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“Ophelia,” Anastasios’ voice was drawled, and when he looked at Phoebe, there was none of the easy affection they’d shared all day. “Allow me to introduce Phoebe—a ‘friend’ of our father’s. She met him around eighteen months ago.”
The intonation he laid on the word ‘friend’ left no room for doubt as to his meaning, the timeline added grist to the mill. She startled, eyes wide, spine straight. His betrayal was like a slap in the face. Her lips parted, shocked, hurt, nauseated. The hurt was all the worse, coming as it did from the peak of happiness.
“You?” Ophelia asked, the word roughly dragged from her. “You’re who he left my mother for?”
Anastasios said nothing. There was no help from that quarter. Her heart splintered.
“I was good friends with your father,” she said, quietly, trying to find calm, reason, sense.
“I can just imagine,” Ophelia spat.
“It really wasn’t like that.”
“Sure,” Ophelia rolled her eyes. “So what was it like? Were you spending time with an eighty four year old for the fun of it?” Phoebe hadn’t expected this vitriol from Ophelia, and it hurt. It hurt because she’d adored her performance, and admired her greatly. It hurt because Anastasios was standing by and letting this happen. Her world was crumbling.
“Actually, yes,” she responded with quiet pride and an angry defensiveness of Konstantinos. Her hurt had her adding, “He was truly the best man I’ve ever known.”
Unfortunately, it only validated both Anastasios and Ophelia’s suspicions. Phoebe couldn’t care less. She felt angry and hurt and used, because Anastasios had thrown her to the wolves with no warning and no hesitation.
“I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree,” Ophelia responded tartly.
“We don’t have to agree on anything.” Phoebe was shaking though, her knees quivering at the awful scene. Her glance roughly encompassed Anastasios as well. “Excuse me. I’ve had enough of this. Good night.” She turned and walked away, her back ramrod straight, her mind numb.
Outside, she looked around, as if just seeing the world for the first time. Earlier, with Anastasios, this piazza had seemed like the most beautiful, romantic place on earth but now it was dark and menacing. She had lost her bearings, but she knew one thing for sure. She couldn’t go back to the yacht with Anastasios.
She needed space and time to think.
“Phoebe.” His voice was stern, unemotional.
She turned slowly to face him, teeth pressing into her lower lip. “What?”
His eyes probed hers, but there was such darkness in his, such suppressed anger, that goosebumps lifted on her arms despite the balmy warmth of the night.
“Was that really necessary?” She whispered, then shook her head. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me?”
“You made your bed when you started sleeping with him,” Anastasios said quietly.
Phoebe gasped, lifting a hand to her chest. “How can you still believe that?” Tears weakened her voice. “How can you think that after everything—,”
His eyes were harder than granite. “Why would I doubt it?”
“Because youknowme, Anastasios.”
“Because you told me a few sob stories about your life? Who even knows if they’re true? Maybe that’s just how you get men to feel sorry for you, to give you gifts, like this,” he pointed to the necklace at her throat, a necklace which had, until that moment, meant so much to her.
Bile rose in her throat. “I told you, I don’t want it.” She reached up, trying to unclasp it, but her fingers were unsteady, and her clutch purse didn’t help. “I don’t want it,” she said again, the words tumbling out of her. “I don’t want it.” And now the necklace was choking her, so she started scratching at her throat, wanting it off, wishing she’d never agreed to wear it. “Please, please take it,” she turned around, but the second his fingers connected with her skin, every cell in her body began to reverberate and she made a wretched, sobbing sound, because she knew then how much she loved him, even when he had no love for her. He undid it, his fingers still hovering there, but she stepped away from him, quickly, urgently, needing to fight her body’s craving.
“I never asked for anything of your father. I never asked for anything from you.”
He stared down at the necklace then pushed it into his pocket as carelessly as if it were a stick of gum.
“I’m not interested in discussing it. Let’s go.”
“No way. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“And what else do you propose to do?”
She hated him in that moment, the love in her heart lurching wildly to its counterpart, light to shadow. “Find a hotel,” she snapped.
