‘I employed an international security firm and with their help, I faked my death and disappeared. My business partners could legally take care of the businesses. My “death” meant the cartel had no reason to go after you or anyone else associated with me.’
There had been no debate in his mind about confiding his plans to Marisa. Safer for her to believe he was dead.
But he couldn’t switch off the horror of those photos and for his own peace of mind and to satisfy himself of her safety, he’d employed the same security force to keep watch over her.
‘Drowning gave a plausible reason for me to vanish. I was smuggled to Alaska and spent the months of my death alone in a cabin in the Alaska Mountain Range. Without a body, a death certificate can’t be issued for a number of years, which meant I could resume my life when it was over.’ He raised his shoulders. ‘And now it’s over.’
Over but with the wreckage still to be cleared.
Despite his best efforts, the Lopezes had still got caught in the cartel’s snare. He knew perfectly well it had been incidental to his own dealings with them—the cartel had needed to increase its distribution processes so they could get their evil goods into the nightclubs and other places it was sold—but it had still come as a blow when he’d learned via the daily report he’d received of Marco Lopez’s murder a year ago. A devastating blow made harder by being eight thousand kilometres away and helpless to do anything about it.
Marco had been a good man who’d welcomed Nikos into his family, and Nikos’s guilt that he’d only had Marisa watched sat like poison in his guts.
That had been the lowest point of his exile. It had also been the moment he’d understood why Felipe Lorenzi, the man who ran the security operation, had insisted on sending him to such a remote part of the world. Sitting idle while the world burned was not Nikos’s style but placing him one hundred and twenty kilometres away from the nearest road had gone some way to curbing his impulsive take-charge tendencies.
He didn’t like to remember how close he’d come to packing a rucksack and taking his chances in the Alaskan wilderness when he’d learned the devastating news. If Felipe hadn’t called to tell him the Lopezes had also hired him to run their personal security in the wake of Marco’s death, he would have made that hike.
And if a single one of the daily reports had mentioned Marisa’s pregnancy or the birth of her child...his child...he dreaded to think what he would have done.
Marisa tried to process what she’d just been told but there was so much to wrap her head around. Too much. Nikos had made a clear and conscious decision to fake his own death. He’d willingly allowed her to believe he was dead.
She met his stare and hugged her knees tighter. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He raised a shoulder before having another drink. ‘My death had to be convincing. Believable.’
‘I understand that... Can I have some more Scotch?’ She would get it for herself but didn’t trust her legs to keep her upright. Everything inside her felt jellified.
He got to his feet and strolled to the bar. She couldn’t stop herself watching his every move, afraid that if she took her eyes off him for a second he would disappear again. None of this felt real.
She clasped the refilled glass tightly while he settled back on the armchair and she tried her hardest to get her scrambled thoughts in order. ‘I think I understand why you did it—faked your death. That cartel...’ she squeezed her eyes shut as memories flashed through her: her father’s coffin; gentle Rocco’s dead body floating in the swimming pool ‘...were evil. But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me, why you were happy for me to believe you were dead.’
‘I wasn’t happy about any of it,’ he retorted bitingly.
‘You could have confided in me. Prepared me. I can keep my mouth shut, especially about something as serious as that.’
‘Secrets don’t stay secrets if they’re shared. And if I had told you, who else should I have told? My grandfather? My business partners?’
His indifference, both in his choice of words and his tone, pummelled through her. When she looked at him and found the indifference there in his stare too, her battered heart withered. ‘I would have confided in you,’ she whispered.
‘You don’t know that. Until you’re in a situation, you don’t know how you would react.’
‘There is no way I would have let the man I love think I was dead. I wouldn’t have put you through that pain.’
She caught a tiny flinch in his features before he said, ‘Not even if you knew the pain would be temporary and that the alternative would mean actual, physical danger?’
Temporary? Marisa had a large sip of the Scotch and let it burn down her throat. ‘The cartel was taken down two weeks ago,’ she said slowly.
He inclined his head in agreement.
‘Why are you only telling me now? Why not then, as soon as the danger was over?’
He took another drink of his own.
‘Are you only telling me now because you’ve learned about Niki?’
His light brown eyes flickered. ‘You call him Niki?’
She nodded. She’d named him for his father but the first time she’d said the name aloud she’d burst into tears. It had got easier hearing others say it over time but those tears and the fact that she’d wanted him to have his own identity without the burden of a dead father to live up to had found her developing her own variant of the name.
‘What’s he like?’
‘A baby. He’s beautiful. He has your colouring—I think he’ll be tall like you too. He’s crawling and tries to stand himself up, and he cut his first tooth two weeks ago...’ Her words trailed off as she was reminded, again, that Nikos could have safely knocked on her door two weeks ago and put her out of her misery. He’d chosen not to. ‘Tell me the truth, Nikos, are you only here now because of Niki?’
‘I can’t ignore the fact I have a child.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘You can’t. But what I want to know is would you have told me you were alive if you hadn’t found out about him?’
‘What would have been the point? You’ve moved on with your life. You didn’t need a ghost from your past showing up.’
She tilted her head back and breathed through the tightening in her chest. ‘So that’s a no, then.’
‘I did what I thought was best.’
‘For who? You or me? You can’t think I wouldn’t have found out eventually. You always intended to resume your life—we have friends in common. Someone would have seen you and told me. Sooner or later the media will pick up on it.’ She downed the rest of her Scotch in an effort to drown her growing anger. ‘Is that what you wanted for me? To get a call or read an article telling me the man I’d mourned for eighteen months was alive and kicking? Or was it that you didn’t care enough to tell me? That rather than it being me who’d moved on, it was you and this was one conversation you simply couldn’t be bothered to have?’
‘I didn’t imagine you’d moved on. This is your engagement party.’
‘And what, you made assumptions about my state of mind? Stop making excuses and be honest with me. You’ve had two weeks to tell me you’re alive and the only reason you’re here telling me now is because of Niki.’
Resting his elbows on his thighs he leaned forward. His features were expressionless as he said the cutting words, ‘So what?’
CHAPTER THREE
MARISA HAD TROUBLE closing her jaw enough to speak. Were her ears deceiving her or had Nikos really just said that? ‘“So what”?’
He shrugged, his expression now nonchalant. ‘Yes. So what? We were lovers but you knew the score. I don’t do long term and I never pretended differently. I’m not here to resurrect an affair that would have soon died a natural death. You’ve moved on and I’ve moved on but that doesn’t stop me wanting to know my child and being a father to
him.’ He swirled the last of the Scotch in his glass and then tipped it down his throat.
Marisa hadn’t thought the evening could produce a bigger shock than Nikos being alive but this revelation landed even harder, filling her brain with the dizzying heat that had made her faint only an hour or so before.
It felt like she’d fallen through a trapdoor and had hurtled down and down to land with a thump that left her entire body bruised.
She knew the score? What score? She had a vague recollection of a date together when they’d talked about dreams for their respective futures and Nikos saying something about never wanting to be tied down, but that had been in their early days, before they’d slept together, before things had intensified so much that being parted had become a physical ache. The nights they couldn’t be together had still been spent together, laptops open, catching up on their day and making dirty talk through video calls before wishing each other goodnight.
Did none of that mean anything to him?
And what about all the times she’d told him she loved him? Didn’t that mean anything either? He’d never said the words back to her but every time she’d said it, he would either kiss her if they were together in person or blow her a kiss if they were speaking through their laptops or phones.
He was very different from her. She’d known that from the outset. His refusal to say the three magic words would have affected her far more deeply if she hadn’t intuited from the little he’d told her of his background that love as a word held no meaning for him. Nikos showed his feelings by deeds and in the six months they’d been together his actions had been those of a man infatuated.
Or was that what she’d wanted to think? Had she seen what she’d wanted to see? Believed what she’d wanted to believe?
She stared into the face that was giving so little away and fought to keep the tears burning the back of her eyes from falling. ‘Don’t you even care about Raul?’
If Nikos had ever felt anything for her then surely he would feel something at her being engaged to another man, and it was taking all the control she had not to fling herself at his feet and beg him to snap out of this horrid ice-cool persona and tell her she wasn’t alone in feeling overwhelmed at being in the same room together again, that she wasn’t the only one having to control hands that yearned to touch and lips that yearned to caress, an entire body that yearned to wrap around him and feel his warm skin against hers.
The growing desperation for his touch fought with what her eyes were telling her. This icy Nikos was a facet of his personality she’d seen only fleetingly before and never directed at her.
Nikos strove not to let the rancid burn at the mention of Marisa’s fiancé show on his face. When he’d learned two months ago during a wet afternoon spent trawling the internet that she’d become engaged, he’d shrugged it off. See? He’d been right that her affection and words of love had been nothing special. She’d picked herself up and found a replacement for him. Good luck to her.
When, later that same night of discovery, he’d found his fingers typing the name of her fiancé into his search engine, he’d been so disturbed at his actions that he’d hurled his phone at the wall. It had been unfortunate that he’d used enough force to crack the screen. His strength had been surprising too, considering how drunk he’d been that night.
He would not accept that his online search of Raul Torres’s name earlier that day and all the calls he’d made about him had been like lancing a boil. He’d only done it because her fiancé would be a huge part of his son’s life. Any father would do the same.
Theos. Him, a father.
‘I don’t know the man,’ he answered evenly, swallowing his anger to stare directly into her eyes. ‘But I don’t care for what I’ve heard. Does Nikos think of Raul as his father?’
Her head dropped. She rubbed her hands over her face before answering. ‘He hardly knows him and he’s too young to think in terms like that.’
‘Good.’ The relief he felt made his body sag but he ignored it to inject a warning tone into his voice. ‘I don’t want to make trouble for you, Marisa, but I don’t want my son to think of anyone as his father but me.’
But the sickly pallor her skin had turned told him her mind had wandered away from him and his stomach clenched to think it was that man it had wandered to.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Where’s my handbag?’
‘I assume it’s where you left it.’
She staggered to her feet. ‘My phone’s in it. I need to get it.’
‘You want to go back to the snake pit for your phone?’
‘If there’s a problem at home, Estrella won’t be able to get hold of me. She’s looking after Niki for the night.’ Just thinking it was enough for icy shards to stab at Marisa’s chest and pierce into her brain. How long had she been uncontactable in this suite?
‘She must have your mother and sister’s numbers?’
‘Yes....’
‘Then stop panicking.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. ‘What does your bag look like?’
‘Small and silver... Can I borrow that to call Elsa? I know her number by heart.’
He unlocked it and handed it to her. ‘If she doesn’t answer, we’ll call the concierge service. They’ll find it.’
Thankfully her sister answered, assured her she was looking after the bag, and promised to bring it to the suite straight away. From the tone of her voice, Marisa could tell she was dying to bombard her with questions but, for once, Elsa restrained herself.
When the call was over, she dragged her feet to the bar where Nikos had moved to, pushed his phone to him, and helped herself to another Scotch.
Marisa had avoided alcohol during the pregnancy and in the weeks she’d unsuccessfully tried to breastfeed, and had barely touched it since. She’d never been a heavy drinker but any tolerance she’d developed would surely have been lost. With the amount of Scotch and the earlier champagne she’d had that night, she should be drunk but the only effect it was having on her was a slight numbing of all the mounting shocks and adrenaline surges.
How could she have forgotten about her phone? It didn’t matter that Nikos was right and that the housekeeper could easily get hold of her mother and sister. Niki was her responsibility.
But, dear God, this was all so overwhelming. Impossible. Nikos standing close enough that she could reach out and touch him.
Her grief for him had left her bedbound for weeks. Only the positive pregnancy test had got her out of bed, some maternal instinct kicking in that demanded she take care of herself for the sake of her growing foetus. Her baby had been the spur she’d needed to fight through the despair. His birth and the responsibility that came with it had forced her to nestle Nikos away into the hidden reaches of her heart. Though time had never even begun to heal the pain, it had dulled her memories of how deeply her need for him had consumed her. She’d been like a schoolgirl, daydreaming constantly about him, aching for him, her mind on him wherever she was and whatever she was doing.
To stand beside his towering body now, to watch him breathe, drink, the movements of his mouth and throat when he spoke, the movements of his muscles, flesh and blood, alive...
It was too much. Every cell in her body ached to throw itself at him, to rip his black shirt off and press her cheek to his chest and feel the steady beat of his heart in her ear.
And then she caught his baleful stare and nausea roiled in her belly. He wasn’t here for her. He didn’t want her any more. Nikos had moved on in every way imaginable.
Holding her glass tightly, she filled her mouth with the fiery liquid and willed her eyes not to leak again.
He leaned his back against the bar and breathed heavily before saying, ‘I meant what I said. I don’t want to cause trouble for you, Marisa, but Raul Torres is bad news. From everything I’ve been told about h
im, the man’s a snake, in business and love.’
She swallowed the Scotch and willed even harder for the tears to stay hidden, tried to breathe through the crushing weight in her chest and stomach. ‘What business is it of yours?’
Nikos had watched her fall apart at his feet with an indifference that bordered on clinical. He’d just admitted he wouldn’t have cared if she’d spent the rest of her life believing he was still dead. He’d never had any intention of seeing her again.
‘If you marry him then he has influence over my son,’ he said roughly.
‘He’s not going to have any influence because I’m not marrying him.’ She drank more of the Scotch and gave a tiny spurt of near-hysterical laughter. ‘It’s almost funny. I only went ahead with the party tonight because I didn’t want to humiliate him but he’s been humiliated in the most public way imaginable. God knows what he’ll do now.’
Nikos stared at her. The anger that had pulsed and churned at the mention of her fiancé reduced fractionally. ‘You were already planning to end the engagement?’
‘Yes. I thought he was a good choice but I was wrong. He let me believe he’d love Niki as his own but it was a lie. If he cared about Niki he would have been there when we needed help but he abandoned us. It’s the business he wants.’ She finished her Scotch, placed the glass on the bar and wiped her plump mouth with the back of her hand.
‘If he abandoned you,’ he said slowly, ‘why go ahead with the party? Why care if you humiliate him?’
‘Because he’s got a vengeful side. He’s expecting to take over the running of Lopez Shipping—we were going to align our two businesses. He’s already learned too much about how we run ours. He can undermine us and undercut us and steal our contracts and do God knows what other damage. I need to end things amicably. After everything my family’s been through these last eighteen months, the last thing I want is another fight.’
The Secret Behind the Greek's Return Page 3
