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He shifted—a miniscule squaring of his shoulders. ‘My father had a one-night stand with my mother. I was the result.’
Effie tried to make her next question sound casual. ‘So they were never married?’
His face was like carved stone. ‘He was already married.’
Married for seven years, she thought, mentally subtracting Achileas’s age from the length of Andreas’s marriage to Eugenie. Her heart started to pound. She had got it back to front. His mother had been the mistress—not Eugenie.
‘How did it happen?’
His hands flexed against the sand again.
‘At some party. Back in the day, my mother was a model. She was young and pretty. My father was on his own in New York. It was never meant to be anything but a fling. He had a wife...children. When my mother got pregnant, he sent some lawyers to see her. They got her to sign an NDA and he paid her off.’
His shoulders rose and fell.
‘Oh, and he made her agree to keep his name off the birth certificate, which was a nice touch.’
Effie stared at him, appalled. It was a detail, but there was an efficiency about it that was breathtakingly cruel.
With an effort, she cleared her throat. ‘And he never got in touch?’
Achileas shook his head. ‘Never. I didn’t even know who my father was until I was twelve. Whenever I asked her, my mother was always so vague I used to think he was a spy, and then out of the blue she told me I was going to boarding school in England. I didn’t want to go, and we argued, and she told me that I had to go because that was what my father wanted.’
His mouth twisted. ‘It was one of his demands. That and learning Greek.’
Picturing a younger Achileas, Effie felt her pulse jerk. It must have been so baffling for him, and hurtful, having to comply with the dictates of a faceless stranger who cared so little about him that he had never bothered to introduce himself.
‘But you did meet him eventually?’
‘When I was thirteen. It was the summer term of my first year.’
She watched the muscles tighten beneath his shirt.
‘I was playing rugby in the final of an inter-school tournament. We were winning, and then at half time one of my teammates told me that a Greek billionaire was presenting the cup. Some shipping tycoon called Alexios.’
The ache in his voice echoed in the darkness.
‘I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. That he was there to see me. And when we walked back onto the pitch, I couldn’t stop looking for him in the crowd. Of course he wasn’t there. He was being wined and dined by the head teacher. But I totally lost my concentration, and we lost the match.’
Effie swallowed. His face was tight, and she knew that he could still remember it now: the nervous anticipation of finally meeting his long-absent father, the panic that it might be a big mix-up—a different Greek billionaire called Alexios.
‘We had to line up to get our runner-up medals, and when I saw him, I was shocked and excited, because we looked so alike. I knew I was right. That he must be there to see me. And I was so certain he’d say something.’
He hesitated, and now his hands were still, the knuckles white.
‘Only when my name was called out, he just handed me the medal and shook my hand. As if I was just some random boy. As if I was nothing to him.’
Achileas felt his stomach clench. Even now he didn’t know how he had managed to walk away as if nothing had happened. As if his whole world hadn’t just spun into the crash barrier like a jack-knifing truck.
For days afterwards he had been mute with shock, and he had felt this pain—as if something had torn inside him and wouldn’t heal. Eventually he’d learned to live with it, but as the pain had dulled his rage had intensified. Rage at his mother for getting pregnant. Rage with his father for rejecting him. Rage at a world that turned a blind eye to the careless, hurtful behaviour of people who were supposed to know better.
And he’d been furious for such a long time now.
He felt Effie’s fingers curl around his, her small, cool hand pulling him back, calming his heartbeat.
‘And after that?’ she asked.
‘After that I didn’t see him again until six months ago.’
