“Lefteris, I’m sorry. I do not feel comfortable asking for money from the man I’m seeing at this time. I suppose if he offered of his own accord, I would not shut him down. I would send him to come discuss it with you. But I cannot… I have to have some integrity.”
“I could ask—”
“No,” Ari said firmly, getting to her feet. The thought of anyone going to Zervou on her behalf and asking made her feel a kind of shame she didn’t fully understand and didn’t want to. “I need you to let this be. To go on with my fights, my opportunities as we always have. It is important to me.”
He scowled. “Integrity doesn’t always pay off, Ari. In fact, it often does the opposite.”
Ari thought that over. She couldn’t argue with it. God knew, she might be in a better position if she had a little less integrity. She could have gotten herself involved in whatever criminal activity her father was wrapped up in that gave him money and power and influence, even if he had to scuttle behind closed doors and alleys and whatever hiding spots he currently resided in.
But she would not be her father.
“I have scrabbled. I have struggled. But I have maintained who I am at many a cost. If I lose that, I have nothing. I am nothing. So, no. I will not risk what no one can take from me.”
He grunted, acquiescing even if he wasn’t happy about it.
Relief swamped her, making her muscles feel shaky. Still, she rose. Still, she told him what she needed to. “I will be away next week. You will have to have Daphne take my classes. She’s ready, and it will be good for her to have some practice without me looking over her shoulder.”
“You have a fight in two weeks,” Lefteris said, studying her with narrowed eyes. As if, just by looking at her, he could tell whether being away would jeopardize that.
“Yes, I will maintain my own training while I’m away. You know I do not like to lose.”
Again, he made a grunting sound, then leaned forward with that same narrowed-eyed gaze. “You aren’t planning on quitting, are you? Retiring to settle down and what not?”
Ari snorted, even as something like panic bumped around in her chest. Quit? And then who would she be? “Don’t be ridiculous.”
But Lefteris only made a dismissive kind of noise and waved her away.
She left the office, tension in her shoulders. Quit? Retire? What would she do without boxing? It was almost unfathomable…
Almost.
Because if she walked away from this fake relationship with Zervou with a decent amount of money…was retiring a possibility? She’d never even considered it before now, but Lefteris had put it in her head. Did she want that possibility?
The terrible thing was…she didn’t know.
Chapter Eleven
Zervou spent hisday working on the Erjon dilemma. Where was the weasel? He should at least be sending someone traceable to watch Ariadne by now.
Ari.
Friends.
His mind kept returning to that one crystalized moment. Her, wrapped in a sheet, calling them friendsafter a fashion. The morning light burnishing her skin gold.
Such a small moment. Such a nothing moment. And yet it lodged there like the root of a weed—he could not pull it out completely, so it just stuck there, deep in the recesses of his mind.
And he didn’t know what to do with it, because it wasn’t a problem to be solved. It was simply a moment. What did one do with a moment?
It wasn’t like his father dying in front of him. Not like his mother’s wails as the life drained out of the man she loved. No, even though those were moments he’d never quite eradicated from his mind, they had come with action items. When people died, there were things to do.
When a woman simply asked him to call her by a shortened name, called them friendsafter a fashion, there was nothing to do.
Except hunt down her father. Lure him out into the light so he could spend the rest of his life in jail. Then Zervou andAricould go their separate ways and whatever this strange…blip was could go with her. Whether she accepted all his help with a positive attitude or that wary distrust, she would still leave him better than she’d been. She would not be able to deny or negate his help.
Andthatwas a positive.
A knock sounded on his office door, and when he offered a “come in,” Bacchus entered.
