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‘Answer the phone, Sage.’ He plucked her handbag off the floor and held it out to her. His implacable expression told her he would accept nothing but her compliance.
With shaking fingers, she took it.
He didn’t move away, completely disregarding her personal space. The harsh gleam in his eyes warned her of the consequences of her next move. On the fourth ring, she took the phone out of her bag.
Could she do it? Could she blatantly mislead her brother?
She shook her head.
‘You’re doing it for his own good. Let that be your reassurance,’ Xandro rasped, as if he’d read her thoughts.
‘I hate you for this.’
A look passed through his eyes. One that almost hinted at regret. Then his face hardened again. ‘I only want back what’s mine.’
In that moment, she knew he would go to the ends of the earth itself for it.
Knowing her every choice was gone, she swiped her finger across the screen. ‘Ben?’
‘Sage?’
‘Ben, where are you—?’
‘Is it true?’ His voice was gruff with barely held-in anger. ‘Are you in Greece with that bastard?’
A furtive glance showed Xandro had heard the slur. His jaw tightened but he didn’t move.
‘Did you take his money?’
A terse silence greeted the question that even now, with the evidence mounted against him, she hoped he would deny.
‘What if I did? It’s nothing more than a man like him deserves. He struts around like he owns the whole world. Outsmarting him like I did was just the reality check he needed.’
Sage closed her eyes, bitterness and disappointment fighting for supremacy inside her. With no ground to stand on in his defence, her vocal cords stopped working. For a moment, she toyed with the idea of hanging up, burying her head in the sand and pretending none of this was happening.
‘Sage,’ Xandro rasped warningly, again proving he had a disturbing insight into her thoughts.
Ben inhaled sharply. ‘Is that him? What the press are saying is true, isn’t it? He bought Hunter’s and he’s there with you?’
‘Yes.’
Her brother cursed viciously. ‘Guys like him treat women like dirt. He’s not worthy of breathing the same air as you. You need to get away from him, Sage.’
Xandro’s gaze trapped hers, forcing her to make the only response available to her. ‘I...can’t—’
‘Of course you can. Call the police. Tell them he’s kidnapped you. Let them haul him to jail! Give him a taste of what the real world feels like.’
‘He didn’t kidnap me, Ben. I came here of my own free will.’
‘But he tricked you, didn’t he?’ Ben insisted. ‘He bought the dance company and tricked you into going to his damn island. How else did you end up there?’
Her hand tightened on the phone. ‘Ben, why are you doing this? All he wants is his stuff back. You need to—’
‘That’s not all he wants. Anyway, he’s not going to get it back! I don’t know what the big deal is anyway. What I took is peanuts to him. He’s worth billions.’
‘You took something that’s important to him,’ she said. Again she saw the look that passed through Xandro’s eyes at her words.
‘What? The trinkets he gives to his women when he’s done with them to shut them up? He orders them by the dozen from the jeweller in his casino. Did he tell you that?’ he snarled. ‘I bet he didn’t.’
