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Now, his chest tightening anew, he curled his rejected hand into a ball and dropped it to his side. With his other, he dialled the number to summon his helicopter pilot, told him to ready the chopper for a trip to Athens.
The moment he hung up, she blurted, ‘I’m not happy with granting you full custody of my child.’
An equally visceral need propelled a forceful answer from him. ‘The original terms of the agreement stay. I can’t risk my children going through what I did.’
She rose to her feet and brushed the sand from her dress with a grace so ingrained it was mesmerising to watch. Then she faced him, bold and unflinching.
‘Ares, what your mother did to you and to Sergios was horrible. You have my word that I would never—’
‘No,’ he interrupted, the reminder of his lost sister and the parent responsible for everything he’d lost filling him with fury and bitterness. That Odessa would choose to bring it up...
He swallowed a growl. ‘She swore too. I’ve seen videos of my parents together when they first married. They were ecstatic. She had stars in her eyes when she married my father and she vowed he was the love of her life.’
‘Surely she didn’t just change overnight?’ she queried, bewildered. ‘Something must have happened?’
He pursed his lips. ‘My father thought she deserved the world and he wanted to give it to her.’
Odessa’s eyes softened in that way they always did over his father. He was mildly jealous of it, truth be told.
‘But she wasn’t prepared for the long hours or his dedication to his job,’ he went on. ‘Nor, eventually, was she satisfied with being a chauffeur’s wife, living in the shadow of all that Santella wealth.’
Recollection of the betrayal and pain he and especially his father had suffered dredged through him like spiked anchors, threatening to uproot his very soul.
‘It took some time, yes, but their vows turned to ash. I watched my father bend over backwards and turn himself inside out to hang on to her. When he couldn’t, he begged her to leave my sister behind. She refused. She took a helpless child she didn’t really want because she knew how much it would hurt him. I can’t... I will never permit that to happen to my own children.’
Mutiny etched deeper into her face and in the haunting eyes that threatened to condemn him. ‘They’re...they will be my children too! Doesn’t that count for something?’
Hot on the heels of that unwanted trip down memory lane, the answer was dragged from his shattered soul. ‘We’ve only just begun this journey, agapita. So the jury is still out.’
She reared back with a sharp exhalation, her eyes filled with anguish and fury. ‘We may have just begun this journey, but you’re quickly running out of road for goodwill, Ares. Keep that in mind.’
On top of the knots twisting in his stomach, he didn’t appreciate the lance of guilt that impaled him.
And yet there it was, drilling deeper as she sailed past him, pale, defiant.
Condemning.
‘The jury is still out.’
Odessa had no qualms about proving him wrong. And she would be damned if she’d wait five years to do so. Because as much as she’d endured in her life up till now, the reality of handing over custody of her child would completely annihilate her.
That urge to act sooner grew stronger the closer they got to Athens.
Beside her, Ares sat in brooding silence. With any other man she’d have attributed it to nerves, maybe even worry about what lay ahead of them. But he’d been steadily working on his tablet—although he’d rejected every call that had blared on his phone as the helicopter raced them towards the Greek capital.
Within an hour of landing they were in his doctor’s office.
Odessa tried not to read anything into the inscrutable looks that passed between him and the doctor as she was thoroughly examined, blood samples taken. Nor did she let in hope when the doctor’s seriousness lightened a fraction and Ares finally stopped pacing in the small but luxurious private room.
But by the time the doctor returned, after an excruciating half-hour, she was ready to jump out of her skin. So she didn’t mind her manners when she heard the doctor address Ares in Greek.
‘Tell me what’s going on!’
Although she addressed the doctor, she couldn’t drag her gaze off Ares, and the fact that he’d gone stock-still.
When she managed to look, she found the doctor beaming at her.
‘As I suspected, the spotting is nothing to worry about. I wanted to double-check, of course, but everything is all right. Congratulations, Kyria Zanelis. You’re healthily pregnant.’
