Page 67 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

But he was not about to tell this woman, his stepmotherandwife andenemy,such things. He couldn’t think of anyone he would trust less with such delicate truths about who he was or what he was about or what this family really was when there was no one about but them.

He studied the enemy in question.

Jolie looked delicate, but she wasn’t. He had made a study of her all these years and he knew that the way she presented herself was a lie. The effortlessly willowy form, to easily inhabit this glittering world his father had created, made her look more like one of the grand film stars who flocked to this place, or the high society darlings, than they did themselves.

The greatest lie of all was that she never looked as icy as she truly was. Shelookedlike a pure, long shot of a perfect Mediterranean day. All of that golden hair. Those impossible blue eyes. That perfect, symmetrical face, classical cheekbones and the kind of sensual mouth that set pulses to skyrocketing all around.

He knew exactly why his father had chosen her. Aside from the obvious, she was precisely the sort of hostess the Andromeda’s extraordinarily particular clientele expected. Demanded, even.

And one thing Apostolis had always known about his father was that as much as Spyros indulged his baser impulses, he never left a mess when it came to the myth of his business. Jolie really was the perfect Lady of the Andromeda, as he had heard her called.

It only made him dislikehis wifeall the more.

Then again, the fact that she’d been forced to marry him could work in his favor. Aside from everything else, it meant that he had ample opportunity to plot and enact the perfect revenge.

His father might not be able to pay for what he’d done, but she could.

And would, Apostolis vowed then, with something like iron in his gut.

Again and again.

“Cat got your tongue?” asked the maddening woman in question, with a certain glee in her voice and all over her lovely face, likely not just because she’d insulted him, but because he’d let her see the insult had found its target.

It was more expression than he’d seen on her face in some time, and he took a dark sort of pleasure in that. Even as he realized with some surprise that while he’d been sorting through the fury and the rage and the fire in him, Alceu and his sister had slipped away, leaving only Apostolis and Jolie in the breakfast room.

How had he failed to notice that?

“It is lucky for you that I am such a small man,” he told her then, and stood. Cataloging, as he did, the way her expression changed, and surely not only because he was, in fact, a large man no matter what she thought of him. It told him all manner of interesting things that he filed away for another time. “Or I might be tempted to return the favor.”

Jolie’s mouth curved in that way it did, that made him think only of sharp blades, polished to shine. And slice. “I wish you would. I can’t wait to hear what a rich fantasy life you’ve been entertaining yourself with all these years.”

But revenge was a long game. If the aim was to win.

And he intended to do just that.

Apostolis shook his head. “There will be time enough for that. Five long years.”

She stayed where she was, seated with a certain insouciance at the table yet turned in her chair with one arm thrown almost languidly across its back. Yet he found he did not believe her attempt to appear bored by this.

Or him.

“One thousand, eight hundred, and twenty-five days, give or take,” she agreed in a quiet voice that was in no waysoft. “But who’s counting?”

And it was a more solemn moment, then, between them. They were looking at each other, for a start. Usually, Apostolis knew, he avoided direct eye contact with this woman like the plague. It was too dangerous—

He wasn’t sure he cared to think about why that was.

Apostolis extended his hand, slowly, and did very little to curb the glittering, sharp dislike—that was the only word for it, he was sure—curling through him and no doubt visible on his face.

She wore a very similar expression, ice to his fire.

But she rose.

“Come, my darling wife,” Apostolis said in his darkest and most sardonic voice. “And let’s start counting the days until we are free of each other.”

Jolie smiled again, sharper still. But still she put her hand in his. And hers was smooth, but warm, and he did not wish to acknowledge how he could feel the contact inside him—everywhere—like another thread of that same...dislike.

“Until we see, you and I,” she said, the blade of that smile honed to a deadly gleam, “who is the most damned.”

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