“I swear this was not—”
“Don’t swear. You can always find another reason to walk away that is perfectly acceptable to you, and I can’t risk going through this again, if not for myself, then for Alex. He needs a whole and healthy mother, not a mass of anxiety and misery.”
He staggered back a step, his shoulders slumping. “I will bring you proof that this will never happen. And I will prove to you that we were both wrong about me. I’m not my father’s son, Selene. I’m not a twisted, unfeeling, selfish deserter. Don’t give up on me, agape mou. Don’t let me out of your heart yet.”
She gave him a wary nod, her heart starting to expand inside her with resurging belief.
Just when she thought he’d take her in his arms again, knew that she’d dissolve there and sob out her love and surrender in his embrace, tell him she wanted no proofs, forgave him, he gave her a solemn nod, as if he’d received a binding oath, and turned away.
She stared after him as he walked out of her office looking like a warrior demigod embarking on a mission with impossible odds and ultimate dangers, determined to not come back without his trophy.
She didn’t hear from Aris again for four days.
The doubt demons started coming back to whisper in her ear, getting louder with each passing empty, lonely, gnawing moment.
What if he’d ended up thinking she and Alex weren’t worth the price of having someone love and depend on him for the rest of his life? What if he was saving himself the endless complications of intimacy, going back to his comfortably numb life of isolation?
She couldn’t believe that. But doubt was malignant, found her weak in his absence and ate at her.
On the fifth day, she was putting Alex down for his afternoon nap when her cell phone rang.
Damon started talking without preliminaries as usual. “I’m double-parked in front of your building. Come right down.”
Before she could say anything, he hung up.
Within minutes, she’d secured the sleeping Alex in his car seat and hopped in beside Damon. She bombarded him with questions, and he said only that he didn’t know for sure what was going on. But they’d all know soon.
The next half hour was consumed in speculation and dread and heart-bursting anticipation. She had no doubt this was about Aris. But what about him? Was he waiting for them wherever Damon was taking her? With his “proof”? What could it possibly be this time?
It turned out they were heading to the Louvardis mansion where Nikolas had come back to live, if only until they decided what to do about it.
Once inside, Damon rushed her to the waiting room of their father’s old office, now Nikolas’s.
“Wait here, and don’t move under any condition, okay?” She opened her mouth and his finger on her lips silenced whatever exclamation hadn’t formed yet in her mind. “Just listen. Whatever this turns out to be, it should be interesting.”
She put Alex on his blanket on the floor then collapsed on the nearest couch to the door Damon had left ajar.
The next second, even though she was half expecting it, she almost jumped out of her skin when she heard Aris’s voice.
It had a world of frustration and haggardness in its beloved depths. “Am I allowed to speak now that the full tribune is assembled?”
“You may say your piece,” Damon mocked. “Make it short, though, Sarantos. We don’t have all day.”
“It won’t be short, Louvardis. So pour yourself a drink and endure it.” Aris exhaled, then began to talk.
“I was the firstborn of my parents. My mother was seventeen when she had me, hadn’t had any measure of formal education, married the man who got her pregnant. He was four years older, a charmer who never held a job for longer than a couple months. He drifted in and out of our lives, each time coming back to add another child to his brood, another burden on my mother’s shoulders, before disappearing. He always came back swearing his love, offering sob stories about how hard life was, when he had the easiest life of us all. By the time I was seven, I was doing everything for the household that he should have been doing. By twelve I had to leave school and work four jobs to barely make ends meet. My father disappeared from our lives completely before my youngest sister, Caliope, was born.
“I grew up despising the emotions that had led my mother to destroy her life, that my father claimed to have for the wife and children he blighted with his existence. I swore I’d never feel any of those emotions or inflict them on others. They were the ultimate waste of potential and life, and I didn’t have a place for them as I faced the world alone and fended for my whole family. I wouldn’t let any weakness, as I saw love and partiality induce in others, infect me, wouldn’t let any softness or irrationality get into the way of getting things done.
“Soon I believed I couldn’t feel, ended up believing that I was like my father, incapable of feeling anything for anyone. But instead of pretending otherwise and exploiting others in the name of love, I pulled away from everyone for fear of hurting those close to me. I gave them the only things I believed to be real and of importance—financial security and the support only I, with my growing power, could provide.”
He fell silent. After a moment, Nikolas sighed. “Is this lesson in Sarantos history going anywhere?”
“I’ll fast-forward to another era,” Aris said. “When your family first crashed into my life. I remember that first day like it was hours ago. And, Theos, how I envied you all your father. I wanted to impress him with everything in me. But I ended up making him despise me instead.”
“He didn’t despise you, Sarantos.” That was Lysandros, exhaling heavily. “It’s probably the main reason we did. He admired the hell out of you, always pointed to you when he was chastising us. ‘See how Sarantos dealt with this?’, ‘Sarantos wouldn’t have been so stupid!’, ‘Why can’t you be more like Sarantos?’ was all we heard for years.”
That was news to Selene. It was apparently shocking to Aris, as well. “Theos!” he exclaimed. “If he felt that way, then…why?”
Nikolas was the one to answer. “I didn’t know the answer to that until I read his diaries. He felt you becoming more detached and ruthless as the years went by. He felt he was sort of your surrogate father, thought it was his role to keep you in check, to try to steer you away from the abyss of leaving your humanity totally behind. And while we were totally in the dark about it, he was also aware of Selene’s attraction to you, thought he should shape you up into a man he could accept for his daughter.”