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‘Momentous occasions are highly anticipated and satisfactorily celebrated. You’d have to be delusional or deliberately blind to imagine I’m in such a state, Calypso Petras.’
The way he said my name, with drawling, mocking intonation, fired my blood. Along with other sensations I couldn’t quite name.
‘It’s Calypso Xenakis now—or have you already forgotten?’ I fired back, taking secret pleasure in seeing the irritated flare of his nostrils.
‘I have not forgotten,’ he answered with taut iciness.
‘If this is such an ordeal for you, then why all this?’ I waved my hand at the obscenely lavish banquet displayed along one long wall, the champagne tower brimming with expensive golden bubbles, the caviar-laden trays being circulated, and the designer-clad guests, shamelessly indulging their appetites.
‘Because your father insisted,’ he replied, his voice colder than an arctic vortex. ‘As you well know.’
I opened my mouth to tell him for once and for all that none of this made sense to me because no one had bothered to consult me about my own wedding.
The sight of my mother’s face, staring at me from one table away, pain and misery etched beneath her smile, dried the words in my throat.
For whatever reason fate had tangled the Xenakises and the Petrases in an acrimonious weave and my mother and I were caught in the middle. I could no more extricate myself than I could turn my back on her.
A tiny, tortured sound whistled through the air and I realised it came from my own throat—a manifestation of that hysteria that just wouldn’t die down. I stood abruptly, knowing I had to get away before I did something regrettable.
Like climb on top of the lavishly decorated lonely high table, set apart from everyone else to showcase the newly married couple in all their glory, and scream at the top of my lungs.
That just wouldn’t do. Because while I might have acquired a new surname, it was dawning on me that until I learned the true nature of what I was embroiled in I would be wise to keep a firm hold of my feelings.
And an even firmer hold of my wits.
CHAPTER TWO
MONEY MAKES THE world spin.
I swallowed my champagne, careful not to choke on it as I dispassionately observed the guests indulging in the revelry of my sham of a wedding.
Money had made this happen, and in the exact time frame I’d requested it.
Money had put that smug smile on Yiannis Petras’s face.
Money had made the family, decimated by my grandfather’s fall from grace, rally together for the sake of enjoying the rejuvenated fruits of my labour.
I’d seen first-hand how the lack of it could cause backbiting and untold strain. Ostensibly solid marriages crumbled under the threat of diminished wealth and influence. I’d seen it in my parents’ marriage. It was why I’d never have freely chosen this route for myself.
My gaze shifted to my brand-new wife.
Had money influenced her agreement to this fiasco?
Was she getting a cut of the hundred million euros?
Of course she was. Had she not proclaimed herself a true Petras?
For those seconds as she’d hesitated at the altar I’d entertained the notion that she shared my reluctance, had imagined the merest hint of resistance in her eyes.
Her words had put me straight.
A cursory investigation had revealed that while she’d graduated from Skypos University with a major in Arts, she’d done nothing with her degree for the last two years. Her father’s daughter through and through, sitting back and taking the easy route to riches.
So what if outwardly she wasn’t what I expected?
I snorted under my breath at this colossal understatement. Calypso Petras...ochi, make that Calypso Xenakis...was beyond a surprise. She was a punch to my solar plexus, one it was taking an irritatingly long time to wrestle under control.
Even now my senses still reeled from what I’d uncovered beneath her veil. She was far from the drab little mouse I’d assumed.
