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She knew his anger was a defence mechanism but it still stung. ‘It’s nearly midnight, Antonios.’
‘I have a lot going on at the moment.’
She took a step into the room, glanced at the computer screen that had been left up, with its many columns of numbers. ‘What are you doing?’
He slammed down the lid of his laptop. ‘Don’t. Don’t look at that.’
Lindsay felt herself go cold at the implacable note in his voice. ‘Why not?’ she asked as reasonably as she could. ‘It’s only numbers.’
‘And you’re so good at numbers,’ Antonios shot back.
Lindsay jerked back at the sneer in his voice. ‘Antonios, what is going on? Why are you acting this way, hiding—’
‘I’m not hiding,’ he returned in a near roar. ‘Theos, Lindsay, just let me be.’ He rose from his chair, pacing the room like a caged lion, one hand clenching in his hair. He looked, Lindsay thought, like a man in torment.
‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ she said quietly. ‘And I think I need to.’
Antonios didn’t even turn around. ‘Trust me, you don’t.’
‘Does this have to do with Leonidas?’ Antonios didn’t answer and, filled with frustration, Lindsay walked up to him, put her hands on his taut back. ‘Damn it, Antonios, stop hiding things from me. You’re making a double standard for our marriage and it’s not fair.’
‘Don’t talk to me about what’s fair,’ Antonios answered bleakly, and she shook her head.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I don’t want you to understand.’ He turned around, clasping her cold hands in his. ‘Lindsay, you’re right. I am hiding something from you, but I have to.’ Anguish lit his eyes and twisted his features. ‘Please believe me. This has nothing to do with you, with us. It’s just business. Naturally, there are some confidential matters I can’t discuss—’
‘Confidential matters that are tearing you apart, making you look haunted?’ Lindsay finished. ‘Making you seem like someone else entirely. Antonios, you’re wrong. This has everything to do with us.’ She stared at him, watched as his mouth thinned and his eyes hardened. She knew he wouldn’t tell her anything now.
Wordlessly, she slipped her hands from his and walked from the room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANTONIOS LISTENED TO the front door of the office close and with a groan he sank back in his chair, raking his hands through his hair. Theos, what had he been about to do?
He flipped up the screen of the laptop and watched as the financial figures of Marakaios Enterprises filled the screen. Figures he’d been contemplating doctoring to hide his father’s shame—and add to his own. He couldn’t believe he’d been contemplating doing something illegal for his father, or at least his father’s memory. His father had done his fair share of tinkering with numbers, and Antonios had felt nothing but a sickening disdain. Yet now he’d been about to do the same thing.
He rose from his chair and restlessly paced the length of his office. He felt a need to escape not just the confines of the room, but of his life. Of the promise he’d made to his father, and the shackle Marakaios Enterprises had become to him.
He’d alienated his brother by hiding the truth of his father’s actions, and now he’d done the same to Lindsay. He groaned aloud, shaking his head. Somehow this had to stop before it was too late. But maybe it was too late already.
A little after two in the morning Antonios headed back to the villa. Lindsay was already asleep, curled on her side, her knees tucked up to her chest like a child’s. Antonios doubted he’d be able to sleep. It had eluded him most nights these last few weeks. Leonidas was barely talking to him, and the tension in the office was palpable, not just to him but to all the staff. And he still didn’t know what to do.
He was still staring gritty-eyed at the ceiling when, an hour later, a light yet urgent tapping at the door of the bedroom had every sense springing to alert. Antonios rose from the bed, careful not to disturb Lindsay, and went to answer the door.
‘Xanthe—’
‘Antonios, it’s Mama.’ His sister’s face was pale and pinched, tears shining in her eyes. Antonios felt as if his heart had stilled for a moment before beginning to thud with hard, painful beats.
‘What has happened?’
‘She woke up in the night, moaning and in pain. Maria has called the doctor. But she seems...it seems...’ Xanthe couldn’t go on, tears spilling down her cheeks, and Antonios hugged her briefly, murmuring meaningless words of consolation before he strode down the corridor.
His mother’s room was lit only by a bedside lamp and its pale glow threw her features into shocking relief. Antonios knew his mother had been getting more tired and frail in the last few weeks, but the reality of it and her illness hit him now with painful force. The skin of her face was drawn tightly over her bones and she lay back on the pillows, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.
Swallowing hard, Antonios approached the bed and perched carefully on its edge. ‘Yeia sou, Mama,’ he said softly.
Daphne’s eyelids fluttered but that was all. Antonios felt a swooping sensation in his chest, like missing a step. He reached for her hand, noticing how thin her wrist had become, her fingers claw-like. He didn’t know what to say; everything felt like a platitude or a lie, so he just held her hand.
After a few minutes the doctor arrived and Antonios stood up, watching as the man checked his mother over, took her pulse and blood pressure.
‘Well?’ he bit out when he could stand it no longer.
Spiros Tallos straightened slowly and turned to face him. The older man had been the family doctor for two generations; he had set Antonios’s leg when he’d broken it, falling out of a tree when he was six.
‘She’s dying, Antonios,’ Spiro said gently. ‘But we all knew that.’
‘She has not been like this before,’ Antonios answered, his voice terse.
‘She is closer to the end.’
Everything in him roared in denial. ‘How long?’
‘It is impossible to say.’
‘Guess,’ Antonios snapped, and Spiros sighed sadly.
‘It could be days, or it could be weeks. There will be good days and bad days, but continued decline.’ He gave a little shrug, spreading his hands. ‘I am sorry.’
Antonios turned away so the doctor would not see the naked grief on his face; he felt the burn of tears behind his lids and blinked them away rapidly. ‘Thank you,’ he finally said, when he trusted himself to speak. He cleared his throat. ‘Can you...is there anything you can give her, for pain relief?’
‘Of course,’ Spiros said, and turned back to Daphne. Antonios turned to Xanthe, who was crying quietly. Wordlessly, he drew her into a hug and Xanthe took a shuddering breath, her cheek pressed against her shoulder.
‘I know it shouldn’t be a shock,’ she whispered haltingly, ‘but it is.’
Yes, it was. A terrible shock, a grim reality. Antonios closed his eyes, wished Lindsay were here with him. He longed for her quiet, comforting presence, the steadiness and strength he’d always appreciated in her. And yet he didn’t want to have to tell her how Daphne had declined.
‘Antonios.’
Xanthe jerked out of his arms and he hurried to his mother’s bedside. ‘Mama...’
‘I want...’ Daphne swallowed convulsively, her breath coming in shudders and gasps. Xanthe pressed a fist to her lips and Antonios took his mother’s hand.
‘Don’t speak, it’s too much for you now—’
She shook her head, the movement violent. ‘I want...Leonidas,’ she finally managed.
‘I’ll get him,’ Xanthe offered and Antonios nodded his thanks.
Ten taut minutes later Leonidas was striding into the room, his hair dishevelled, his shirt untucked from the jeans he’d hastily put on before coming from his own villa to here.
His gaze snapped to Antonios and then back to his mother and, without a word of greeting for his brother, he sat on the opposite side of the bed and took his mother’s other hand.
‘Mama.’
Antonios began to rise. ‘I’ll go,’ he murmured. ‘You can have privacy...’
Daphne shook her head again. ‘No. The two of you here. That is what I want. Together.’ Neither Antonios nor Leonidas spoke and with effort Daphne drew her hands together so their hands, clasped in hers, were touching.
‘There is too much pain and bitterness between you,’ she said, her words coming slowly, her breathing laboured. ‘You must make peace with each other now, before it is too late.’ A tear snaked its way down her withered cheek. ‘Before I am gone.’
Leonidas’s hand twitched against Antonios’s. They were both, he suspected, itching to pull their hands away, yet they wouldn’t for the sake of their mother.
‘We’re fine, Mama,’ Leonidas said placatingly, and Antonios’s mouth tightened. Fine. He was beginning to hate that word. They were not fine. Lindsay had not been fine. In that moment, nothing, about anything, felt fine.
Daphne must have agreed for she shook her head, her hands tightening on her sons’. ‘No,’ she rasped. ‘You have been angry and bitter with Antonios for too many years, Leonidas. It must stop now.’
