“She strikes me as a very independent person, someone who’s used to dealing with things on her own.”
“She is. She’s had to be. Mila’s done it tough for a long time.”
Something inside Leonidas stretched to breaking point. She was beautiful and talented, confident and courageous, but she was also broken, hurting from life circumstance, adept at pushing people away, because she’d had to be. He ached to contemplate how often she must have felt the sting of rejection.
“Leo, be careful.” Benji sighed.
“You think I’m danger?”
“Who knows? This person sounds unhinged. But I meant—,”
Leonidas closed his eyes. Benji didn’t need to finish the sentence. “I know.”
“The way you are with women, I don’t judge, but Mila isn’t—,”
“I know. For God’s sake, Benji, I get it. I’m trying to help her, not hurt her.”
“Good. She’s known enough hurt in her lifetime.”
After disconnectingthe call with Benji, Leo called Grieg, his head of security, and filled him in as well, galvanizing him to act, to take point on the investigation. Within twenty minutes, local police began to arrive at the house, but Leonidas was not there to witness their arrival. He’d taken Mila and her most essential belongings only, away from the house, the threat, her fear, and any sense of danger.
But leaving the house didn’t mean he’d pushed events from his mind. Rather, the opposite was true. Leonidas was now invested in the situation, as determined to discover Mila’s stalker and have him or her brought to justice as anyone ever had been. Determined to keep her safe.
God complex? Perhaps, but in this instance, it would serve him—and her—well. Grief for his father sat in the back of his mind, a permanent part of him, but relegated, for the moment, and he relished the distraction, the absorption in something else. He couldn’t change the past. He couldn’t bring Valentina back. He couldn’t save her from drowning. He couldn’t save his father. But hell, he could save Mila. In the here and now, he could make a difference, and he was determined that he would—for Benji.
Mila was numb.She’d been that way since they’d left the cottage. The drive back to town, then the flight in the helicopter over the Adriatic, towards Athens, and then, when they’d boarded the private jet with a huge X painted gold on the tail, and wings that were the same colour.
She stared out at the far-away world beneath her, insides trembling, as the reality of what had just happened played through her mind.
When Leonidas came to sit opposite her, she blinked towards him, without seeing. Her mind was fractured, unable to work properly.
“He was in the house,” she said, nausea lifting in her throat. “Watching me? Watching us?”
Loeonidas’s lips compressed in a line. “Possibly.”
She felt as though she might vomit. She dug her fingernails into her palms and looked towards the windows again. She had to be stronger than this. “Notpossibly. He must have been. He wrote ‘slut’. He knows we kissed. That it could easily have gone further. That it would have if you hadn’t—.”
The words were strained, and then completely silent. He nodded once. “Yes. That’s likely.”
She shivered in a way she couldn’t control. “Where was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you suspect?”
“I don’t think we can rule anything in or out.”
“My God. But youdothink he was in the house, don’t you?”
His lips were grim. “It’s possible.”
“Possible,” she repeated, nodding slowly, but her insides felt as though they were writhing with snakes.
“The police will know more.”
“Police.” She was repeating everything he said, she knew it, but she couldn’t find words or brain power to move beyond that.
“They’re at Benji’s.”