Page 63 of The Actor and His Secret

NIKOS

Without Oli distracting me, I would’ve spent the entire flight fixating on Selina’s text message. At first I’d wondered if Oli had seen it on my phone when he held it, but he showed no sign that something terrible was about to happen.

Paradise came crashing down around me. I fight the urge to pull out my phone on the jet, knowing that staring at Selina’s message would taunt me.

Selina

The press have photos of you with Oli

They’ll be leaked by tomorrow

Fuck Nikos

We are trying to stop them

Call me ASAP!!

I hoped this was all some big joke. How had my father taken things into his own hands? I’d not spoken with him since before Greece, and my answer to paying him was still up in the air. And yet something has provoked him. After we land back in London, I’m following Oli down the jet’s stairs, trying to locate the messages I last had from him. But I can’t find the thread. It’s as if the entire string of threats have self-destructed - father hiding evidence like he did all those years ago.

‘Nikos,’ I hear Oli call beneath the roaring engines of planes and commercial carriers. I don’t look up until he shouts it again, this time with panic lacing his words. ‘Nikos!’

‘What?’ I bit back, unable to hold my tongue.

Shock passes over his face. Oli is hanging out the side of a private car, beckoning me to follow him. Our bags were being loaded into the back already, and here I was, left standing at the bottom of the plane’s stairs, dumfounded.

What I’d give to get back on that plane and fly away forever.

‘We need to go,’ Oli says, gesturing towards the terminal. I see them, a wall of photographers and fans banging on the glass in the distance. ‘You’re giving the audience a show.’

As if my life couldn’t crumble any more than it already was, my phone vibrates in my hand. It’s an unknown number and I know instantly who is calling me. I answer it, locking eyes with Oli at a distance, using him as my confidence.

Heavy breathing sounds down the end of the line. I speak before my father gets a chance.

‘Meet me at my hotel. I trust you already know where that is.’

More heavy breathing followed by a gruff voice. ‘I do.’

The line goes dead, and just like that, I have a date with the man who’s haunted my life.

I get into the car and fake a smile, pretending like everything is ok when the truth is the complete opposite. My body buzzes with unspent energy, my mind racing with the possibilities. Oli rests a hand on my knee, but I peel it off and lay it in the seat between us.

‘Selina already on your case?’ Oli asks, voice quivering with nerves.

I stare ahead as the car engine starts. ‘Something like that.’

Oli is a smart man. He can tell that something’s wrong. Just as I know I’m retreating behind walls of iron and steel, hiding myself. No matter how painful this is, I’m doing it to protect him. This is necessary to ensure his life isn’t affected by my orbit any more than it already has been.

I lean into the plastic partition separating us from the driver. One knock and he has the window lowering.

‘Everything suitable for you, Mr Ridge?’

It’s hard to swallow the lump in my throat when it’s as dry as the sand back in Greece. ‘Can you make a detour for me? I need to drop my assistant off first at the following address.’

I list off Oli’s address, all the while he sits next to me and stares out the window. Even after the driver agrees and the partition goes up, we both don’t talk. Oli continues to gaze out the window, while I stare at my phone screen, fingers shaking.

I don’t realise we get to Oli’s apartment until the door slams closed. I’ve been so engulfed in the folder of images Selina sent. In every one of them, me and Oli are traipsing around the town in Greece. It wouldn’t take a genius to see that the two men were enjoying each other’s company are more than friends.

But what is worse is the message that followed those images.

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