On an impulse she went into the white and fluffy room, still a bit bemused at the thought that she’d insisted on having an office. There was a computer on the desk and she sat down and tapped a key experimentally. It opened automatically in an internet browser.
Wondering how it hadn’t occurred to her before, she put Apollo’s name into the search engine. The first items to pop up were recent deals and headlines like Vasilis and His Midas Touch Strike Again!
Sasha skimmed a recent profile article done for a prominent British financial newspaper where it talked about Apollo’s myriad achievements and rapid rise to stratospheric success. He was also one of the first construction titans to commit to working ethically. Every worker on one of his sites had proper healthcare and insurance and if accidents occurred, workers were rehabilitated and then redeployed either back to where they’d been or to a new area more suited to them.
Consequently, his workers were among the happiest in a normally fickle industry and by holding himself to a higher standard, he was forcing the industry to change around him. He was a trailblazer.
At the end of the article it said:
When asked about his recent marriage to Sasha Miller, Vasilis was curt, saying, ‘My private life is off-limits.’
Sasha felt sick. Unsurprisingly he hadn’t wanted to divulge the details of his marriage of inconvenience to an interviewer.
It only made Sasha want to know more about her own past—what had happened to her to make her behave like that? To trap a man into marriage? She went back into the history of the computer and saw some social media account tabs and clicked on them. But they’d all been logged out and she couldn’t remember the passwords.
For one of the main social accounts she could see a small picture of herself, smiling widely against a glamorous-looking backdrop of a marina. She was wearing more make-up. Her skin was tanned...which must have been fake because she was naturally the colour of a milk bottle. She was holding up a glass of sparkling wine. It sparkled almost as much as the massive diamond on her ring finger. It eclipsed the much plainer gold wedding band. The rings that had gone missing in the accident.
She rubbed her finger absently, imagining them being torn off somehow, but there was no mark on her finger or bruising to indicate what had happened. Something about that niggled at the edges of her memory. A sense that she had seen them somewhere...but not on her hand. But the memory refused to be pinned down. Again.
Sasha touched the picture of her face with a finger, as if that could unlock the secrets of her past.
Nothing.
Nothing except a tiny shiver down her spine. Looking at her face like this reminded her of that dream, because it was like looking at another person.
She turned off the computer, eager to put that image of her face, and the dream, behind her. She saw a drawer in the desk and opened it, vaguely wondering if she might find some other clues to her past.
There was a thick manila envelope inside and she pulled it out. It had her name on it. For some reason, she felt superstitious about looking at the contents but the envelope was open and it was addressed to her.
She pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and read the words at the top of the first page: ‘Application For Mutual Consent Divorce Proceedings Between Apollo Vasilis and Sasha Miller’.
It was dated a few days before the accident.
Sasha started to look through the pages, which weren’t signed yet. They outlined the grounds for divorce. Irreconcilable differences. And non-consummation of the marriage.
They hadn’t slept together.
So he really hadn’t wanted her. But last night...he had. And he hadn’t welcomed it.
‘What are you doing?’
Sasha looked up to see Apollo standing in the doorway. She was too shocked to be embarrassed or feel like he’d caught her doing something illicit.
She held up the document. ‘We were going to divorce?’
‘We were always going to divorce.’
Sasha dropped the document back on the desk. ‘But what about at first...when the baby...?’ She trailed off, realising what she was saying.
He arched a brow, ‘The baby that never existed?’
She flushed guiltily.
‘When I believed you were pregnant we agreed to marry for a year, enough time to have the baby and then reassess the situation.’
Sasha frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Custody.’