‘I feel like a plucked chicken!’ she berated Nikkos over the phone. ‘And just so you know, I won’t be having inter … I won’t be sleeping with this guy, so what the hell was the point? He’s never going to know what I’ve got going on down there.’
‘It’s Mykonos,’ Nikkos said, grateful Ella wasn’t there to see his blushes. ‘You will be wearing a bikini sometimes. In Greece, men don’t like—’
‘Screw Greece!’ Ella cut him off waspishly. ‘I’m Persephone Hamlin and I didn’t come here to find a Greek boyfriend. I came here to get over my asshole, coke-head husband and his latest prostitute girlfriend.’
‘Called?’ Nikkos quizzed her.
‘Katya,’ Ella answered, not missing a beat. ‘They met at Les Caves nightclub in St Tropez, the day after Nick celebrated six months sober and I kicked him off the yacht the next morning. I’ve got this Nikkos. I’m ready.’
In reality, Ella was by no means sure she was ready. It was true that, ever since Camp Hope and starting her brain training, she was growing in confidence. With the white noise in her head under her own control for the first time in her life, she was starting to feel different. It was as if a thick layer of cloud had cleared, and she was seeing the world as it really was – the way everyone else saw it. Socially she felt less awkward. And in a strange way, taking on a cover story, an alter ego, made it even easier to practice her newfound skills. Even so, she knew she had a history of saying the wrong thing. If she made a misstep as Persephone Hamlin, the consequences could be grave. It wasn’t just her own life she’d be risking.
On the other hand, if she didn’t project confidence to Nikkos now, she might never get another chance to avenge her parents. Destiny was calling, and ready or not, Ella wasn’t about to miss her shot.
In the distance, the church bells tolled once for one a.m. Tonight had gone well, better than she’d expected. Makis Alexiadis wanted her. She’d sensed it in the club, and confirmed it waiting for her cab outside, when to her delight she’d managed to tune successfully into his cell-phone communications. Since leaving Camp Hope, Ella’s attempts to use her powers on her own had proved worryingly hit and miss, despite her daily mindfulness practice, as prescribed by Professor Dix. But on this occasion, Makis’s calls came through loud and clear.
‘He requested two different escorts, both to have short blonde hair, within ten minutes of me leaving,’ Ella told Gabriel after her shower, in what would be the first of their regular nightly debrief calls. ‘That means he is very interested.’ She wisely chose not to add the part about her own, powerful attraction to Makis, the ruthless killer with the raw sexual magnetism of a young Marlon Brando on steroids.
‘Good,’ said Gabriel, although nothing in his tone suggested that he thought Makis’s intentions towards Ella were ‘good’ at all. ‘Stay close and let me know of your next contact. And be careful, Ella.’
‘It’s Persephone now,’ she corrected him, teasingly. ‘And don’t worry. I will.’
She found it hard to sleep that night. Not because of the white noise traffic from her fellow hotel guests – she was now mostly able to lower that fairly easily to an almost comforting hum – but because of the adrenaline coursing through her veins, mingled with a raging river of untamed and unquenchable lust. It seemed impossible to think that only six weeks ago she’d been Ella Praeger, lonely data analyst at Biogen Medical, working for the loathsome Gary. And now here she was, an international spy, on a mission to seduce a crime boss and help bring down his evil, global network. And hopefully, in the process, exact vengeance on the woman who’d stood by and watched her mother drown.
Thinking about her mother’s death brought Ella back down to earth. Would vengeance bring closure? Ella didn’t know. But for the first time in her life she felt she had a purpose; that her actions and decisions mattered. Being Persephone Hamlin was going to be an adventure, but an adventure that meant something.
It felt good.
Ella was still finishing breakfast, a delicious buffet of creamy Greek yogurt, honey, fresh fruit and various different breads and cheeses, when she got the first call.
‘Good morning, Miss Hamlin. This is Makis Alexiadis. We met last night.’
His voice sent shivers down her spine, and then directly between her legs, but Ella quickly pushed them aside and jumped into character. You can do this.
‘It’s Mrs Hamlin,’ she said primly. ‘And how did you get my number?’
‘I’m a resourceful man,’ Mak replied smoothly. ‘I wanted to apologize.’
‘I see,’ said Ella. Her tone wasn’t rude, but neither was it exactly inviting. ‘For what, exactly?’
‘You found me to be impolite last night. I would hate to leave you with that impression.’
‘Thank you. I accept your apology,’ Ella said regally, and hung up.
Sprawled out in his four-poster bed in Villa Mirage’s sumptuous master suite, Makis laughed out loud.
Bitch!
Who the hell did Persephone Hamlin think she was?
The next call came that afternoon. Ella was reading by the pool, a new biography of Lincoln. (For reasons best known to himself, Gabriel had declared Persephone Hamlin to be a history buff.)
‘Persephone. May I call you Persephone?’
‘Mr Alexiadis.’ Ella sighed. ‘Is there something else I can help you with?’
‘As a matter of fact, there is. I’d like you to have dinner with me tonight. And I insist that you call me Mak.’
‘Mak.’ She softened just fractionally. ‘Look, I do appreciate the invitation. Truly. And I admire your persistence. But as I told you last night, I’m married.’
‘To a man who isn’t worthy of you,’ Mak shot back.
‘Oh, and you are, I suppose?’ she retorted archly.
Sitting at the desk in his glass-walled study, Mak felt a surge of triumph. The cold Lady Persephone was beginning to defrost. Only slightly. But there was definitely a playfulness in that last response that hadn’t been there before.
‘Have dinner with me and find out,’ he purred.
She hesitated, just long enough to give him hope.
‘I can’t tonight, I’m afraid. But thank you again.’
For the second time in a day, she put the phone down on him.
It’s a gauntlet, thought Mak, feeling happier than he had in years. She wants me to chase her.
Be careful what you wish for, Mrs Hamlin.
It was almost two weeks before ‘Persephone’ finally relented and agreed to a ‘date’ of sorts. Two weeks that were every bit as hard on Ella as they were on Makis.
‘You did what?’ Gabriel erupted when he heard the news. ‘Are you out of your mind? No. Cancel.’
Ella was perplexed. ‘Why should I cancel? You were the one telling me I was in danger of stringing this out too long. You literally instructed me to accept him.’
‘Yes, for dinner.’ His voice quivered with frustration and anxiety. ‘Surrounded by other people, and where you stand a chance of intercepting any email or cell-phone communications he might receive. Not on a boat! Alone! With no cell reception, no means of rescue. He’s a killer, Ella. You seem to have forgotten that fact.’
‘Of course I haven’t,’ said Ella, slightly sheepishly because the truth was she often did forget it, especially when Mak gave Persephone his hungry lion look. ‘But a boat is more intimate than dinner,’ she countered. ‘Just the two of us, on the open waves.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.’
‘But I’m here to get close to him. To invite confidences. Isn’t that the whole point?’
‘No!’ Gabriel said angrily. ‘The whole point was for you to use your special abilities to gather intelligence about Athena. Which you can’t do, alone on a boat or some godforsaken private beach with a psychopath.’
‘Mak wants to seduce Persephone, not kill her,’ said Ella stubbornly. ‘I’ll be fine.’
You hope, thought Gabriel despairingly. He hated these calls with
Ella, hated not being close enough to help her if she needed it. Nikkos Anastas was the ‘man on the ground’ for this mission, but Nikkos was so fat and slow these days he could barely break into a jog without risking a heart attack, never mind execute a daring, last-minute rescue mission, should Ella need one. They had to provide Ella with some sort of backup.
‘I’m surprised Big Mak suggested a fishing boat, and not a superyacht,’ he said, trying to drag the conversation back into calmer, more civil waters. ‘That’s hardly his usual style. He’s normally so flashy he makes Kanye look low key.’
‘True, but Persephone isn’t, remember?’ said Ella. ‘She’s the opposite. And flashiness was one of the things she came to hate about her husband. The fishing trip was her suggestion.’
Gabriel groaned. He wasn’t going to win this one, but he didn’t like it.
He didn’t like it at all.
Miriam Dabiri didn’t like it either.
Watching through the blacked-out windows of her town car as Makis Alexiadis helped the odd-looking Hamlin woman down from the jetty into a simple, rustic wooden fishing boat, she felt a lump of bile lodge painfully in her chest. Mak looked as dashing as ever in a sea-green polo shirt and Ralph Lauren shorts, his dark hair slicked back and his eyes hidden behind tortoiseshell Prada shades. The girl, Persephone, by contrast, appeared to have made no effort at all, and in fact looked more like a boy than ever in loose-fitting harem pants and a black tank top, teamed with a simple headscarf and flip flops.
Who are you? Miriam thought bitterly as she watched the two of them push laughingly off into open water. Where the hell did you come from?
Two weeks ago she, Miriam, had had the great Makis Alexiadis eating out of her hand, begging for her attention. True, there had been other girls around. But no one Miriam was confident she couldn’t outclass, in bed and out of it.
‘You have a body built for sex,’ Makis had told her, the first night they made love. ‘You’re incredible.’
It was true. She did. And she was. Until all of a sudden this androgynous, small-breasted, American Uma-Thurman-lookalike appeared out of nowhere and somehow managed to blow Miriam out of the water. She wasn’t even pretty, for God’s sake! Not to mention her rude, sullen manner. It was beyond Miriam what it was about Persephone Hamlin that had her almost-beau so utterly obsessed.
I’m watching you, bitch.
Miriam Dabiri might look like a sex-doll, but she was far from stupid. Nor was she about to let a hot ticket like Big Mak Alexiadis slip through her fingers without a fight.
There was more to Mrs Persephone Hamlin than met the eye.
Miriam intended to find out what it was.
Mak watched as Persephone sat perched on a cushion at the bow of the boat, trailing her delicate fingers in the water while he rowed. How he wished those fingers were caressing his naked body instead, clawing at him, begging him to make love to her harder, faster, deeper …
The fantasy faded away as the physical demands of fighting against the waves asserted themselves, making his arms burn and his chest heave. He tried to remember the last time he had been in a rowboat, never mind actually sat at the oars. Long enough ago that he’d forgotten how good it felt to have the wind on his face and the salt spray on his arms; infinitely nicer than working out on his state-of-the-art ergo machine back at the villa.
I must do this more often, he thought, then laughed at himself for the ridiculousness of that idea, and for how much he’d already let this bolshie young woman affect him.
‘How much further to the beach?’ she asked, her voice half lost on the wind as she turned to face him.
‘Not too far,’ he panted. ‘Around the next headland.’
‘The beach’ turned out to be a private cove on one of a string of tiny islands that Makis had bought up over the years, bribing his way around the notoriously complex Greek property laws. As they approached the thin strip of white sand, it was hard to imagine a more peaceful, idyllic spot. Or a more romantic one. The ruins of Delos were just visible on the horizon, but apart from those and a single, shabby fishing trawler in the distance, there was nothing to see but sea and sky. The island itself was utterly deserted, with only the occasional hardy olive tree, rooted stubbornly on the shoreline, braving the warm but relentless wind. For the first time Ella felt a pang of nervousness, remembering Gabriel’s warnings. ‘You’re alone with no cell reception, no means of rescue. He’s a killer.’
‘What would you like to do first, my lady? Fish, eat or swim?’ Mak asked, looking absolutely nothing like a killer as he spread their picnic blanket on the ground, securing it with rocks he found scattered beneath the trees. In fact, he was so handsome and charming, so flatteringly solicitous of her happiness, that Ella had to consciously remind herself that: a) it wasn’t her he was interested in but Persephone Hamlin, a figment of Gabriel’s imagination; and b) he was in fact, as Gabriel never failed to remind her, a psychopath. More than that, he was a man who sold children to predators, who traded in human life as if people were mere goods to be profited from, and who might be the key to finding the woman who murdered Ella’s parents. She was ashamed of her powerful sexual attraction to him, and worried that the shame didn’t seem to make it go away.
As if on cue, Gabriel’s voice suddenly rang out in Ella’s head like a bell in an empty church. ‘BE CAREFUL.’
Are you kidding me? thought Ella. Somehow the bloody man was managing to transmit to her, even here. Worse, she seemed unable to tune him out. Where is he? And how is he blocking out all my frequencies? The last thing she needed right now was a back-seat driver.
Looking around, her eyes were drawn to the fishing trawler out towards Delos. Could it be? She tried to remember what Professor Dix had said about hacking into local transmitters remotely. Could Gabriel or Nikkos have used the boat as a sort of mobile radio station?
‘I am being careful!’ she replied, waspishly – and foolishly, as she knew Gabriel couldn’t hear her.
‘What?’ Makis looked at her, his dark eyes narrowing.
Shit. Ella’s heart plunged into her stomach as she realized to her horror that she’d spoken out loud.
‘I’m being careful … with what I eat.’ Persephone scrambled, smiling reassuringly at her date. ‘I saw all the baklava you packed for us. Let’s swim first. Make sure we’ve earned it.’
‘Sure.’ Mak brightened, thrilled by the prospect of seeing more of Mrs Hamlin’s body at last. He passed her the simple cotton bag she’d brought with her on the boat, assuming it contained a bikini. Hopefully a skimpy one. ‘After you.’
‘NO!’ thundered Gabriel. ‘Tell him no. Keep your clothes on!’
Ella rubbed her temples, trying desperately to turn Gabriel off. Didn’t he know he was distracting her? She desperately tried to recall some of the other tricks that Dix had taught her. Why was nothing working?
‘Tell him you forgot your swimsuit.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Can’t what?’ Makis asked. ‘Is something the matter, Persephone?’
Jesus. I did it again.
‘No, no. Everything’s fine. I was just thinking that I can’t decide between swimming and fishing. I mean, I haven’t fished in years, but there’s something rather romantic about catching one’s own food, don’t you think?’
She touched Mak’s arm lightly with her hand and turned her head to one side coquettishly, successfully diffusing his irritation. Thank God.
‘I suppose there is,’ he answered gruffly, laying his own, warm hand over hers. A jolt of desire surged through her, so violently that she worried whether Gabriel might pick up on it.
‘You know … you remind me of someone,’ said Mak, his expression subtly changing.
‘Very careful!’ boomed Gabriel. ‘He’s trying to …’
‘Do I?’ Ella smiled at Mak, trying simultaneously to interrupt Gabriel’s signal with one of Dix’s mind-control techniques. If he didn’t stop distracting her, she was going to make another mistake, an
d one more might prove fatal. But to her immense relief, this time she succeeded in blocking him out. Gabriel’s voice was gone.
‘Mmmm,’ said Makis. ‘You do. And the strangest thing about it is that I can’t think who. But when you smiled just then, I saw it.’
‘What did you see?’ She moved closer to him. Dangerously close.
‘Something I recognized.’ Reaching out, he ran a slow, languid finger down Ella’s face and along her jaw, stopping just before he reached her lips. For a moment she thought she might be about to spontaneously combust with arousal. It took every ounce of her self-control not to show it.
‘I don’t know.’ Smiling, Mak withdrew his hand. ‘Maybe we met in a past life. Isn’t that the sort of thing you Californians believe in?’
‘Not all of us,’ said Ella, clearing her throat, and deciding that Persephone Hamlin would be much too down to earth and practical for any of that ‘past lives’ nonsense.
She walked over to the two fly rods that Makis had propped against a sandbank a few yards from the water’s edge. Makis followed. Handing her the smaller rod, he stood behind her, his strong, hard body pressed against hers as he instructed her on the correct grip.
‘Casting a fly is an art form.’ His breath felt warm in Ella’s ear and she could smell his cologne, some heady mixture of patchouli and pine. She could have wept with longing. ‘But it’s also a knack, like juggling or riding a bicycle. Once you know how you’ll never forget.’
His warm, smooth palm closed over her hand as he guided her rod up and backwards, before jolting it to a stop with a little flick. He’s evil. He’s a psychopath. Ella’s brain kept re-sending the message, but her body kept returning it to sender. Another shiver of desire shot through her as a second twitch of the wrist sent her line flying forwards and her fly landing on the water, with a rather inelegant splash. She tried not to think about the frantic warning messages Gabriel was no doubt trying to send her right now.
‘You see, Persephone?’ Makis whispered.
‘I think so,’ Ella rasped, forcing herself to step forward so that their bodies were no longer touching. ‘Let me try.’
The Phoenix Page 18
