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Chloe jerked around in her chair to look at Ariston in shock. “What’s he talking about?”
Takis stood. “I will leave you two to talk.”
“Thank you, Pappous,” Ariston said, sounding anything but grateful.
Chloe was just confused. “I don’t understand.”
“The fact your father’s company was on the brink of bankruptcy was not all down to his antiquated views on business.”
“You’re saying you engineered the downfall of Dioletis Industries?” she asked, shock coursing through her.
“With the help of your father’s poor financial choices and my grandfather, though I did not know it, yes.”
“Why?”
“It was necessary.”
“To get revenge against me … or my father?”
Ariston had said he’d been livid about her not sticking to the intent of their contract. And he had to have been beyond furious that she’d walked out on him, though he’d never come right out and said so. But he’d never even hinted he’d been angry enough to bankrupt a company because of it.
“No.”
She ignored his denial. “Was convincing me to marry you again part of your revenge plot? Once our children are born, are you going to manufacture evidence of my infidelity and take them from me?”
“Don’t start imagining scenarios that have no basis in reality,” he said on a teasing note.
“This isn’t funny.” She jumped up from the table, looking wildly around, but seeing no means of escape.
Oh, she could leave the terrace, but she couldn’t run from what she’d heard.
“No, it is not. There. Is. No. Revenge. Plot.” He spoke slowly, emphasizing each word.
But she wasn’t having any of it. “Don’t lie to me. You just as good as admitted to it and your grandfather was honest at least about punishing my father.”
“Pappous had his own reasons for doing what he did. Mine were very different.”
She wanted to believe him, but couldn’t fathom how his words could be true. “What were they?”
“To bring you back into my bed, back into my life.”
“You tore down a company just to get me back into your bed? That’s insane.”
“I do not do things on a small scale.” He was still in his seat, but his entire body seemed to vibrate with tension. “And perhaps in the beginning, revenge played a role in what I wanted—but my revenge was not to hurt you. It was to get you back where you belonged. With me.”
Could she believe him? “You’re every bit as bad as my father. Maybe worse.”
Ariston was up from the table faster than light and coming to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Do not say that. It is not true.”
“Really? What would have happened to all those employees you used to manipulate me back into marriage if I had never come to you, if I’d refused?”
“I would have come to you, if I had to.”
“And if I’d refused?”
“You weren’t going to.”
“You couldn’t know that.”
“You are here, aren’t you?” he practically shouted. “I am no fool. I think my plans out carefully before taking action.”
“But even you cannot predict every outcome. And let’s be honest … if I’d refused, you wouldn’t have been too broken up about the dissolution of Dioletis Industries.”
“I would have been broken up all right.” His tone was sincere, his expression grim.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted. If it really was all about getting her back … “Why not just come to Oregon and just ask me out?”
His arrested expression said the thought had not even occurred to him. Her brilliant business tycoon had overlooked the most obvious and easiest course of action. Why?
She stared up at him. “Does the word overkill mean anything to you?”
“I needed to be sure of my success.”
“Why was it so important? Your grandfather,” she guessed.
But even as much as Ariston cared for the old man, she still couldn’t imagine him going to such lengths just to please him.
“No. It was not about Pappous, though I tried to tell myself he was my reason for needing to get you back so badly.”
“He wasn’t?” she asked, hope warring with terror at being disappointed again inside her.
“No.”
“Why, then?”
“I was thirteen when my father divorced his third wife so he could marry a woman he claimed to love. That wife had been the most decent of all his conquests. She cared about my father, she cared about his family … Pappous … me. She tried to kill herself and I found her, blood all over the bathroom.”
