A Shameful Consequence

‘What are you paying me for?’

‘For peace,’ Nico said, even if he did not understand his own response. He just wanted to stop the trade, to wipe out one injustice.

He walked the streets; he ran through the streets like a madman; the town clock chimed and he realised it was two a.m. He wanted away from this place and how it made him feel. He would be gone first thing in the morning, would go now to his room and order their best bottle of brandy, not the sickly ouzo that churned in his stomach still.

He walked briskly through the hotel foyer, bypassed the lift and took the stairs, two, three at a time, and when nothing could have halted him, something did.

A bride still in her dress, a half-drunk bottle in one hand, a crumpled heap on the stairs, crying.

‘Leave me,’ she sobbed, and he wanted to, did not want to sit on the stairs and ask her what was wrong, for he already knew.

Did not want to sit and tell her to hush, to dry her tears and to tell her to go back there, as his father would expect him to.

He did neither.

He took her by the hand and made her stand.

Felt her hot hand in his and he wanted all of her, wanted to hold her, to stop the tears, to comfort her.

‘Leave me,’ she begged. ‘I’ll be okay in a moment.’

She wouldn’t be, Nico knew that. The champagne might dim her pain enough to send her back, but no doubt she’d need it again tomorrow, and another night and another … to get through the hell that would be her marriage, because Nico knew the truth.

‘Come with me.’ He took her by the hand and he led her.

‘Come with me to my room.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘HE’S GAY.’

He hadn’t even got her through the door before she blurted it out, and Nico was surprised and rather proud that she did.

HAT she admitted what, after this night, she must never again say to another.

‘Why,’ was Nico’s only response to the revelation as he turned the lights on in his room and saw it for the first time, ‘have I been given the bridal suite?’

Tear-filled eyes looked around and she let out a slightly hysterical laugh—this, the room she had chosen when her father had booked the hotel, this, the room she had later envisaged being part of a magical night.

#X2018;Stavros changed the booking. He said that he wanted the two-bedroom suite. I thought it was so I could get ready away from him, instead he and his koumbaros …’ She was wretched in her grief, the sobs getting louder, and he went to the bathroom and came out with a wad of tissues.

Nico could not help but give a wry smile as he looked around. The maids must have assumed it was being used as the bridal suite and prepared the wrong room for the happy couple, for there were candles that had long since gone out, and petals on the bed, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. The ice had melted and was now water.

‘When did you find out?’ Nico asked, wincing on her behalf when she answered.

‘Just before. When we got back to the room, when still he would not kiss me, when I begged … he told me …’ Constantine sobbed. ‘He even laughed that I hadn’t worked it out, that I hadn’t questioned why he never seemed to want me. I thought it was out of respect for this night.’

‘You had no idea?’ He had assumed she knew, that that was the reason for her hesitancy at the church. That she was going along with things, as so many others on the islands did.

‘I thought things would be different after the wedding.’ She still sobbed. ‘That he was nervous of my father … men always are. I knew I didn’t yet love him, but I thought it might grow, that we’d make it work.’ She was so, so humiliated, so embarrassed. The kisses she had pressed on her new husband seemed to have repulsed him. She switched from shamed to furious. ‘I’ll take a lover,’ she said defiantly, and Nico just stood there. ‘I’ll take ten!’ And Nico suppressed a smile, but when the tears came again he saw the real depth of her grief, heard firsthand what was really distressing this beautiful bride.

‘He knew.’ She sobbed. ‘My father knew. Why would he agree to that? He could have chosen better for me—he’s a prominent man, he’s the island’s lawyer, surely I am worth more than this? I believed him when he said that this was the best choice for me, that other ways end in divorce. I trusted him to make the best choice for me. Why would he choose for his daughter a man who could never love me?’

Nico was quite sure he could hazard an accurate guess.

By local standards this had been a lavish wedding. Clearly her father was one of the island’s wealthy—but how could a lawyer get rich when the people he served were poor? The celebrities in the south had their own legal teams, they would never choose the services of a local. Nico knew how things worked on Lathira, knew from his own family the lengths they would go to to get that next deal—it was why he wanted no part of it. He was sure it was no different here on Xanos. He could smell the corruption yet Constantine seemed to have no idea, and suddenly she was back to scared.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything about it to you.’ Panic flared in her eyes as she realised who she was confiding in. “If Dimitri found out that your father knew about Stavros … Oh, God …’ she whimpered. ‘He’s the one Dimitri always wants to impress …’

‘Constantine. Your secret is safe.’ His voice was clear and commanding, his words unwavering. So badly she wanted to believe in him, but surely she could not trust him. After all, he didn’t even know her name.

‘It’s Connie,’ she said. ‘People I know call me Connie.’

‘And if you knew me, then you would know that I do not speak with my father, other than about the food on the table or the temperature of the air. We do not speak of things.’

‘You might now …’

‘No,’ Nico said. ‘No.’ He said it again, and it was up to her whether or not she believed him. ‘I will say nothing,’ Nico said. ‘One day you might choose to, though.’

Her eyes jerked to his and she glimpsed that possibility.

Maybe when her father was gone, she could end this hell, but there was still her mother, her family, the reputation they lived and died by, and she simply could not do it to them, though Nico did not leave it there.

‘I do know how hard it can be.’

She shot him a disbelieving look. She couldn’t imagine anyone even attempting to put pressure on this strong, assertive man and getting away with it, but when he spoke next she realised that he just might understand.

‘When I grew up, it was a given that I would go into the family business. That I would live in a house a few minutes away with my wife and children, that the family would sit together to eat at night and weekends. My first son would be named Vasos after my father.’ She nibbled on her lower lip, his words painting her future, for even as Stavros had broken the news, he had told her that there would be children, that their first son would be named Dimitri. ‘I broke away. I have made my own business. I come home now and then but always it is to a row. I have no interest in marriage, and—’ his voice was definite ‘—I certainly never want children. It causes fights with my parents even to this day. I am their only son, their only child, and, as they tell me at every given chance, I am a bitter disappointment to them.’

She looked up at him and truly wondered how he could possibly disappoint. She had heard the envy in Dimitri’s voice when he’d spoken of the Eliades and their rich and successful son, but from the way Nico was talking, the pressure from home was exactly the same for him. Yes, maybe he did understand all she was going through, maybe he did know how impossible it was for her.

‘I’m an only child, too …’ Connie said, her voice faltering because she had never really discussed such things, but he nodded with understanding and tentatively she carried on. ‘So much is expected from me. So much of their happiness hinges on me.’

‘When you are in it,’ Nico explained, ‘you cannot judge it, you just know that something is wrong. When you break away …’ She closed her eyes because there was no chance of that, but Nico spoke on. ‘When you clearly see all you have to sacrifice to make them happy, maybe you will choose to be happy for yourself.’

‘Some sacrifice.’ She tried to be brave, to look at the bright side. ‘I will be living in Lathira, in a beautiful home, entertaining …’

‘The perfect wife,’ Nico interrupted. ‘You will lunch with your friends, dressed in your secret … A woman, a wife, perhaps even a mother … ‘And she started to cry a little, because he was right, it had all been worked out.

‘Stavros said that we will have children, that there are ways for me to get pregnant without …’ She choked rather than say ‘without touching me’ but Nico heard every unspoken word and could happily have crossed the corridor and thumped Stavros and then her father, too, for all they would so readily deny her. Of course there were ways for her to have children, to play perfect—he could see her future, could picture it, because so many people here lived mired in their secrets. He looked into her eyes and found out that they were, in fact, the darkest of blue and surely she deserved better. He wanted her to see she could have so much more than the life she was being forced into.

‘When you join your new friends at the gym, when you shop with them and you try on a dress and they tell you that you look beautiful, that if you buy that dress then Stavros will not be able to keep his hands off you …’ He saw tears fill her eyes again and perhaps he should stop, but this would be her truth. ‘Will you be able to admit to these so called friends that not once has he touched you?’

‘Please stop.’

‘Tonight you danced … What did he say that upset you?’

She didn’t answer and Nico walked over, and she wrapped her arms around her body as if to cover it.