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‘Then you and I have nothing more to say to one another,’ she said primly. ‘So, if you could just give me back my bag, I have somewhere to be.’
Achileas gritted his teeth. She was dismissing him.
He stared down at her, too stunned to speak, his pulse juddering like a needle across a record. Nothing more to say? No, that wasn’t how this worked. He always had the last word.
‘Excuse me, sir?’
It was Crawford, the head of his security detail.
‘What is it?’ he snarled, without turning.
‘We have a situation, Mr Kane. Apparently, Ms Ivanov has called her brother and he’s heading this way.’
Achileas swore under his breath.
Of course he was.
And, knowing Roman as he did, no doubt he would make a monumental scene.
His mouth thinned. No way: not now and not here.
Normally it wouldn’t bother him in the slightest. He thrived on conflict and confrontation. It was one of the reasons he’d gone from business school graduate to hedge fund billionaire before the age of thirty.
But Andreas Alexios was pathologically averse to scandal. That was, after all, why he, his bastard son, had grown up with another man’s name.
He felt the ache in his chest spread like an oil spill. It had all been sorted out long before he was born. Pretty much about the time his mother had found out she was pregnant a team of lawyers had arrived with an NDA, and in return for her silence she had received a generous financial settlement.
Of course, he knew now that that amount could have been multiplied tenfold and still not made a dent in the Alexios fortune. But what stung more than that was the fact that his father had sat down with his lawyers and carefully and precisely calculated the cost of abandoning his child. Just enough to ensure his son would always be comfortably provided for, to make him socially acceptable. But not enough so that he could stand on an equal footing with his half-sisters and cousins.
Or course that had changed. He had changed it through hard work and determination. And pushing his ambition, obsessively driving that hunger to succeed, to win, had been an unspoken need to best Andreas so that he no longer needed his father’s wealth.
Nor did he want a relationship with Andreas. The years when he had wanted and needed a father were long gone.
What he wanted was revenge. Retribution for being ignored for so long. A reckoning, in fact. Taking what was his by right. Taking back what he was owed. Besides, the Alexios name would be good for business. His business. And that was all that mattered to him.
Losing his temper with Roman was a luxury he would have to forgo right now. He couldn’t risk giving his father a reason to back off, and if that meant walking away from a fight, then so be it.
But it was galling not to have the last word.
He frowned at the thought, and then Effie Price looked up at him and he saw himself reflected in her glasses. Saw himself as she was seeing him. A narrow-eyed, unshaven surly stranger, looming over her.
Except that he wasn’t in the wrong here.
‘As it happens, I have plenty to say,’ he said, focusing his temper and frustration on the woman in front of him.
There was a beat of silence and then her mouth pulled into a frown. ‘Then perhaps it’s your hearing that needs testing, Mr Kane,’ she said, giving him another glimpse of her throat as her face tilted up to meet his. ‘Because I just told you I have somewhere to be.’
The flush to her cheeks made her look almost pretty, and he gazed down at her, momentarily startled by both that thought and by the ripple of heat that skimmed across his skin in response to it.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my sight or my hearing, Ms Price. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with any part of me.’
‘Apart from your ego.’ One delicate eyebrow arched upwards. ‘That seems a little swollen...bloated, even. You might want to go and see a doctor about it.’
In comparison to the insults and accusations Tamara had flung at him earlier, it was nothing. So why did it sting so much? Why did he feel the need not just to deny her accusation but to prove her wrong?
Not knowing or wanting to know the answer to either question, he glanced away to where his bodyguards stood, waiting at a respectful distance.
This was ridiculous.
