Page 88 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

It was only a matter of time.

But that being so, finding out what secrets she was keeping became more important than ever.

He went over to his laptop, taking his chair at the obnoxiously huge desk that took over the room, a monument he’d placed here to annoy his father when he was not around to do it himself.

But he wasn’t thinking about Spyros. He was determined that this time, he would know the answers to the questions he asked her before he asked them. The better to plan how and when to ask them at all.

Because there was no better way to break someone down than to peel them open.

And when it came to the frustrating enigma that was Jolie, his wife in almost no way but legally, he had to believe it was the most important weapon of all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ITWASLOWERINGindeed to realize that if it weren’t for Mathilde, she would have run.

Locked away in her little room some few evenings later—and still not sure if she was locking him out or herself in—Jolie found herself grappling with that deeply unflattering and unpalatable truth.

“Then again,” she muttered aloud, glaring out her window toward the Andromeda, “if it weren’t for Mathilde, I could have moved to any city in Europe and found myself some kind of job after I graduated.”

Sometimes she dreamed about the life she might have had if she’d gone that route—but it was something she’d discussed at length with the headmistress over the course of her last year at the school. She’d gone around and around about her prospects.

Until the day the older woman had looked at her, once again with entirely too much knowledge in her gaze.

Listen to me,she had said.I believe that all women should be as independent as possible, but there is a fine line between independent-minded and foolish. Right now you are penniless.

She had said that with the precision of a knife thrust in deep.

It would be different if you had something to fall back on while you looked for an appropriate situation somewhere, but you don’t. The rest of these girls, with their trusts and their funds and their wealthy families...

She had shaken her head, her gaze kind—but certain.

They have more options than you do, I am afraid. It’s not that I think you can’t find a decent life for yourself, Jolie. I just worry that you don’t have enough time.

I’m hardly over the hill just yet,Jolie had protested.

I’m not talking about your prospects.The headmistress had shaken her head.I’m talking about poverty. Everyone thinks that there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, but the truth is that there is not as far to fall as most imagine. For most people, it’s a very thin line. And the reality, my dear, is that you’re already living on borrowed time. Your grandfather paid your tuition in full years ago, but you have nothing extra. You have no savings. How would you establish yourself somewhere in order to begin even looking for the kind of job you want? If you managed to secure a job, how would you afford a flat? Food? Transport?

The headmistress had waved around at the castle-like building where she kept her office.

I worry that when you meet the real world, it will flatten you.

I’ve already survived—Jolie had started to argue.

But the headmistress had laid both her hands flat on the top of her desk.I am not an heiress, Jolie. I grew up working-class. I had to scrape and worry over every bill, every day, when I was your age. And I hadsignificantlymore resources than you have right now. Do you understand what I’m telling you?

The headmistress hadn’t come out and said that she should think hard and fast about whether she wanted to find herself in the position of having to sell herself on a street corner to pay her rent. When she could instead make a bargain with a rich man who would keep her comfortable in most of the ways that mattered.

It was easy enough to tell which was the better option when it was offered to her.

And maybe the fact that she’d understood that there were worse things out there than a controlling old man and all his many demands had made it easier to inhabit her role as Spyros’s scandalous younger wife. She had not found himsurprising. He had not done a single thing she would callunexpectedin the whole time she’d known him.

Except, she supposed, dying. She had expected him to live forever, if only to spite his son.

It was that son who was the problem.

It was Apostolis who had surprised her—floored her, completely, and not only because he wasn’t the wastrel that she imagined. She had checked on that, of course. She certainly hadn’ttaken his word for it. But then, it hadn’t taken much digging to find that everything he’d told her was true. She was forced to acknowledge that it had been Spyros who had asserted that Apostolis was a waste of space and she’d believed him, when the evidence was easily accessible all along. And worse, he and his forbidding friend were not the soulless corporate raiders she’d imagined, but rather,saviors.

That was what the people they saved called them. That was how the companies and hotels and sometimes families they’d helped thought of them.

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