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‘Since when?’ he seethed.
Odessa swallowed, her hand darting to her belly as her son chose that moment to kick her—hard. Wincing, she answered, ‘A while.’
‘How long is “a while”?’ Ares demanded.
She cast her mind back, her senses reeling. ‘A few weeks.’
Sergios’s expression grew harder and Ares sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Leave my house. Now.’
The bespectacled man mumbled a quick apology before he darted out through the front door. A purse-lipped Demeter was waiting to shut the door firmly behind him.
Ares’s eyes blazed with a mixture of censure and...was it pain?
‘That talk you wanted. I’m guessing it has something do with this?’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘No! Not this. Ares—’
He stopped her with a raised hand. Glancing around them, he issued a swift order to his father and the staff. With another speaking glance that had her lowering her eyes, Sergios walked away, the staff scurrying after him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARES STARED AT HER, and a bitter silence throbbed between them.
Then, without speaking, he strode towards his study.
Odessa followed at a slower pace, her mind reeling at how two minutes could completely change the landscape of her life. But while she had a few things to explain, she wasn’t giving up.
A sense of déjà vu swept over when she entered, to find Ares pacing in front of the mantelpiece.
‘You consulted a lawyer?’ he rasped, his voice ice-cold shards, his eyes holding the same disbelief, formidable censure and, perhaps most shocking of all, the same pain she’d seen in his father’s eyes. ‘I want to ask how you could, but what I really should be asking myself is why I believed you’d be different.’
Righteous anger stiffened her spine. ‘Don’t you dare play that old nonsense with me. You know deep down that you can trust—’
He waved an imperious hand at the door. ‘You just proved conclusively that I was a fool to entertain that notion. “Have faith”?’ he scoffed, but the edge of his voice was off, something resembling anguish underscoring his words.
‘So I made an appointment with a lawyer to talk through my options? So what? Don’t you dare judge me for it when you would’ve done the same in my shoes.’ She stopped, shook her head, because the most important thing between them remained unsaid. ‘I promise you I was going to cancel. I’d changed my mind about how I needed to tackle this.’
‘When?’ he threw at her, his frame still frozen in brutal fury. He shook his head before she could speak. ‘Don’t bother answering that. You only claim you’d changed your mind because you’ve been caught,’ he snarled.
His wan pallor remained, but she didn’t believe he was in any way diminished. Hell, she would bet good money that he was feeling immensely, powerfully vindicated right now.
Purpose such as she’d never seen before bristled from him...from the clenched fists to the taut muscles that bunched when he moved. Ares didn’t intend to give an inch.
Despair weighed her down as she shook her head. ‘Just when I think we’re getting somewhere you shatter my hopes.’
His head reared up, vicious emotions bristling from him. ‘You have a nerve, speaking of hopes!’
‘Do I? Even though I kept repeatedly hanging on to mine even when you pushed me into a corner? What hope did I have when you kept telling me I wasn’t good enough to stay in my child’s life? But I fought that. You expected me to sit back and take whatever you dish out? How is that rational?’
His jaw clenched. ‘If you were so determined to prove me wrong and stay in this marriage, why did you need to seek out a lawyer?’
She sighed in disbelief. ‘You see how that works, Ares? You demand unfailing loyalty. But what right do you have to mine when you wouldn’t budge about taking away something so vitally important to me?’
‘Even if I wouldn’t, you’ve proved that I was once again blind to trust you.’
Odessa was glad she felt numb, because it meant she didn’t crumble over the fact that her heart had shrivelled to nothing. That she was witnessing the end of her marriage—a marriage that had started on extremely shaky ground and only grown shakier.
There would be a time to mourn it—perhaps far too soon and much more devastatingly than she’d feared. Because even in a half-baked marriage she had been the most intensely happy she’d ever been. But for now she raised her chin, refusing to be cowed.
