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Padding back to her bed, Velvet said over her shoulder, “Even though you don’t sound like it – you’re welcome.” She switched her night light off, plunging the bedroom into darkness.
The softest sound reached Velvet, and she knew that Mandy also knew it was Mairi, doing her best not to cry.
Shit. She hated men. She really hated them. They were all jerks – how could they be anything but jerks when they had the gall to hurt someone as sweet and, well, childish and gullible as Mairi?
“You cry too much,” she said gruffly and heard Mandy groan. She knew that it meant Mandy was very close to killing her for being her usual tough-girl self.
Mairi didn’t answer.
Velvet wanted to punch someone. The silence was even more awful, somehow making Mairi’s pain more intense, like a wound that bled so much they could smell the metallic scent of blood emanating from it.
Should she give Mairi stupid false words of hope just to make her feel better? She wanted to. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Men like Damen Leventis were just...
“Mairi, he’s not worth crying over.”
It took her friend so long to answer that by the time she did, Velvet was halfway asleep.
“I know, Velvet,” Mairi whispered, closing her eyes, and when she did all she could see was him. “I know, but I just can’t stop.”
Chapter 5
To trust a Greek billionaire, you must remember that he also gets hurt and because he’s hurt, he may want to hurt you, too.
She said: I mean emotionally.
He said (groaning): Can’t you let readers think that it’s a macho thing instead? You make me sound so soft, matakia mou.
She said: But you are! I just want to—-
He said: Note to editor – Please consult me privately about this. This is not good for my image.
HAD IONIKO MADE HIS move yet?
It was a question that had been bothering him for three nights now, increasingly so since Mairi had not yet returned any of his calls or messages. Frustration, edginess, and impatience created a furor inside him, making Damen unable to concentrate on the millions of things that demanded his time.
Someone knocked on his door. “Enter,” Damen rapped out abruptly, his temper igniting for no reason at the intrusion. He had a very short fuse these days, and he knew it was only a matter of time before something had to give.
Bart nervously came inside his employer’s office. He was in his early twenties, a little heavy-set and dorky-looking. Thousands of individuals had applied for the job as the billionaire’s PA-slash-secretary, many of them with more impressive work experience and better academic credentials than him. And yet Bart had beaten all of them, simply because he had been the only one with the courage – which his mother termed as stupidity at the time – to tell the billionaire that he had miscomputed a certain account and had provided the correct formula for it.
The memory was something Bart desperately clung to now as he made his way further inside. Mr. Leventis is a fair man, he reminded himself. He will not fire me for what I’m about to say.
“Bart?”
It was softly voiced, but Damen’s voice still had him jumping nervously.
“S-sir?”
Damen leaned back in his chair, which was custom-designed and handcrafted as was all the other furniture in his spectacularly designed office. It was a symbol of his success, but he took no pleasure in it. At present, all it reminded him was what he did not have – and what Ioniko might already have.
The thought was ruthlessly squashed, but its effect lingered and his tone was positively biting when he refocused on his secretary. “Say what you have to say or leave the office, Bart.”
Swallowing, Bart said, “Your mother, ah, learned of your plans to reward Ms. Diana with her own car and has canceled your purchase.”
In seconds, he was across the hall and inside his mother’s office, not bothering to knock. His mother was in the middle of a meeting, but he didn’t fucking care. Without taking his gaze off Esther Leventis, he said, “Out.”
Everyone scrambled to do his bidding, leaving the office empty except for mother and son. “How melodramatic,” Esther said disdainfully, “—-especially since I assume this is about your ill-advised idea for Diana’s gift?”
“You had no right to do that, Mother.”
“I have every right,” she snapped. “I’m her mother and she is yet under aged. If I say a gift is inappropriate, then it is so!”
“She is about to turn seventeen – most young wealthy Greek girls her age have their first cars at the age of fifteen – and that’s two years ago!”
“I do not need my daughter to be like other Greek girls. I do not need my daughter to have any silly ideas about being independent and following silly dreams or marrying for true love.”
