The Secret Behind The Greek’s Return by Michelle Smart

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MARISABACKEDSLOWLYto the stairs, covering her mouth tightly to stop the scream from escaping.

When she reached the top of the stairs she flew down the corridor to Seema’s room and rapped loudly on it.

‘Are you okay?’ the nanny asked when she opened the door.

‘What is the word for divorce?’

‘It’s diazýgio.’

She closed her eyes and pulled in a breath. She hadn’t misunderstood. ‘Thank you.’

Checking Niki was still sleeping, she hurried to her bedroom, grabbed her phone and called her sister.

Elsa answered on the third ring. ‘Hi, big sister! How’s Mykonos?’

‘Is Santi there?’

‘Yes... What’s wrong?’

‘Can you put him on, please? It’s important.’

Seconds later, the man she’d grown up thinking of as a big brother figure was on the phone. ‘What do you need?’

She swallowed her relief that he’d got straight to the point. ‘Can you send one of your planes to get me?’ Santi owned a fleet of planes that delivered freight across the world. He also had his own private jet.

‘Are you in Mykonos?’

‘Yes.’

‘When do you want to be collected?’

‘As soon as you can get here.’

‘I will send a plane to you now. Keep your phone on you for instructions... Marisa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘No. But I will be. Please hurry.’

‘Hold on a minute. I have a better idea. Speak to your sister while I make some calls.’

‘Marisa?’ This time there was panic in Elsa’s voice. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’ Yet. ‘But the wedding’s off. I can’t marry him.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get home.’ Her real home. A home filled with people who loved her. ‘Do me a favour and don’t tell Mama. I don’t want her to worry. I’ll tell her when I get back.’

‘You’re scaring me.’

‘I promise it’s nothing to scare you. He’s not hurt me, I swear.’ Not physically.

‘You promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘Okay... Santi wants to talk to you again.’

There was no preamble. ‘I’ve spoken to a contact. He’s on Santorini. He’s sending his jet to you now. All being well, it should land in an hour. Shall I send a car to get you to the airport?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Hold tight. I’ll call you when the driver’s ten minutes from you. It won’t be long. Hold tight,’ he repeated, and then the line went dead.

Marisa didn’t waste any time. Forget packing. Clothes were replaceable. Chucking her passport and Niki’s into her handbag, she secured the bag over her shoulder then hurried to the nursery to pack a change-bag for Niki.

Thankfully, the ground floor was empty of people and she was able to carry Niki and their bags to the underground garage without being seen. The keys for Nikos’s showroom of cars were hanging up and she pressed them all until the one with the baby seat in it flashed. She strapped a still-sleeping Niki into it before unclipping and carefully removing the seat. Rather than go back up into the house, she pressed the button to open the garage’s sliding doors and waited for rescue in the shade of the terrace that ran along the side of the villa.

Her hope of being miles away before Nikos noticed they were missing was foiled a minute later when footsteps crunched behind her.

‘Where are you going?’

Almost jumping out of her skin, Marisa spun around to find Nikos walking towards her.

Nikos scanned her slowly, taking in the guilt blazing on her face to the protective way she stood before their sleeping son. She couldn’t have known the garage was alarmed. The moment she’d set foot in it, an alert had gone to his phone. He’d watched her every move.

‘Where are you going?’ he repeated icily.

She just stared at him, her face now the colour of an overripe tomato.

The faint sound of a phone buzzing broke the tense silence that developed.

‘Are you not going to answer that?’

Throat moving, she slowly pulled her phone out of her handbag and put it to her ear. ‘Hola.’

The one-sided conversation in which she was required only to make the odd noise of acknowledgement was over in less than a minute. She kept her eyes on his face the entire time. He didn’t think she blinked once throughout it.

Nikos folded his arms across his chest and clenched his jaw. ‘Speak to me. Tell me what’s going on.’

Her eyes closed. When she snapped them back open, she said in a tone that turned his blood to ice, ‘I’m going home.’

Now he was the one to stare without blinking. Every part of his body tightened, his lungs squeezing into balls.

She was leaving him. He could see it in her eyes.

He’d sensed it while watching her hurried movements in the garage.

Marisa was leaving him. Her flustered guilt had been replaced with a calm defiance he recognised from the weeks following his return. Her controlled demeanour was at complete odds with the turbulence Nikos now found himself fighting.

Hadn’t he always known this day would come?

‘And when were you planning to tell me?’

‘I was going to send you a message.’

‘A message?’ Red-hot rage pulsed through him, burning through his brain. He fought to stop it echoing in his voice, speaking through gritted teeth. ‘You were going to leave without a single word of warning?’

‘Yes.’

She would have let him worry. Let him put out a search for her. Let him imagine the worst.

Clamping down on the rising rage that swirled with something else, something indefinable but which felt like a weight was pressing against his heart, he said, ‘You have a reason?’

Contempt flashed in her eyes. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Do you want to share it with me?’

She looked at her watch. ‘Not really. I have a car coming.’

‘A car...’ He gave a quick, humourless laugh. ‘You have been busy.’

‘Not me. Santi. He’s arranged a plane to get me home, so if you’re thinking of trying to stop me leaving, you’ll have him to deal with.’

‘I wouldn’t stop you leaving, agapi mou.’ He let his gaze fall to the car seat and the child sleeping in it she was shielding with her body. ‘Our son, though, is a different matter...’

She showed not the slightest hint of intimidation at the menacing words he’d deliberately left hanging.

Stepping slowly to him, she folded her arms across her chest, mimicking his stance.

Her words were delivered quietly but with absolute precision. ‘I’m taking Niki home. To Valencia. To his family. To the people who have loved him since he was in my belly. And if you think you can stop me then you will learn just how dirty I’m prepared to fight.’ Her face tilted. ‘But I think you know that—after all, isn’t that your reason for marrying me? To guarantee your access and rights to our son?’

To see the colour drain from Nikos’s face stoked the fire in Marisa’s belly. So her instincts had been right. Her Greek wasn’t good enough to understand everything Nikos and his granddad had said but she’d caught enough to get the gist of it. Their body language had told her the rest.

She’d understood his reasons immediately. Understood every little part of it.

And she also understood he’d lied to her. His proposal had never been about giving Niki a stable family. It had been all about Nikos, the dirty, cruel, unconscionable bastard.

Moving her face as close to his as she could get without actually touching him, she summoned every muscle in her face to form a smile. ‘I heard everything... Did I forget to tell you I taught myself Greek while you were playing dead? Oh, yes, I did forget...deliberately forgot... You see, the truth is I wasn’t prepared to give you the satisfaction of knowing just how desperately I grieved for you, or that my grief was so strong I had to listen to recordings of your language at night to get any sleep. That’s how I found comfort. Because it was that strong.’ She nodded for emphasis. ‘My grief for you. I wanted to die.’

Nikos’s guts fisted. The punch it made rippled straight through him.

Still speaking in that same, calm, quiet, matter-of-fact tone, she continued, ‘I’m sure I would have got through that naturally with time, but the one thing that helped me cope with the grief was discovering I was pregnant.’ She patted her stomach and widened her smile.

His already cold body chilled to the marrow.

‘It’s a real shame you missed out on the pregnancy. You never got to see my belly move or feel him kick. You missed out on the morning sickness too but I’m willing to bet you’re glad about missing that part. It’s funny, but only this morning I was thinking how much I would love us to have another baby and thinking that this time you could share in all of it. Not yet—I was thinking in around a year’s time.’ She lifted her shoulders and pulled an ‘oops’ face. ‘That was a bit silly of me, wasn’t it, what with you planning to serve me divorce papers then?’

She took a step back and shook her head in the fashion of a disappointed teacher.

‘I assume you decided a year of marriage was long enough for the law to be on your side if I refused to play ball over custody arrangements? How clever you are, mi amado. You think of everything. I congratulate you on your deviousness.

‘If only I was a poor woman, you could have gone straight for the jugular and used your wealth to get full custody without a fight. But I’m not going to fight you...’ Her nostrils flared. ‘Not unless you force me.’ Eyes like lasers, she hissed, ‘I will never stop you seeing our son but you will have to kill me before I let you take him from me. Now please excuse me, I hear a car—that will be my driver.’

She turned her back to him and leaned down to pick up the car seat.

‘Are you not going to give me the courtesy of hearing me out?’ Nikos asked in as modulated a tone as he could manage when he could barely hear his own voice over the roar of the heartbeats drumming in his ears. But the car coming to drive her away...he could hear that. Hear it closing in on them.

Her back to him, she retorted, ‘I heard everything I needed to hear when you were talking to your grandfather.’

‘So you’ve appointed yourself judge and jury?’ Hooking his hands to her shoulders, he spun her round. ‘This is the very reason I wanted us to marry. You think you are entitled to decide everything but you do not get to decide everything when it comes to our child. I’m his father.’

‘You’re a liar,’ she snarled in his face. Any pretence at calm had gone. The façade she’d been wearing had dissolved like a block of salt hitting hot water. ‘You said you wanted us to be a family and give Niki stability and I believed you. I swallowed my pride and did what was best for our son when all the time you were doing only what was best for yourself.’

‘I was protecting my interests. How do I know you will always do what’s best for him?’ he demanded, his anger flaring back to life. ‘Things change and people change, and I know all too well how money and power can be weaponised against a child’s best interests. I was fully aware that if you decided to kick me out of our son’s life, I would have an uphill battle to fight you so, yes, I lied to you, but what would you have me do? Would you have me on the fringe of our son’s life waiting for the day you decide even that is too much? Without marriage, any agreement we made about access and custody would be on your terms. Everything has to be on your terms. You don’t trust anyone with him. You’re scared to let him out of your sight.’

‘And why do you think that is?’ she screamed, eyes wild. ‘My life turned to hell! I went to hell! Your death almost killed me! Loving him saved me—he was my saving grace because he was the only part of you I had left, and I will not apologise for being overprotective, not when I spent the first eleven months of his life terrified I would lose him like I lost you and my father.’

All the fight and fury in him dissolved at the same speed hers had risen. Staring at her furiously stricken face sent the punches rippling through him harder and faster than they’d ever punched through him before.

But the fight had left her too. Tears broke through her rage and she swiped them away furiously.

‘Damn you, Nikos,’ she sobbed. ‘Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Why did you have to do this? I never denied you any part of him. I swallowed my pride and my hate for all you’d done to me and welcomed you into our lives for Niki’s sake and I made my family welcome you too, and still you think I’m just waiting for an excuse to kick you. You still see me in the same way you see everyone else—as potential hurt to be pushed aside before they can get close enough to reject you like your parents did. You think there’s something wrong with you but it was never you, it was them. They were wrong, not you, but until you can believe that you’re doomed to hurt everyone who loves you.

‘I don’t care how badly you were hurt as a child—you’re a fully grown man who knows better than to treat people worse than dogs, but that’s how you’ve treated me. How could you do this to me? Knit my heart back together and then willingly rip it apart again? Did you ever have feelings for me?’ But then she covered her ears and staggered back. ‘No. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t. You’ve broken me enough.’

The car had pulled alongside them. The driver had got out and was watching them.

Pulling her shoulders up, Marisa carried the car seat to him. ‘Can you strap it in for me, please?’ Her hands were shaking too much to do it herself.

About to get into the car, she turned to stare at Nikos one last time.

He hadn’t moved. His features were unreadable.

Raising her chin, she swallowed and said, ‘I will instruct my lawyers to draft a custody agreement when I get home. It will be as fair as it can be to all three of us.’

And then she closed the door, turned her face away from him and gazed at her son.

Niki’s eyes were open. He looked at her and gave a beaming smile that melted her broken heart.

Nikos watched the car until it was no longer in sight. He couldn’t make his legs move to return inside.

He sank down on the top step of the terrace and waited for the cold fog that had enveloped him to pass.

Clasping his pounding head, he swallowed hard. Everything inside him felt bruised and tight. Deep in the pit of his stomach, sickness churned, rising up his throat to leave a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth.

Time slipped away. The fog didn’t clear... Not until he caught the sound of a distant car nearing. His heart thumped then everything in him slumped to realise the sound was coming from the wrong direction. A moment later, his grandfather’s sports car appeared, the top down.

Stratos parked in front of Nikos and put his elbow on the lowered window. ‘Everything okay?’

He managed to jerk a nod.

‘You’re sure?’

Another nod. He cleared his throat. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Poker night at Stelios’. We’re having food first. I tried to find Marisa to apologise but I couldn’t find her. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’ He put the car back into gear. ‘Got to go—I’m already late. Don’t wait up,’ he added with a cackle, then drove off in the same direction Marisa had not long travelled.

For an octogenarian, his grandfather had a remarkable social life. A string of women. Raucous nights out with good company. The kind of social life Nikos had looked forward to resuming after his resurrection. The kind he would have if he hadn’t learned about his son.

He blinked. What was he thinking?

Hadn’t he stayed out of the spotlight and avoided any kind of socialising until he’d seen Marisa again? Hadn’t he embedded himself back into her life?

The only times he’d enjoyed himself after his return from the dead had been with her because the vacuous social scene he’d once revelled in no longer meant anything to him. His isolation had changed him. Marisa had changed him. His son had changed him.

And how had he learned about his son? By following the mother. Why had he followed the mother? Because the compulsion to see her one last time had been too strong to resist...

Fighting the direction of his thoughts and unable to look a moment longer at the road on which she’d travelled away from him, Nikos dragged himself to his feet and walked back into his home.

The emptiness was stark.

The silence was deafening.

He held tight to the bannister and climbed both flights of stairs without any thought of where he was heading.

Shuffling along the corridor on the second floor, the nausea in his stomach rose up like a wave. He doubled over, pressing his hands to the sill of the window he was passing to support himself, and closed his eyes.

When the sickness passed, he opened his eyes and found his gaze drawn back to the winding road in the distance. His grandfather’s car had disappeared.

He straightened sharply as clarity exploded into his thoughts.

His grandfather wasn’t the one who needed to apologise to Marisa. His antipathy had been a direct consequence of Nikos’s actions. If he’d opened up to Marisa all that time ago about his life, she would have understood what his grandfather meant to him and reached out to Stratos, however deep her despair had been.

But he hadn’t opened up. He couldn’t change that. Couldn’t change who he was. Couldn’t change that he never opened up to anyone...

But hadn’t he opened up to Marisa? It had been forced on him but he had opened up to her, about virtually everything.

She knew him better than anyone else. When he’d given her his blasé reason for moving into this villa the look in her eyes had told him she understood the real reason behind it, even if it was one he’d never acknowledged to himself, that he’d moved back here to prove to himself that the past didn’t affect him when the ottoman’s very existence proved otherwise. Marisa had seen that. And still she’d given him that same soft smile of love.

Yes, love.

Whatever it was that had stopped his parents loving him hadn’t stopped Marisa placing her cheek to his chest and listening to the beats of his heart...

The beats of his heart picked up speed and he looked at his old bedroom door. That’s where he’d been heading, he now realised, but what he’d intended to do in there he didn’t know, just knew it no longer mattered. If he wanted a future then he had to free himself from the shackles of the past. Free himself properly. In his heart.

Having his child growing inside Marisa had given her comfort. When she’d described grief as being a bruise that hurts with every breath you take, she’d been speaking about her grief for him. How had he not seen that?

Because he’d never thought for a second that he could inspire such feelings in anyone.

When he’d hidden in the shadows for eighteen months, hers had been the face he’d seen before falling asleep. Hadn’t he done the same as she’d done in those long months apart? Listened to recordings of her language to help him sleep?

Theos, he saw it so clearly now. Understood so clearly.

Marisa had been the reason he’d taken the extreme action of faking his own death. To protect her. Because, even then, the thought of anyone or anything harming her in any way had been unbearable and he’d preferred to die himself than expose her to any danger.

Patting his pockets, he found his phone and, fighting the panic threatening to overwhelm him, quickly scrolled through the contacts.

‘Thodoris?’ he said when his call was answered. ‘It’s Nikos Manolas. I need your help.’