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CHAPTER SIX
LYKOSBURSTFROMthe door at the side of the hotel onto the pavement, startling a dog walker and causing the little beast to howl disapprovingly. Inside, he felt...betrayal, the cold, hard, familiar twist of it turning in his gut. And stupid. He felt stupid. He was usually much more careful than this, better at seeing through people’s lies. He’d had to be. But he’d been distracted by a pretty face and a princess’s tantrum.
No. He’d been distracted because he thought he’d seen the truth in her eyes when she’d claimed to want to know about him. Aprincess. And now she’d run. He should have known better. His heart was pounding heavily in his chest, not from the run but fromher.
He cursed loudly in Greek and fisted his hand. It caught Benito’s attention and he came rushing over.
‘Signor—’
‘Have you seen her?’ he asked, his gaze sweeping back and forth across the street.
‘Miss Marit? Yes, she asked about a street café and I directed her to Carlotta’s.’
‘What?’ Lykos asked, his brain trying to clear through the damp fog of his thoughts, unable to understand why Marit would have asked Benito about a café. Unless it was another misdirect, his cynical mind suggested.
‘Carlotta’s. It’s by the park. I’ll send you the directions I gave Miss Marit.’
Lykos started jogging in the direction Benito had gestured and, pulling his phone from his pocket when it pinged, he realised he had several missed calls and text messages. He frowned. No one texted him these days. He pulled down the top bar and saw that just beneath a work email were four text messages from a number he’d programmed into his phone two days ago.
Didn’t want to bother you, but got a little hungry and thought I’d cross something off my list. Benito knows where I am if you want to join me, but no pressure.
PS This is Marit. I’m assuming you have my number.
PPS And clearly you could track my phone should you wish.
His jog slowed to a walk as he read Marit’s first message, and he slowed to a stop as he read the next and the next. Each one threw his feelings into even more confusion until he felt vaguely nauseous. She hadn’t run from him this time.
He looked up and saw tables and chairs spilling onto the open square beneath an awning that said ‘Carlotta’s’ in bright blue against brilliant white. At one of the tables he saw her, a cascade of beautiful golden hair and a pair of hazel eyes staring at him. Eyes that morphed from pleased to hurt, before the shutters came down as a waiter brought her a bulbous glass of something bright orange. Her smile to the café’s employee was glorious and generous and the poor boy looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. Lykos walked towards Marit’s table, unable to take his eyes from her, sliding his phone in his pocket before taking the seat opposite her.
‘You thought I’d run,’ she accused, glancing towards him, unable to hide the hurt that marred her features.
His stomach twisted, but he wouldn’t do her the dishonour of lying to her. ‘Yes.’
She turned her head aside in the most gracious of cuts and a conscience he seemed to have grown only in the last two days jabbed and prodded again. He called the waiter over with a raise of his finger, his gaze still locked on Marit. He ordered a beer, not his usual drink but it was early in the day and for some reason he felt a nostalgic pull towards it.
‘I don’t think I’ve had a beer since I was with Theron in Piraeus over ten years ago,’ he revealed. Nothing in him ever wanted to discuss his past. But with Marit? It was especially hard with her. It felt as if it would create an even greater divide between the Princess and the one-time pauper. But she had asked because she wanted to know and, instinctively, he felt it would be a peace offering that she’d understand. And maybe if they stopped fighting each other and kept that truce he would stop feeling this twisting frustration that had him by the gut. Maybe if he answered her question from that morning the desire he saw burning golden flecks in her hazel eyes would burn to dust.
‘I met Theron about two years after my mother left me at the orphanage. I was nine and he was seven. His parents had been killed in an earthquake that devastated Athens and he was so wide-eyed and scared.’ Lykos shook his head thinking about the vulnerable little boy his oldest friend had been back then. ‘Of course he’d kill me for telling you that,’ he said, allowing the bond of friendship to pull his lips into a small smile. A friendship they’d only just rekindled. He paused while the waiter placed the beer in front of him and stared at it a beat before reaching for the condensation-covered glass.
‘We were the scourge of Athens,’ he announced with pride, tipping his drink upward in a toast, a title thoroughly earned and utterly justified. ‘No businessman’s wallet was safe, no unsuspecting tourist’s camera and phone protected. One time, we stole a whole tray of muffins from a coffee vendor. Theron tells me the old man has neither forgotten nor forgiven it,’ he said with the huff of a laugh.
Marit’s gaze was drawn by his words, her eyes sparkling as he told her more stories of the easy, gentle thievery he and Theron had used to get up to. No one ever left out of pocket too badly and no one ever hurt. He told her about lifting Kyros Agyros’s wallet. How Theron’s soft heart had made him insist they returned it to the billionaire businessman when he’d seen a picture of the man dancing with his wife.
‘Kyros was...’ Lykos shook his head, feeling that powerful force he’d first felt when he’d met the older man ‘...impressive. Rich.Veryrich,’ he said wryly. ‘What he saw in two street kids, I’ll never know. But he made us an offer. He paid for our education, trained us, taught us everything we could learn, with the condition that we went to work for him after finishing school and national service. And every Sunday he invited us for dinner at his house with his wife, Althaia.’ His heart twisted with grief from her passing three years ago, despite not having seen her for over ten years.
Marit frowned, as if noticing the swift turn in his feelings. ‘I’d never been foolish enough to look up to Kyros the way that Theron did—’Liar, his newly vocal conscience claimed. ‘But I did respect him. Until he sent me looking for an Englishwoman. An Englishwoman with a little girl who had Kyros’s eyes.’
And, just like that, the scales had fallen from his eyes. His mentor wasn’t the kind, devoted married businessman, determined to help two kids from the streets, to treat them like the sons he’d never had. No, Kyros Agyros was just like everyone else: ready to use Lykos’s debt to buy his silence.
‘Oh.’ There was a glimmer of understanding in Marit’s eyes and he could see the pulse flicker at her throat, her soft heart beating with too much empathy.
‘Kyros’s wife was ill. She had multiple sclerosis. For Althaia it was a life sentence, and it made Kyros’s betrayal so much worse.’ Anger coloured his words with gravel and sand. ‘I presume he sent me thinking I would be so grateful that I’d not say anything to Althaia.’ Kyros’s betrayal had cost Lykos everything: the family unit he’d never thought he’d have after his mother’s abandonment disappearing in the blink of an eye.
‘Instead of going back to Greece, I went straight to a small hotel in London.’ It had been years since Lykos had allowed himself to think of those first few days. The blinding pain of being used and betrayed by the man he’d thought of as histruefather. The shocking blow to his sense of self and everything he’d known had brought on a migraine so bad Lykos had almost called an ambulance. But when the aura of agony had receded, Lykos felt a clarity of thought he’d not experienced before.
‘While I was there, I used the money I’d saved from the two years working for Kyros to play the stock markets.’ For the first time, Lykos’s sleeplessness had become a benefit. During the late-night hours he’d hunted the stock markets for quick hits and even quicker sales, surprised to find that the lessons he’d learned from his father—misdirection, disguise, speed and intense focus—had become a transferable skill. Kyros’s act of betrayal had further forced a complete trust in himself and his own instincts.
But those skills were the only thing from his past that Lykos chose to take with him into the future. From that moment on, he promised he’d never trust anyone but himself. He’d chosen the tenets he would live by: his words, his acts and his reputation. His future was severed irrevocably from his past as a thief from the streets of Athens.
