‘No.’
‘No?’
‘There will be no divorce.’ His lips lifted to bare his teeth. ‘I am Konstantinos Ariti, your husband, and you will return tome. Youwill repair the damage you have done to my reputation. You will show them you are safe. You will show them I did not abandon my duty. You will show them I am the man who protects his own when they are weak—when they are sick. You will show them all you are alive.’
Confusion contorted her face. It was his ethos—to protect his people. It was what he wanted the world to see, even if it was a lie, but—
‘Show who?’
‘The press,’ he enlightened her.
She blinked rapidly. ‘The press?’
She hadn’t read a newspaper—looked online—in so long. Not since the photo of her standing on the cliff’s edge looking into the sea after the funeral.
She wasn’t going to jump.
She’d just wanted…
She didn’t know.
Standing up there, she’d understood why the monks had chosen the so very difficult to reach island of Sotiría to search for their sacred solitude. She’d understood why Konstantinos had renovated the abandoned white brick monastery to become their home.
It stood centrally within the green land mass, but hermitages—simple three-walled structures—were scattered throughout the island for when the monks had sat with nothing but themselves and the island for contemplation. And she’d stood there outside of the three-columned walls of the one at the top, overlooking all of Sotiría.
The stillness…never had she known anything so absent of chatter. But the island sang with a different noise. The pine-covered cliffs, the white sands contrasting with the crystal-blue sea, they’d all hummed. But she’d felt nothing. Not the wind throwing her hair into her face or plastering the thin cotton of her dress to her body. She hadn’t recognised the danger of the incoming storm or how close her bare feet had come to the edge.
She had just felt…empty.
But their headlines had been cutting alongside the stolen image of her standing there…
‘Youwill show them you are, and always have been, safe, and are my devoted wife,’ he said, jolting her back from the cliff’s edge.
‘You want me to lie to them?’
‘Yes,’ he husked, his chest rising and deflating in short, powerful pumps of his lungs.
‘You want me to make them think we’re still together? Pretend nothing’s happened?’ She swallowed. ‘Foryourreputation?’
‘Yes.’ He stepped closer. ‘I had planned to spend some time in Paris,’ he continued, ‘to rejoin society after the takeover of Léon’s organisation, to change the narrative expressed daily online, in the papers, but nowyouwill change it for me. We will implement a PR campaign of you attending chosen events.Thiswill correct the headlines that you are hidden somewhere on the island because I have let you fall into despair. You will show them that all you needed was time, but you are back,stronger, by my side,’ he snarled. ‘And you will start tomorrow, when we attend the première ofIncapable de Voler.’
‘You want me to attend…’ she frowned in disbelief ‘…a play?’
‘Ballet opera at the Palais Garnier,’ he corrected. ‘A small select group will be in attendance. Important dignitaries. Celebrities. And…us.’
‘I can’t.’ Panic flared in her chest. ‘The press will be there in droves.’
‘That is whywewill be there.’
She could imagine the cold and callous headlines aboutthem.The articles ripping their marriage apart with horrible assumptions about her disappearance from public life. But she didn’t want to be part of their daily harassment schedule again.Ever.
‘I can’t do it.’
‘And why not,poulaki mou?’
‘Because too much has happened to paint on a smile and—’ she heaved in a heavy breath ‘—pretend everything is okay. It isn’t!’
‘You married me to help my image,’ he reminded her. ‘Youwill remain married to me to fix it.’
