by Maya Blake
But I was past hysteria. That unfortunate state had occurred two weeks prior, when my father had informed me just how he’d mapped out the rest of my life. How it was my turn to help restore our family’s honour.
Or else.
The cold shivers racing up and down my spine had become familiar in the last month, after a few days spent in denial that my father would truly carry out his intentions.
I’d quickly accepted that he would.
Years of bitterness and humiliation and failure to emulate his ruthless father’s dubious acclaim had pushed him over the edge once and for all.
The soft bristles of the blusher brush passed feverishly over my cheeks. The make-up artist determined to transform me into an eager, blushing, starry-eyed bride.
But I was far from eager and a million miles away from starry-eyed.
The only thing they’d got right in this miserable spectacle was the virginal white.
If I’d had a choice that too would have been a lie. At twenty-four I knew, even in my sheltered existence, that being a virgin was a rare phenomenon. At least now I realised why my father had been hell-bent on thwarting my every encounter with the opposite sex. Why he’d ruthlessly vetted my friendships, curtailed my freedom.
I’d believed my choices had been so abruptly limited since the moment my mother fell from grace. Since she returned home the broken prodigal wife and handed my father all the weapons he needed to transform himself from moderately intolerable to fearsome tyrant. I thought I’d been swept along by the merciless broom of wronged party justice, but he’d had a completely different purpose for me.
A purpose which had brought me to this moment.
My wedding day.
The next shudder coagulated in my chin, making it wobble like jelly before I could wrestle my composure back under control.
Luckily the trio of women who’d descended on our house twenty-four hours ago were clucking about pre-wedding nerves, then clucking some more about how understandable my fraught emotions were, considering who my prospective husband was.
Axios Xenakis.
A man I’d never met.
Sure, like everyone in Greece I knew who he was. A wildly successful airline magnate worth billions and head of the influential Xenakis family. A family whose ill fortune, unlike mine, had been reversed due the daring innovation of its young CEO.
It was rumoured that Axios Xenakis was the kind of individual whose projections could cause stock markets to rise or fall. The various articles I’d read about him had boggled my mind—the idea that any one person could wield such power and authority was bewildering. To top it off, Axios Xenakis was drop-dead gorgeous, if a little fierce-looking.
Everything about the man was way too visceral and invasive. Just a simple glance at his image online had evoked the notion that he could see into my soul, glean my deepest desires and use them against me. It was probably why he was often seen in the company of sophisticated heiresses and equally influential A-listers.
Which begged the question—why the Petras family? More specifically, why me?
What did a man who dated socialites and heiresses on a regular basis, as was thoroughly documented in the media, have to gain by shackling himself to me?
I knew it had something to do with the supreme smugness my father had been exhibiting in the last several weeks but he had refused to disclose. Somehow, behind the sneers and bitterness whenever the Xenakis name came up over the years, my father had been scheming. And that scheming had included me.
In all my daydreams about attaining my freedom, marriage hadn’t featured anywhere. I wanted the freedom to dictate who I socialised with, what I ate, the pleasure to paint my watercolours without fear of recrimination, without judgement... The freedom to live life on my terms.
The hope of one day achieving those things had stopped me from succumbing to abject misery.
But not like this!
I forced my gaze to the mirror and promptly looked away again. My eyes were desolate pools, my cheeks artificially pink with excess rouge. My lips were turned down, reflecting my despair since learning that I was promised to a stranger. One who’d demanded a wedding within twenty-eight days.
My flat refusal had merely garnered a cold shrug from my father, before he had gone for the jugular—my one weakness.
My mother.
As if summoned by my inner turmoil, the electric whine of a wheelchair disturbed the excited chatter of the stylists. The moment they realised the mother of the bride had entered the bedroom, their attention shifted to her.
Taking advantage of the reprieve, I surreptitiously rubbed at my cheeks with a tissue, removing a layer of blusher. The icy peach lipstick disappeared with the second swipe across my lips, leaving me even paler than before but thankfully looking less of a lost, wide-eyed freak. Quickly hanging the thick lace veil over my face to hide the alteration, I stood and turned, watching as the women fawned over my mother.
Iona Petras had been stunningly beautiful once upon a time. Growing up, I was in awe of her statuesque beauty, her vivacity and sheer joy for life. Her laughter had lit up my day, her intelligence and love of the arts fuelling my own appreciation for music and painting.
Now, greying and confined, she was still a beautiful woman. But along with her broken body had come a broken spirit no amount of pretending or smiling, or even gaining the elevated position as mother of the bride, soon to marry a man most deemed a demigod, could disguise.
She withstood the stylists’ ministrations without complaint, her half-hearted smile only slipping when her eyes met mine. Within them I saw ravaging misery and the sort of unending despair that came with the life sentence she’d imposed on herself by returning when she should have fled.
But, just as I’d had to remain here because of her, I knew my mother had returned home because of me. And somewhere along the line Iona Petras had accepted her fate.
‘Leave us, please,’ she said to the stylists, her voice surprisingly steely.
The women withdrew. She wheeled herself closer, her face pinched with worry. For the longest minute she stared at me.
‘Are you all right?’
I tensed, momentarily panicked that she’d learned what I’d hidden from her for the last few weeks. As much as I’d tried to ignore the ever-growing pain in my abdomen, I couldn’t any more. Not only had it become a constant dull ache, it had become a reminder that even health-wise my life wasn’t my own. That I might well be succumbing to the very real ailment that had taken my grandmother—
‘Callie? Are you ready?’
Realising she was talking about the wedding ceremony, I felt the urge to succumb to hysteria pummel me once again. As did the fierce need to be selfish just this once...to simply flee and let the chips fall where they may.
‘Is anyone ever ready to marry a man they’ve never met?’ I asked. ‘Please tell me you’ve found out why he’s demanding I do this?’ I pleaded.
Eyes a shade darker than my own lapis-lazuli-coloured ones turned mournful as she shook her head. ‘No. Your father still refuses to tell me. My guess is that it has something to do with your grandfather and old man Xenakis.’ Before I could ask what she meant, she continued, ‘Anyway, Yiannis will be looking for me, so I need to be quick.’
She reached inside the stylish designer jacket that matched her lavender gown and produced a thick cream envelope, her fingers shaking as she stared at it.
‘What’s that?’ I asked when she made no move to speak.
Within her gaze came a spark of determination I hadn’t seen in years. My heart leapt into my throat as she caught my hand in hers and squeezed it tight.
‘My sweet Callie, I know I’ve brought misery to your life with my actions—’
‘No, Mama, you haven’t. I promise,’ I countered firmly.
She stared at me. ‘I’m not sure whether t
o be proud or to admonish you for being such a good liar. But I know what I’ve done. My selfishness has locked you in this prison with me when you should be free to pursue what young girls your age ought to be doing.’ Her fingers tightened on mine. ‘I want you to make me a promise,’ she pleaded, her voice husky with unshed tears.
I nodded because...what else could I do? ‘Anything you want, Mama.’
She held out the envelope. ‘Take this. Hide it in the safest place you can.’
I took it, frowning at the old-fashioned cursive lettering spelling out my name. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s from your grandmother.’
‘Yiayia Helena?’ A tide of sorrow momentarily washed over me, my heart still missing the grandmother I’d lost a year ago.
My mother nodded. ‘She said I’d know when you needed it. And even if I’m wrong...’
She paused, a faraway look in her eyes hinting that she was indulging in all those might-have-beens that sparked my own desperate imagination. When she refocused, her gaze moved dully over my wedding dress.
‘Even if this...alliance turns out to be tolerable, it’ll help to know you were loved by your grandmother. That should you need her she’ll be there for you the way I wasn’t.’
I held on tighter to her hand. ‘I know you love me, Mama.’
She shook her head, tears brimming her eyes. ‘Not the way a mother should love her child, without selfish intentions that end up harming her. I took the wrong turn with you. I left you alone with your father when I should have taken you with me. Maybe if I had—’ She stopped, took a deep breath and dabbed at her tears before braving my worried stare again. ‘All I ask is that you find a way to forgive me one day.’
‘Mama—’ I stopped when she gave a wrenching sob.
Her gaze dropped to the envelope in my hand. ‘Hang on to that, Callie. And don’t hesitate to use it when you need it. Promise me,’ she insisted fervently.’
‘I... I promise.’
She sniffed, nodded, then abruptly turned the wheelchair and manoeuvred herself out of my bedroom.
Before I could process our conversation I was again surrounded by mindless chatter, unable to breathe or think. The only solid thing in my world became the envelope I clutched tightly in my hand. And when I found that within the endless folds of tulle the designer had fashioned a pocket, I nearly cried with relief as I slipped the envelope into it.
Even without knowing its contents, just knowing it came from my grandmother—the woman who’d helped me stand up to my father’s wrath more times than I could count, who’d loved and reassured me on a daily basis during my mother’s year-long absence when I was fifteen years old—kept me from crumbling as my father arrived and with a brisk nod offered his stiff arm, ordered me to straighten my spine...and escorted me to my fate.
The chapel was filled to the brim, according to the excited chatter of the household staff, and as my father led me out to a flower-bedecked horse-drawn carriage I got the first indication of what was to come.
Over the last three weeks I’d watched with a sense of surrealism as construction crews and landscapers descended on our little corner of the world to transform the church and surrounding area from a place of rundown dilapidation into its former whitewashed charming glory.
The usually quiet streets of Nicrete, a sleepy village in the south of the island of Skyros, the place generations of the Petras family had called home, buzzed with fashionably dressed strangers—all guests of Axios Xenakis. With the main means of getting on and off the island being by boat, the harbour had become a place of interest in the last few days.
Every hotel and guest house on the island was booked solid. Expensive speedboats and a handful of super-yachts had appeared on the horizon overnight, and now bobbed in the Aegean beneath resplendent sunshine.
Of course the man I was to marry chose to do things differently.
My carriage was halfway between home and the church when the loud, mechanical whine of powerful rotors churned the air. Children shouted in excitement and raced towards the hilltop as three sleek-looking helicopters flew overhead to settle on the newly manicured lawns of the park usually used as recreational grounds for families. Today the whole park had been cordoned off—evidently to receive these helicopters.
Beneath the veil I allowed myself a distasteful moue. But the barrier wasn’t enough to hide my father’s smug smile as he watched the helicopters. Or his nod of satisfaction as several distinguished-looking men and designer-clad women alighted from the craft.
I averted my face, hoping the ache in my heart and the pain in my belly wouldn’t manifest itself in the hysteria I’d been trying to suppress for what seemed like for ever. But I couldn’t prevent the words from tumbling from my lips.
‘It’s not too late, Papa. Whatever this is... Perhaps if you told me why, we can find a way—’
‘I have already found a way, child.’
‘Don’t call me a child—I’m twenty-four years old!’
That pulse of rebellion, which I’d never quite been able to curb, eagerly fanned by Yiayia when she was alive, slipped its leash. She’d never got on well with my father, and in a way standing up to him now, despite the potential fallout for my mother, felt like honouring her memory.
His eyes narrowed. ‘If you wanted to help then you should’ve taken that business degree at university, instead of the useless arts degree you’re saddled with.’
‘I told you—I’m not interested in a corporate career.’
Nor was I interested in being constantly reminded that I wasn’t the son he’d yearned for. The one he’d hoped would help him save Petras Industries, the family company which now teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
‘Ne—and just like your mother you let me down. Once again it has fallen to me to find a way. And I have. So now you will smile and do your duty by this family. You will say your vows and marry Xenakis.’
I bit my lip at this reminder of yet another bone of contention between us. I’d fought hard for the right to leave the island to pursue my arts degree, only returning because of my mother. The small art gallery I worked at part-time on Nicrete was a way of keeping my sanity, even as I mourned my wasted degree.
‘After that, what then?’
He shrugged. ‘After that you will belong to him. But remember that regardless of the new name you’re taking on you’re still a Petras. If you do anything to bring the family into disrepute you will bear the consequences.’
My heart lurched, my fists balling in pain and frustration—because I knew exactly what my father meant.
The consequences being my father’s ability to manipulate my mother’s guilt and ensure maximum suffering. His constant threats to toss her out with only the clothes on her back, to abandon her to her fate the way she’d briefly abandoned her family. But while my mother had deserted her child and marriage in the name of a doomed love, my father was operating from a place of pure revenge. To him, his wife had humiliated and betrayed him, and he was determined to repay her by keeping her prisoner. Ensuring that at every waking moment she was reminded of her fall from grace and his power over her.
The reason that I’d been roped in as a means to that end was my love for my mother.
Eight years ago, when he’d returned home with my absentee mother after the doctors in Athens had called and informed him that she’d been in a crash, and that the man she’d run away with was dead, he’d laid out new family rules. My mother would stay married to him. She would become a dutiful wife and mother, doing everything in her power to not bring another speck of disgrace to the family. In return he would ensure her medical needs were met, and that she would be given the finest treatment to adjust to her new wheelchair-bound life.
For my part, I would act the devoted daughter...or my mother would suffer.
The horses whinnying as they came to a stop at the steps
leading to the church doors dragged me to the present, pushing my heartache aside and replacing it with apprehension.
The last of the guests were entering while organ music piped portentously in the air. In less than an hour I would be married to a man I’d never exchanged a single word with. A man who had somehow fallen in league with my father for reasons I still didn’t know.
I glanced at my father, desperate to ask why. His stony profile warned me not to push my luck. Like my heartache, I smothered my rebellion.
My father stepped out of the carriage and held out his hand. Mine shook, and again I was glad for the veil’s cover to hide my tear-prickled eyes.
A small part of me was grateful that my father didn’t seem in a hurry to march me down the aisle because he was basking in the limelight that momentarily banished the shadow of scandal and humiliation he’d lived under for the past eight years. For once people weren’t talking about his wife’s infidelity. Or the fact that the woman who’d deserted him had returned in a wheelchair. Or that he’d taken her back just so he could keep her firmly under his thumb in retribution.
Today he was simply the man who’d seemingly bagged one of the most eligible bachelors in the world for his daughter—not the once illustrious but now downtrodden businessman who’d lost the Petras fortune his father had left him.
The doors to the church yawned open, ready to receive their unwilling sacrifice. My footsteps faltered and my father sent me a sharp look. Unable to meet his eyes without setting off the spark of mutiny attempting to rekindle itself inside me, I kept my gaze straight.
I needed to do this for my mother.
I spotted her in the front row, her head held high despite her fate, and it lent me the strength to put one foot in front of the other. The slight weight of my grandmother’s envelope in my pocket helped me ignore the rabid curiosity and speculative whispers of three hundred strangers.
