Instead he had turned the tables back on her. Seen through her pathetic attempt to resist him. To retaliate against him.
And now resistance and retaliation were impossible.
Now…Her eyes bleached with despair. Now there was only survival.
Getting through to the end.
Fear bit into her, like a stab in the belly. When would the end come? She had never bothered to ask just how long Theo intended her to stay here, because what would have been the point? He might not have told her, and it would simply have shown him how much she longed for the ordeal to be over. And that in itself would have given him a satisfaction she would never, ever willingly grant him.
But how long would he keep her here? How many nights had she still to endure?
Her fingers clutched into the sheets. There was nothing, nothing she could do. She would endure as long as she had to endure. Until Theo had finally finished with her.
Because only then would she, too, be finally finished with him…
Whatever the price she had to pay to do so.
Night after night he came to her. In the daytime, when the bright sun beat down, she was like an automaton. She got up, ate breakfast on the veranda, sat and read, swam in the sea from the shingle beach, up and down, back and forth, over and over and over again. She ate lunch and read. Drank coffee. Watched the sea, its tireless constancy marking the sameness of her days.
Then, by night, she went upstairs to her bedroom and adorned herself for Theo Theakis.
Every night he came and took her to his bed, gave to her body a physical pleasure that she could not bear to remember, either in the light or the dark, and then, when it was over, he left.
Leaving her slowly bleeding from wounds she could not stanch.
On the seventh night he emerged from the bathroom, fully clad in his business suit once more, and placed a piece of paper on the bedside unit.
‘Your money,’ he said. Then he walked out.
CHAPTER NINE
VICKY sat in the bed, looking at the piece of paper in her hand. The money she needed. The money she had come to Greece to get.
Well, she had it now
She went on staring at the piece of paper, with the curtly written signature on it, the zeroes of the figure in the box.
She could hear the sound of him walking down the stairs, out of the door, his monstrous car revving loudly, then swirling away down the drive—away, away, away.
When she could hear him no more she slowly placed the cheque back on the side table, then lay down, drawing the bedclothes over her. She should sleep, she knew. Tomorrow she would be taken back to the airport, put on a plane, despatched to London. To get on with her life. And she could, now. She had her money, after all.
Think of the future. Think of when you start helping Jem restore Pycott. Think of the work ahead and the things to achieve. Think of the first schoolchildren arriving, the new hope they will have. Think of that. Think only of that.
Don’t think about anything else.
You’ve got the money—be glad of that at least.
Closure.
That was the word, the word psychologists used to describe how essential it was for people not to have things hanging over their head emotionally. Closure to seal one part of life from another. The past from the present. The present from the future that was yet to come.
She had come for closure, but for her there could be no closure—not yet.
What Theo had done to her in his bed ensured that.
Instead of closure, something else was swelling inside her—something powerful, unstoppable. Something that was seeping through her, blotting through all her body.
And she knew exactly what it was.