The Kanellis Scandal

Zoe pressed her pale lips together and nodded that she understood.

‘Try to keep in your mind that once we have left here they will leave, and your neighbours will retrieve their peace and quiet.’

Staring down at Toby sleeping snugly in his car seat, she nodded again.

‘Will you allow me to take care of your brother?’

This time she looked up. Those amazing eyes were burning with so many conflicting things, from uncertainty in what she was doing to straight-out anxiety and fear, that Anton broke his own constraints, reached out and rested his fingers beneath her chin. Her skin felt like the finest silk.

‘Trust me.’ He uttered his biggest lie yet, then watched her lips tremble as they parted. ‘I do,’ she told him.

It was no reassurance. In fact his own expression turned so tough even he felt its harshness as he bent to grasp the handle of the child’s seat. As he straightened up again he looked at Kostas, who said something into his mobile then turned to open the door.

Zoe’s heart was throbbing in her mouth even before the din hit her. The afternoon sunlight spilled over the threshold just before it was blocked out by Kostas’s bulky shape. Anton placed an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t protest when he drew her close into his side. They walked through the door in a huddle of dipped heads and baby seat. She did as she had been told to do and focused on the limousine standing there with a man at the ready to throw open the rear door.

There were flashes, shouts, the vague impression of a swirling crowd-surge. ‘What does it feel like to be Theo Kanellis’s granddaughter, Zoe? Hey, Anton, how does it feel to lose a fortune? Is it true Theo Kanellis wants the boy?’

His handsome face locked in austere lines, lips pinned together, Anton kept them walking. His own body blocked Zoe’s transfer into the car. The baby seat followed, grabbed and hugged to Zoe’s lap as he dipped his long body and followed her inside. One of his men closed the door. Her eyes were wide and stark with alarm. She almost jumped out of her skin when people started banging on the glass beside her, making her swing around wildly to find camera flashes blinding her eyes.

They started moving. Peeling her eyes forward, she saw the shadowy bulk of a uniformed driver separated from them by a partition of glass.