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MY SON.
I have a son.
My chest squeezed tight. The emotions tumbling through me were...indescribable.
Back on Bora Bora everything inside me had prompted me to accept Calypso at her word—accept that the child was mine. Only I’d made the mistake before of thinking I could manage her, that she was a victim when she was anything but. She was cunning. Intelligent and resourceful enough to disappear without a trace for a whole year.
And apparently to take what is mine with her.
The result of the paternity test spelled out in stark indelible ink confirmed that, in this at least, Calypso had spoken the truth. But swiftly on the heels of that knowledge came a mystifying mix of searing fury and heady delight—the former for what I’d been deprived of and the latter for the astounding gift I hadn’t even realised I wanted.
My son.
She kept him from me. Deliberately. Chose to leave my home and have my baby on her own, with no care as to what my feelings were in the matter. Why? Because I’d left her on Agistros? In the lap of the kind of luxury most people only dreamed about?
But did you give her any choice?
I swallowed the bite of guilt as my eyes locked on the paper.
Andreos.
Even as a part of my brain tested the name out and accepted that it fitted him my fingers were shaking with the enormity of everything I’d missed. Things I’d never have thought would matter suddenly assumed colossal importance.
His first cry.
His first smile.
His first laugh...
Did babies his age laugh? I’d been robbed of the opportunity to find out for myself.
I tossed the document away and stood. Sudden weakness in my legs stopped me from moving. One hand braced on the polished wood surface, I sucked in a deep breath, attempted to bring myself under control.
Control was essential. Over my erratic emotions. Over my wayward wife and over the belief that she should take such actions without consequence. To deprive me of my own flesh and blood...
Why?
The deeply visceral need to know straightened my spine.
I found her in the smallest living room—the room farthest from my study and the one she seemed to have commandeered for herself and Andreos since her return. He lay on a mat on the floor, his fists and legs pumping with abandon as Calypso crouched over him. A few toys were strewn nearby, momentarily forgotten as mother and son indulged in a staring game of some sort. One that amused Andreos...my son.
So babies his age did smile. They also returned their mother’s stare with rapt attention until they were tickled, then dissolved into heaps of laughter.
Something stirred raw and powerful within me as I stared into the eyes that had seemed familiar to me from the start, even as I cautioned myself against full acceptance. The feeling intensified as I watched Calypso’s utter devotion, saw the bond between mother and son, the unit I’d been excluded from.
The unit I wanted to belong to—
Sensing my presence, Calypso’s gaze flew to mine, then immediately shadowed.
Theos mou, was I really that frightful?
‘You can be.’
I dismissed the uncanny sound of Neo’s voice in my head.
Too bad. I’d given her four days to settle in. Four days of swimming in the uncharted waters of her re-entry into my life with a son...my son...in tow.
It took me but a moment to summon Sophia, one of several household staff who’d been infatuated with Andreos since his arrival.
