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But leaving the house didn’t mean he’d pushed events from his mind. Rather, the opposite was true. Leonidas was now invested in the situation, as determined to discover Mila’s stalker and have him or her brought to justice as anyone ever had been. Determined to keep her safe.
God complex? Perhaps, but in this instance, it would serve him—and her—well. Grief for his father sat in the back of his mind, a permanent part of him, but relegated, for the moment, and he relished the distraction, the absorption in something else. He couldn’t change the past. He couldn’t bring Valentina back. He couldn’t save her from drowning. He couldn’t save his father. But hell, he could save Mila. In the here and now, he could make a difference, and he was determined that he would—for Benji.
Mila was numb.She’d been that way since they’d left the cottage. The drive back to town, then the flight in the helicopter over the Adriatic, towards Athens, and then, when they’d boarded the private jet with a huge X painted gold on the tail, and wings that were the same colour.
She stared out at the far-away world beneath her, insides trembling, as the reality of what had just happened played through her mind.
When Leonidas came to sit opposite her, she blinked towards him, without seeing. Her mind was fractured, unable to work properly.
“He was in the house,” she said, nausea lifting in her throat. “Watching me? Watching us?”
Loeonidas’s lips compressed in a line. “Possibly.”
She felt as though she might vomit. She dug her fingernails into her palms and looked towards the windows again. She had to be stronger than this. “Not possibly. He must have been. He wrote ‘slut’. He knows we kissed. That it could easily have gone further. That it would have if you hadn’t—.”
The words were strained, and then completely silent. He nodded once. “Yes. That’s likely.”
She shivered in a way she couldn’t control. “Where was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you suspect?”
“I don’t think we can rule anything in or out.”
“My God. But you do think he was in the house, don’t you?”
His lips were grim. “It’s possible.”
“Possible,” she repeated, nodding slowly, but her insides felt as though they were writhing with snakes.
“The police will know more.”
“Police.” She was repeating everything he said, she knew it, but she couldn’t find words or brain power to move beyond that.
“They’re at Benji’s.”
“Which police?”
“The local station, initially, but my chief of security should be there soon too.”
Her eyes widened. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Didn’t I?”
“You don’t have any obligation to me.” For a moment, though, she’d forgotten about Benji. That was why he was doing this—not for her. “What did he do to you?”
He frowned, clearly not following her line of questioning.
“My cousin. Why do you feel this debt to him?”
Leonidas rubbed his palm over his chin. “He made me face up to some demons when I really needed to. He spoke the truth to me. He got me out of habits that were destructive. He saved me.” His lips twisted. “Or at least, he made me see I had to save myself.”
“From what?”
“The path I was on.”
“What path?” she enquired, glad to turn her mind to anything other than the slash of red words across white walls. The beautiful beach house was ruined now, the cottage would always remind her of being stalked.
