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It did not wane, at all. Not even when it was clear that he was standing there, sizing her up the way they always did at work, as if she was a horse at market. Molly felt lucky that she was used to it. And more, that despite the reaction she was having, there was something soothing about being treated like a mannequin that took direction. It was her life’s work, after all.
“The only things you know about me,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even, “are the things I never should have told you when I was a silly teenage girl who believed that Constantine Skalas was actually my friend. But guess what? That girl is gone. You got rid of her yourself.”
“You learned a valuable lesson,” he replied, thrusting his hands into his pockets and giving her a long, thorough, deceptively sleepy once-over that made everything inside her prickle into high alert. “It is an act of supreme foolishness to trust anyone. Some don’t learn this until it’s too late. You learned it while you were but a girl. You should thank me.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was acidic. “And how proud you must have been to take it upon yourself to teach such a harsh lesson to a lonely girl. Such a humanitarian you are. I’m shocked you haven’t collected awards for your services to mankind.”
His smile was an exercise in seductive menace. “But we are not speaking of a hapless, awkward teenage girl, the daughter of a grifter of a housekeeper who fancied herself a replacement mother. As well as an actual mistress of the Skalas estates, rather than my father’s tawdry affair that he dressed up in legalities for reasons that died with him.”
There wasn’t much anyone could say about Isabel that Molly hadn’t thought herself. But that didn’t mean she liked hearing it. “Yes, my mother woke up one day and justimagined herselfyour stepmother. Nobody pursued her. Or married her. Or told her to do as she pleased with the estates and the stepsons and everything else because, Lord knows,hecertainly didn’t care either way.”
“My father is dead and cannot account for his decisions.” Constantine shrugged, a masterpiece of Mediterranean nonchalance. “And would not have anyway, even had he lived.”
“Right. You expect me to believe that while he was alive you changed the habits of a lifetime and took him to task for his behavior?” Molly laughed, and then laughed a little harder when she saw how little he liked it. “I’d like to have seenthat. You know full well that the only thing he cared less about than what my mother did with his money was you. He likely would have cut you out of his will for suggesting otherwise.”
She thought she saw the hint of a clenched jaw, which she told herself was a win. But was it really? Because the way he was looking at her...
“I’m interested that you seem to think insulting my father—and me—is a good way to begin a debt repayment program.”
“Is it an insult to speak the truth about a man we both knew?” Molly shrugged, aware that when she did it, it was less a study of carelessness and more a sharp little gesture of disdain. She’d practiced it for years. “I wouldn’t even say that’s any kind of insider take on the late, great Demetrius Skalas. He was a complete mystery to me while my mother was married to him. Anything else I might have gleaned about him is public information.” She counted off on her fingers. “He was a terrible person. His sons are terrible people. That’s not my opinion, that’s just a couple of incontrovertible facts.”
Constantine smiled, and she regretted, deeply, that once again she couldn’t seem to control her mouth in his presence.Damnhim.
“Here are some other facts,” Constantine murmured, all dark undertone and that glinting thing in his bittersweet gaze. “You have a martyr complex, for I assume you must get some sort of pleasure out of sacrificing yourself for your mother at every turn. Or why would you do it, again and again? She is a grown woman, capable of handling her own life—except she need not trouble herself with such things, because you do it for her.”
Molly assumed he wanted a response from her, so she only gazed back at him, mutely defiant.
He continued. “For all that you travel about the world, command top dollar for pouting at the camera, and have entertained more rumored lovers than photographers, you’re a very, very lonely woman.”
She would die if he saw any kind of reaction on her face.Die.And still it took everything she had to simply continue to stare back at him as if he hadn’t done that thing he’d always done. Smile and then skewer her.
“I know this because I watched you, Molly,” he said, his voice getting quieter. But she watched his eyes. And the way they gleamed, that dangerous gold. “Every year you get thinner. Your eyes go darker. You become more and more brittle. Do not mistake me, your beauty, certainly a surprise to any who saw you as a gawky sixteen-year-old, only grows. But you’re not happy, are you?”
She continued to stare back at him, but once the silence stretched between them, she gave an over-the-top sort of start. “Oh, my bad, is this the part where I actually respond to the man who’sblackmailingme? I thought this was all rhetorical.”
“I know what you eat, how long you sleep, even what documentaries you like to watch,” he told her quietly, his dark gaze all gold, telling her clearly that he was showing her his weapons even if she hadn’t heard him. “I know what you do when you’re without one of your command appearance parties to attend in whatever city you find yourself.”
“Why, Constantine. I’m flattered.”
“You walk,” he said, with a certain soft menace. And that time, she doubted very much that she managed to conceal her reaction. And then knew she hadn’t when his gaze lit with victory. “Around and around and around whatever city or town you happen to be in, and you’re not taking in the sights, are you? You prefer to go at night, almost as if there are demons you’re trying to put behind you. Your mother, perhaps?”
“Wrong again,” she replied, holding his gaze as if none of this scared her. When it did. Whenhedid in more ways than she ever planned to admit. “I’ve only ever known one demon, Constantine. And he is standing right in front of me.”
“I know you,” he said again, clearly relishing this moment. Clearly enjoying this. “And when I have you, and I will, I will have all of you. And if there’s nothing left after I glut myself on all you have, all you are, maybe you can see how it feels to put yourself back together.” His dark eyes blazed. “The way my mother tried to do after yours took her place.”
Molly was back home in London by evening, feeling as jittery as if she’d existed on nothing but caffeine and cigarettes for three weeks—a lifestyle she’d given up in her first year of modeling, because that led nowhere good. And was unsustainable besides.
It was a rainy, cold, and foggy May evening, and the shift in the weather from Skiathos to England’s best plunged her instantly into a mood that was far too reminiscent of sixteen-year-old Molly. First plucked out of gray, miserable England and swept off to the dazzling coast of a Greek island, out of her depth in every possible way.
The sun had burned her skin a bright, feverishly painful red within an hour of her landing at the Skiathos airport. She should have known, even then, that it was only the first of many ways Greece would sear straight through her.
And when Isabel had finally left Demetrius and his power games, creeping back to England to lick her wounds and to hire a set of sharks to handle the divorce, Molly had felt the loss of all that terrible light and heat too keenly. It had felt like dying.
She felt the hint of that feeling again now, as her car bumped along the cobbled mews not far from Hyde Park and dropped her off at the Mews house she’d bought when her career first took off. A stone’s throw from the Marble Arch, Hyde Park, and Oxford Street, her little house was a quiet retreat from the bustling, busy city all around her. It was alsohers.All hers. She’d bought it with cash, filled with the naive hope that the one thing that was finally hers and only hers would stand as a symbol toward a bright future. The one she’d been determined to have, because she was sure she could make it different from the childhood she’d lived, the mistakes she and her mother had made in turn, and everything else she wanted to turn her back on.
Everything tainted by the Skalas family, in fact. And it had worked.
Her Mews house was a home, not an investment piece. It gave her four walls, three floors, and two lovely terraces’ worth of peace. It was the only place on the planet where she could happily be herself. There were no pictures of Magda gracing the walls inside. There were no magazines. Inside, there were only the things she loved wholeheartedly. Books and art and other things she’d picked up in all the places she’d traveled. Bright colors and deep, soothing chairs and sofas, because every square inch of the place was meant for relaxation and recharging.
