‘To what? What else is there for me to hear? My father has said it all!’

Damos swore. Vehement and vicious.

‘Your father is a brute! Don’t take any notice of him—he isn’t worth it!’

She rounded on him. ‘And you? Are you worth anything more? Are you? Because what the hell was going on in there? What is all this about ? Why is Cosmo Palandrou here? Why did you say my father’s deal would still be on the table for him if he wanted it? What deal? And why... why did my father say those things about me? Those hideous, hideous things!’

The words, the questions, tumbled from her, anguished and uncomprehending. She was caught in this nightmare. She’d been catapulted into it. Her heart was pounding—she could feel it—and there was nausea inside her, rising up. She stared at Damos, still hearing her father’s vile denunciation ringing in her ears.

Desperate denial filled her.

It’s not true, it’s not true!

‘Damos, why ?’ she cried again.

Her eyes clung to his, but there was something wrong about them...something wrong in his face, in its starkness, in the tightness of his mouth, the set of his jaw.

A sudden fear went through her.

Damos was speaking, answering her. His voice was as tight as his expression.

‘There is no good way to tell you this, Kassia—and I wish to God you’d never had to know! I never intended you to. But Cosmo Palandrou was there tonight because your father wants you to marry him,’ Damos bit out, his face stark and grim. He gave a harsh, short laugh, bereft of humour, and his breath incised sharply. ‘Make that wanted you to marry him.’

Kassia was staring at Damos. There was still something wrong with his face—but then there was something wrong with the universe right now. Something hideously wrong...

‘Marry Cosmo?’ she said. Her voice was hollow, her eyes uncomprehending.

‘Yes,’ Damos said grimly. ‘Look, I have to explain...’

She heard him incise his breath again, as if forcing himself to speak, and when he did constraint tightened every word.

‘Your father is after Cosmo’s company. Cosmo’s playing hardball and holding out for more. So...’ His breath knifed again. ‘Your father was going to throw you into play. Offer Cosmo the role of his son-in-law.’ His voice changed. ‘Kassia, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that he said such things to you! I never—’

She raised her hand to stop him. What Damos had just told her about Cosmo Palandrou could not be true! It couldn’t be! Her father couldn’t possibly want what Damos said. And yet...

Why else would Cosmo Palandrou be here this evening?

The hollow inside her became suddenly a yawning chasm, And why else had her father been so angry to see her with Damos? So angry with Damos?

‘He called me those vile things because you were with me,’ she said blankly. ‘But why?’ Her words were suddenly as heavy as stones. ‘Why was he saying...saying that you...you were only interested in me because I’m his daughter? And why was he so angry with you ...?’

Damos’s face was stark, his features like granite. She saw him take a breath—brief and harsh.

‘Because,’ he said tightly, his mouth set—as if, she thought suddenly, he did not want to speak but was making himself do so, ‘your father is not the only party interested in acquiring Cosmo Palandrou’s company.’

Kassia heard his words. And as she did so a wheel started to turn very slowly somewhere in the recesses of her shattered mind.

‘You,’ she said. Her voice was empty.

He nodded. There was still that closed expression on his face, the same tightness in his voice and in the set of his mouth.

‘Yes. I intend to acquire Cosmo’s freight and logistics business,’ he said. ‘So I don’t want him selling to your father—’

She cut across him. ‘You knew Cosmo Palandrou would be here this evening, didn’t you?’ Her voice was still empty. ‘You wanted to turn up with me— didn’t you ? So that he would see us together. So my father would see us...see us and know—’ She broke off.

That same closed, stark look was in Damos’s face.

‘Yes,’ he said. His hand tightened on her arm. ‘Kassia, all I wanted was for your father and Cosmo to know about us. Then your father’s scheme would collapse on the spot and we could just walk away. I never thought your father would react like that! Would say such things to his own daughter!’

The vile words her father had thrown at her were still slicing through her, each one drawing blood.

‘My father does not take opposition well,’ she heard herself say, her tone expressionless. ‘And his temper,’ she said, ‘is very short.’

But that wheel in her head was still moving forward, slowly and agonisingly. Taking her to a place she did not want to go. A place she would have given all she possessed not to be taken to. But those words that her father had hurled at her, so vile and ugly, were taking her there.

She heard them again now, incising across her consciousness as if with sharpest knife.

‘Do you really think Damos Kallinikos would have looked twice at you if you hadn’t been my daughter? He’s used you—’

Carefully, very carefully, she lifted Damos’s hand off her arm and took a step back. The air felt thick, like the toxic air of a distant planet. The planet that she was now on. A million light years from all she had known. Had thought she knew...

‘Tell me something,’ she said, and she thought there was something wrong with her voice, as well as with the air she was breathing. It was starting to suffocate her. ‘When did decide you wanted Cosmo’s company? And when did you learn of my father’s charming plans for me?’ She stopped, trying to take another breath, but the toxic air was in her throat now, and it was suffocating her.

She forced herself on. Forced herself to ask the final question. The question she would have given everything not to ask, but must. Must...

‘Was it before you showed up at the dig?’

He did not answer. His face had closed.

She let her eyes rest on him. On Damos. On the man who was not Damos. Not the man she’d just spent the three most wonderful weeks of her life with. Three weeks which had transformed her life. Transformed her ...

Into a fool...a gullible, cretinous idiot.

Her father’s vicious, excoriating, scathing castigation rang pitilessly in her ears. And more words too.

‘Whore! Slut—shameless slut!’

She wanted to silence them, but it was impossible...impossible. Oh, dear God. To think she had wanted her father to see that she was no longer the crushed, dowdy daughter he’d always condemned her as being! To think that she’d thought her glamorous new look would achieve that...her fabulous transformation into a woman that any man might desire...

That Damos might desire.

A cry rose up in her from very deep, excoriating her.

Fool—oh, fool! It was never about you—never. Not for a single moment! It was only about—

‘You knew,’ she said, never taking her eyes from him though each word was like a scalpel on her skin. ‘You knew that Cosmo Palandrou would not want to...to marry me if I had already—’ She swallowed, and it was as if that scalpel was peeling the skin from inside her throat. ‘If I had already, as my father so succinctly put it, “warmed your bed...” ’

She fell silent. What else was there to say? What else could ever be said?

Except the word that fell from Damos’s lips now.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She turned away.

She felt her arm seized, heard words breaking from Damos.

‘Kassia—listen...listen to me! Please! It wasn’t...isn’t...’

She gave another cry, yanking her arm free, plunging down a path on feet that were stumbling, desperate.

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 the ma?tre 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—he must .

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 my whore of 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’t ever call 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.

There was no trace of her.

Over the following days there was no trace of her at her workplace either—and Dr Michaelis had been reserved in the extreme when Damos had finally badgered someone sufficiently to get him to speak to him directly. He had informed him, stiltedly, that Kassia had taken indefinite leave.

Damos’s next attempt had been at her mother’s house. The housekeeper there had been equally reserved. No, her employer’s daughter was not there. She had no knowledge of her whereabouts, and she could not give out any information on where her mother was at the moment. She believed she was no longer in Spain, but would not take it upon herself to say when she might be returning to the UK.

Frustration bit through Damos.

More than frustration. Worse.

Desperation.