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This was no way to live. This was not a healthy marriage. Damen was destroying her but Kassiani had been through too much to just wither away and die. Her survival instinct was too strong. She had too much of the fighting Greek spirit to just self-destruct without trying to save herself.
On Adras she’d told Damen that he needed help, but maybe she was the one who needed help. Maybe she was the one who needed a therapist to help her come to terms with her past, so that she could have a future. Right now there was no future.
If she wanted a future, she had to go. She had to leave him. It was the only way. They weren’t good together. They just inflicted pain.
Tears stung her eyes but she drew a slightly deeper breath and felt some of the terrible pressure in her chest ease.
Leaving was the right answer. She needed to go. She needed to return home.
Kassiani sat up and stared out the window to the sea. Clouds obscured the moon but she could see a gleam of light from Adras’s lighthouse on the water and it calmed her.
She wouldn’t go back to her father’s house. She’d find a place of her own. She had money of her own now and she’d use the money to start over in San Francisco and from now on, she would be smarter and braver and more self-aware.
It had been a brutal week, but she would feel better once she was back in California. Damen could initiate the divorce proceedings, citing her for desertion. As long as she was the reason for the marriage failing, the marriage contracts would hold. Damen would retain control over Dukas Shipping. She didn’t feel guilty. Dukas Shipping needed proper management. Dukas Shipping was in shambles, and it’d be far better to have Damen step in and save what he could than allow the family business to end up in bankruptcy.
She didn’t feel sorry for her father, either. He had pursued this relationship with Damen, offering up his daughters as if they were bargaining chips. He’d wanted the merger and the marriage for purely selfish reasons—he didn’t want to be poor. He didn’t want to be a failure. Damen Alexopoulos would save him, and his company, and so he brokered a deal that was a travesty in hindsight.
Elexis hadn’t wanted to marry Damen.
Kassiani had married Damen to earn her father’s approval.
But how could her self-esteem have been so bad that she thought marrying a stranger, much less marrying a man with a reputation like Damen’s, would be a good thing?
She felt stupid and pathetic. But now she’d be wise. She was returning to California smarter and stronger, and more self-aware. She didn’t care what others would say, or think. She didn’t care that people would talk about her, or gossip that she’d gotten divorced just weeks after the wedding. She had tried. She’d truly tried. But she was no match for Damen. She never had been.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS STRANGE being back in California.
She’d been gone only a couple of weeks and yet once back in San Francisco, it felt like months since she’d flown to Athens for Elexis’s May wedding.
Kassiani didn’t even feel like the same person. Maybe because she had married and lost her innocence. Maybe because she’d fallen in love and had her heart broken. Maybe because she missed Damen even though he was not the right man for her.
She knew when Damen was in San Francisco because her father told her. The first time he was in the city, she prepared herself for his visit, getting a blowout to make her hair silky and gleaming, and having another one of those excruciating waxes that left her completely bare down there. She paced her house, anticipating his arrival, hoping he’d come to say he missed her, anticipating his words, wanting desperately to hear him say he’d made a mistake...that he’d made many mistakes...and he was sorry and wanted to try again. He wanted a fresh start.
But Damen never came to her house.
Damen never tried to see her. He didn’t even attempt to contact her.
He did whatever business he needed to do and returned to Athens.
Kassiani was crushed when she discovered Damen had gone, and she hardened her heart so that the next time, four weeks later, when he was back, she didn’t have such high hopes. She still had her hair done, but that was all, and she didn’t walk around in a state of anxious anticipation. But she did hope because she wanted him to miss her because she did miss him.
All she wanted was to hear him say that he’d realized he’d made mistakes and he wanted to try again with her, and then they could discuss the marriage each of them wanted, and how they could meet in the middle.
Or something like that.
But he didn’t see her on his second visit, either.
She wasn’t in town for his third visit or any others. It was deliberate. As August drew to an end, she told herself she no longer wanted to see him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Kassiani prayed the divorce papers would come soon.
* * *
The divorce papers weren’t the only thing she was waiting for.
Her period hadn’t come. In months.
At first, she’d thought she was merely late—it happened a lot with her—and then she thought maybe it was stress that was playing havoc with her system since she’d lost a lot of weight since the wedding, but when the weeks became months and she was fully settled into her lovely house in the Presidio, she couldn’t ignore facts any longer.
Something was wrong. And she suspected she knew what was wrong, and once she took a test and discovered, yes, she was pregnant, her dread turned to horror. Kassiani was so horrified she took the test three times at home before going to a doctor.
She didn’t want to be pregnant. It felt like such a betrayal to even admit such a thing, but being pregnant would change everything. Pregnant, she would be forever tied to Damen.
Pregnant, she’d given him what he wanted, an heir.
He would be happy. It was what dynasties required...children. Another generation to carry on the family name, to continue the legacy.
Even as September drew to a close, she found it hard to wrap her head around the pregnancy. She’d always wanted to be a mother but this wasn’t how she wanted to be a mother.
Single, alone.
Unless she reunited with Damen, but everything in her recoiled at the thought because if they reunited now, it would be only for the child’s sake. Damen had made it clear he didn’t want her, and while being together might be good for the baby, it would destroy her. Her soul would shrivel up into nothing.
During the long nights when Kassiani couldn’t sleep, she didn’t doubt that Damen would be a good father, at least, he’d be a good father until the child was a teenager and began to defy his father. Damen didn’t like being challenged. Damen didn’t like anything that made him feel. Children would make him feel. But there was nothing she could do about that. The baby had been conceived.
Kassiani spent many long, sleepless nights trying to figure out when and how to tell Damen about the pregnancy. Obviously, she would have to tell him. Eventually, he’d need to know and she’d never keep something like this from him, but she had months to go before the baby was born. She was only just entering her second trimester. In clothes you couldn’t even tell she was pregnant, her ripe curves overshadowing everything else.
Still no divorce papers arrived.
Why?
What was he thinking? No contact, no communication, no nothing. What did he want from her? Was he trying to intimidate her, or force her hand? Was this just another power play at his end?
And then suddenly, on the last day of September, he was there, on her doorstep, in a dark suit, looking gorgeous and polished and hard, because Damen Alexopoulos was nothing if not hard.
She was shocked to see him and her legs wobbled but she was never going to let him know he still could rock her world simply by standing in front of her, being himself. It was worse feeling her heart race. How could she still love him so much?
“Are you going to invite me in?” he said quietly.
