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‘It’s model week.’ Leonidas could hear his brother’s grin, and experience told him that in approximately twenty-four hours there’d be tabloid headlines about Thanos’s latest stunning conquest. ‘Did you say you’re getting married?’
Leonidas’s eyes drifted to the window of his study, and beyond it, to where Hannah was lying beside the pool. The bathing costume was really just a couple of scraps of Lycra, and his fingers itched to remove it.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re getting married?’
Leonidas grimaced. ‘On Friday.’
‘As in three days away Friday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christós. I didn’t realise you were seeing anyone.’
‘I’m not. I wasn’t.’ He swept his eyes shut, his stomach clenching painfully. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘So what is it like?’
Leonidas’s chest felt as if it were being scooped out, replaced with acid. ‘She’s pregnant.’
Silence.
It stretched for so long that Leonidas thought they might have lost reception. The phones on their state-of-the-art jets were good, but not one hundred per cent reliable.
‘Thanos?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m just surprised. I thought you’d sworn off women for life.’
‘So did I.’
‘And yet?’
‘And yet,’ Leonidas agreed, his eyes roaming her body with a hunger that was not a part of him. He’d given up on fighting this, on fighting Hannah. She was breathing herself into his soul, and taking over small parts of him, forming his building blocks back into shape. Except for his heart, which would always be locked away, reserved for Amy and Brax.
The rest of him, he could share. Especially if it made her smile the way she had been.
‘When? I mean to say, when will you have this baby?’
‘She’s due in four months.’
T
hanos let out a low whistle. ‘So you’re marrying her for custody?’
The description turned Leonidas’s stomach. ‘I’m marrying her for security.’
A moment of silence and then, gently, ‘Leonidas, the man who killed them is locked up for life. He’ll never get out. There’s no reason to think he wasn’t acting alone.’
‘It’s organised crime. Do you really think he’d have operated without instruction?’
‘Yes,’ Thanos spoke swiftly. ‘I think he was a lunatic, angry that our father had turned on his brother and so he took that out on you—an eye for an eye. There is no risk now.’
‘Would you bet someone’s life on that, Thanos? Would you bet the life of an innocent woman you were too weak to resist and that of her unborn child?’
More silence, and eventually, ‘No.’
Leonidas didn’t realise until that moment how badly he’d needed to hear that. ‘Here with me, on the island, she is safe. Our child will be safe.’
