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“There’s your minder now,” Katarin says and waves at Peter. “Tell me something. Are you afraid of him? Is that why you’re standing down in the water and dreaming about escape?”
I walk from the waves, holding my dress up with my hands. It’s a nice dress, pretty, silk, emerald green. It works with my tan skin and sun-lightened hair. But I hate it because it was a gift from him.
“I don’t thinkafraidis the right word,” I say as I drift past Katarin. “More like tired. Exhausted. Sick of him. Ready to go back home.”
“And when are you going back?”
“Hopefully soon. It was nice meeting you.”
“Lovely meeting you as well, dear.”
I trudge up the beach toward where Peter’s waiting with his hands on his hips.
That man knows how to look at me like I’m a piece of trash washed up on the shore. He acts as though I’m the source of all his problems in this world, like I’m a bad smell, like I’m a stretch of failing crops or a wide tract of rotten land. He tolerates me, but barely, and his disdain seeps into the house and colors everything we do. It fills the silences with disgust.
I dislike him just as intensely.
His dark eyes, his heavy brows, his handsome lips. That cocky smirk. That know-it-all smile. How he laughs at his own jokes in a way he never laughs at mine. The way he looks at me like I’m the only person in a given room, his attention so complete and utter that it makes me wonder if he’s really seeing me at all.
Three weeks in a house together and we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words, and yet he’s a constant lurking presence. I dream about him half the time. I wish I wouldn’t.
“What were you doing down there?” he asks as I get closer. Then, glaring, “You ruined your dress.”
“It’s wet. It’ll dry.”
“That’s Versace. You know how much I spent on it?”
“Send me the tab.”
“You’re a problem, Adrienne, and I don’t know how I got stuck with you.”
“So leave. I can feed myself. Do I really need you around?”
“And let my father eviscerate me? No, thank you.” He glances over my shoulder toward where Katarin stands alone in the sand with her back to us. “Is that Balaska’s wife?”
NotKatarinbut insteadBalaska’s wife. That’s how it is with these Greek men. “Yes, that’s her. She says you have business with her husband.”
He nods slowly and doesn’t look at me. “We’re leaving tomorrow for Athens.”
I let that sink in. I’m not sure what it means to leave Crete for Athens except that it wasn’t part of the plan. I came to Greece three weeks ago because I got pulled into a dangerous war between the Greeks, the Italians, and the Russians back in the States, and this is supposed to be a refuge from the fighting. My best friend, Kacia, set it all up while she remains behind with her new boyfriend, dealing with the fallout from the war. If the Russians hadn’t nearly killed me, I might be back there with her.
Instead, I’m here with this man who clearly despises me in a country I don’t know anything about, floating around bathed in a language I don’t speak, feeling so lost and unmoored and hopeless that the vast black ocean doesn’t seem so bad.
I touch my face and run a finger down my scar but stop when I catch Peter watching me. I quickly drop my hand and glare at him.
“You do realize you can’t simply drag me all over Greece with you.”
“Then stay behind.” He turns away back toward the party. The house is filled with powerful men, all of them criminals, all of them deeply connected and rich and dangerous, and I still can’t keep my eyes from Peter. He’s tall and handsome and looks good in his slim navy-blue suit with the edges of his tattoos poking out at the collar and at his cuffs. “But I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”
“I’m supposed to tag along with you then like a happy little lap dog?”
He smiles slightly. “If only you were so pliable, I wouldn’t mind having you in my lap.”
“That sounds dangerously like a compliment. Except coming from you, it only makes my skin crawl.”
“Good, then I know where we stand.” He hesitates for a moment, standing beside the pool. “The crime lords offered me a job.”
“Really? Does your father know about it?”
