Leander had to seize his day when the board meeting arrived, but felt curiously flat when it did. He climbed into the back of his SUV, aware that he would push Midas off his pedestal once and for all today, but there was no excitement for the other man’s downfall. All he could think about was Ilona.
Leander had already made enough compromises for her. Hadn’t he? Did she not recall that he had agreed to run the company in good faith? Rather than level it? Why was that not enough for her? What more did she need to hear before she would stand behind him? Stand beside him?
God, her absence hurt. He had moved through these last days in a zombielike trance, making his final calls, ensuring the various board members would support him. They had all agreed to back his bid for the chair, but there was no satisfaction in it.
He, the man who had preferred for years to walk alone and eat alone and sleep alone was...alone. Desolate.
He couldn’t stop thinking reliving those intimate moments when she had brightened and softened and exploded. Was it the sex? Did she not enjoy it the way he did? Because it nearly killed him in the most deliciously satisfying ways. Every time. She was fierce and uninhibited and they always seemed to arrive at culmination together, bodies shaking and hearts crashing and ecstatic cries filling the room.
He didn’t want to lose that. How could she let it go so easily?
Was it his desire for children? The fact it hadn’t happened? Did she blame him?
Was it him?
Here was the deepest bruise, the darkest fear, the rawest worry. Was there some flaw in himself that he didn’t see? One that caused the people he loved to disappear when he needed them most?
Oh, hell. He closed his eyes and the breath he sucked in seemed filled with powdered glass, expanding in his lungs with fiery tingles, leaving him without oxygen. Lightheaded.
He loved her.
The poignant arrow of love was lodged so deeply in his heart, it had become a part of him without his realizing it. He loved her. He loved her beyond what he thought was possible. Beyond what any one person had felt for another in the history of time. His love was epic and terrifying and so bright and right, it caused a hot pressure behind his eyes and in his throat.
That’s why his chest was a hollow, cavernous, windy space. That’s why his bed was, too. And their new home. Ilona could have moved into her unused bedroom, but instead she had left him completely. He couldn’t bear it. Not for another second.
He turned his head. “Call Feodor and find out where she’s staying.”
Androu didn’t ask who he meant. He placed the call and his mouth went flat. “Feodor can’t say,” he relayed.
“Give me that,” Leander snarled, holding out his palm. “Tell me where she is, Feodor.” He needed her.
“I genuinely don’t know. I swear. She asked me to get our new CEO organized—”
“Your new—? She stepped down from running Callas?” Leander sat up and clamped a hand on Dino’s shoulder, ensuring his driver knew a sudden change in route might be necessary. “Is she even in Athens? Is she accounted for?”
“She texted twenty minutes ago, reminding me the plant in her office shouldn’t be overwatered.”
A ridiculously innocuous message, yet jealousy overwhelmed him that she continued to communicate with Feodor and wanted nothing to do with him. Because he had hurt her. He had asked her to compromise her principles to prove her love, which wasn’t love at all.
He handed the phone back to Androu and stared at the back of Dino’s head.
“She’s on Paxos. She must be,” Leander muttered.
“Would you...like me to have the yacht prepared?” Androu asked tentatively.
Dino was looking at him in the rearview mirror. Both were awaiting his decision.
The helicopter would be faster, but what if she wasn’t there? What if he went all that way and missed this meeting only to miss her?
Or worse, what if she was there and he went all that way only to have his love thrown back in his face?
He pinched the bridge of his nose, head tilted back, filled with despair because he was about to get everything he wanted—
No.He had had everything he wanted. Everything he needed. Ilona filled his life with meaning. She made him laugh, made every moment of every day more enjoyable. She consistently took him to the heights of profound pleasure. She made him happy.
She made all that had happened in his past bearable. She pushed it into the past so he could look forward to his future with her.
Yet here he was, chasing destruction. Returning to the rotten tooth, rather than pulling it. He was reveling in pain and wanted to inflict it on others, purely to satisfy some demon inside him. He was no better than Midas.