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“Katrakis is nothing but trash,” Peter snapped. “Ten years ago he had ideas above his station. He got in over his head in a business deal, and could not handle himself. He lost some money, made some threats.” He shrugged. “I was astounded he ever made anything of himself. I expected him to disappear back into the slime from which he came.”
“Then let me ask you another way,” Tristanne said coldly, Nikos’s words spinning through her head, their whole history flashing past her as if on a cinema screen. “What does he think that you did?”
“I believe he blames me for any number of things,” Peter said dismissively. “He had a rather emotional sister, I believe, who fancied herself in love and then claimed she was pregnant. ” He scoffed, and made a face. “He blamed me when she overdosed on sleeping pills, but his own mother was a known drug user. I rather think blood tells, in the end.” His lip curled. “Look at yours.”
Vivienne made a soft sound, and something ignited inside of Tristanne. She waited to feel the usual wave of shame, of anger, that someone who should love her should find her so disgusting, so worthless. But it never came. All she could think was that this was how her brother chose to speak to her just after she had been left at the altar. This was how he chose to behave. And the worst part was that it was in no way a departure from his usual behavior. He had treated her this way for years—and she had allowed it, because better her than her mother. But why would he stop, now that Gustave was gone? Soon, she had no doubt, he would turn it on her mother directly, and she could not have that.
She had not gone through this, all of this, to watch Peter destroy Vivienne as she knew he wished to do—as he had already tried to do. She did not know how she would survive the next moment, or the next breath, with the vast, impossible pain that ate her from the inside out. She wondered who she was now that it was over, now that Nikos had left her, and how she might ever put the pieces of herself back together. She had no idea what might become of her.
But she was still standing, and maybe that was all that mattered. For as long as she could stand, she could protect her mother. Which was why she was here in the first place.
“You are a monster,” she said softly, but distinctly, to Peter. “I do not think there is a shred of humanity within you. Not one shred.”
Peter moved closer, his face set into a scowl. Yet Tristanne did not step away. Or shrink back. After all, what could he do to her that Nikos had not already done? Threaten her? Bruise her? Why should she care? The worst had already happened. She was a fool in the eyes of the world, and worse, she was in love with the man who had abandoned her. She had no idea how she would ever get past this. She had no idea where she would start. How could Peter possibly compete?
“You had better watch yourself, sister,” he hissed, his voice menacing.
It was the word sister that rang in her, then. That ricocheted inside of her and made her realize that he had never honored that term, not even when they were children. At least her father, for all that he had been cold and dismissive, had performed his fatherly duties. He had fed her, clothed her, paid for her schooling until he no longer felt he could support her choices. And perhaps Nikos had been right to make her question the appropriateness of those choices. It had hurt her at the time that Gustave could not be more supportive of her—but then, that was not at all who Gustave Barbery had been. He might not have been the best father she could have hoped for, but at least he had been a father.
What had Peter ever done? Tristanne, who had never asked him for anything, had asked him for access to her trust fund a few years early and what was his response? To whore her out at his command, for his purposes. And now, in the worst moment of her life, abandoned at the altar on her wedding day—still wearing her wedding dress—he behaved liked this. If she could have felt something beyond the agony of Nikos’s betrayal, she might have felt sick.
“I am not your sister,” she told him, feeling more free in that moment than ever before. “I don’t know why I ever cared to honor the relationship when you, clearly, do not. Consider it ended.”
“How dare you—” he began.
She turned her back on him, and looked wildly around, her gaze landing on her mother. Beautiful, vibrant Vivienne, so diminished now. So delicate. She was the only family Tristanne had ever had. The only thing worth protecting. And she was worth this, Tristanne told herself fiercely. Her mother was worth any price, no matter how heavy.
“Mother,” she said, her voice rough enough to be a stranger’s. But then, she felt like a stranger to herself, almost as if she inhabited someone else’s body. A body Nikos would never love again, never taste again; a body that would never melt into his—she shook the thoughts away, and bit back the sob that threatened to spill out. “I must change out of these clothes, and then we are leaving this place.”
