Page 49 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

“What is important to you,nonno?” Vasilios prompted gently. His grandfather was not always lucid anymore.

“Emma must be allowed to stay here, after I’m gone. I asked her to live with me because I could see she needed protection. She still does. I want you to promise me,” here Costa broke off, coughing, his whole body shuddering with the effort. “Promise me that you will leave her here. It is no trouble to you. You don’t come. Charge her a small rent, if you must—she will probably want to pay it anyway, she’s so damned proud.” Costa’s laugh was hoarse and took all his energy, but Vasilios barely noticed. Something was throbbing in his gut, his chest, demanding all his attention. Emma. And where she would go…afterwards. But Costa had recovered, and continued, “You thought she was looking at me for money—the truth is, I could barely even buy her ice cream.”

Vasilios closed his eyes, aware of how wrong his first suppositions had been, hating that he’d ever looked at Emma with suspicion. He felt like a completely different man to the one he’d been then. At first, it had been easy to see her as some sort of gold digger, come to capitalise on Costa’s predilection for beautiful young women.

Vasilios had even decided to seduce her especially to thwart that plan and instead, being with Emma had thrown every single one of his own convictions into disarray. He was no longer certain of the things he’d known and felt before coming here. His whole life, prior to returning to Puglia, seemed almost dream-like. He tried to look back at it, to remember who he’d been then, but couldn’t quite grasp the recollection.

But it would come back to him.

“Vas?”

“Of course she can stay,” Vasilios reassured his grandfather quickly. It was the right thing to do. This was her…home. Even the word left a strange pang in his heart. He ignored it.

Emma could stay but he, Vasilios, would leave as soon as he could. Without Costa here, without the need to remain for Costa’s sake, Vasilios would only be staying for Emma. Which would mean something. Something important. And they’d both sworn this meant nothing, so he would have to go away, for both their sakes.

The thought of leaving her though was a pain greater than almost any he’d ever known.

13

IN THE END, COSTA’S death was as without drama and excitement as his life had been full of both. He simply went to bed one night and one hour later his breathing grew laboured, though he continued to sleep.

The nurse alerted Vasilios and Emma that things were turning, and they were therefore with him when he took his last breath, a beatific smile on his face, as he faded from this earth.

Emma cried softly. She sat on the edge of the bed and held Costa’s hand, after he was gone, not because she wanted to bring him back but because she knew it would be the last time she could touch him, or be so near him.

Vasilios sat as still as stone.

He’d had weeks to prepare for this, and yet the reality of Costa’s death was now right before him and the dull, throbbing ache in the centre of his chest was far greater than he could have imagined.

He hurt.

He felt as though he’d been cut off at the knees.

Costa had been the biggest, most constant force in Vasilios’s life.

They’d disagreed often, fought more, but love and respect had always underpinned their relationship, and when Vasilios had felt a little short on both those qualities, Costa had held more than enough. His admiration for Costa had been enormous, to the end.

With Emma at Costa’s bedside, Vasilios had scraped back his chair, taken one last, awful look at his grandfather and stalked from the room, needing to return to his natural state desperately: needing, more than anything, to be alone.

His motorbike tore over the bitumen, the adrenalin of going too fast on those narrow roads making his blood pound and pushing the enormity of grief to the back of his mind because his survival skills had to come to the fore. He sat low over the handlebars, stared at the horizon, and let the engine speed him away from that place, from the death, and from Emma, whom he could almost not bear to see again.

She had no idea how to get through to Vasilios.

He’d pulled away from her, even as they were living in the same house. Not just physically, though she felt his absence like a missing limb, but in every way he was estranged from her. He barely spoke.

She made allowances for his grief, she understood how enormous his loss was, but still she expected him to talk to her, to open up to her about how he was feeling, so that she had some opportunity not only to make him feel a little better but also to share her own pain, which was in danger of devouring her. But hours bled into days and nights and Vasilios avoided her with considerable skill.

Emma had been so afraid of letting Vasilios in, of letting him come to mean something to her, and yet without realising it, that was exactly what had happened.

She stared across the pool at the rippling water, stricken, when she looked inside her heart and realised that all of it, every cell, fibre and beat, was for him.

“Oh no,” she whispered, closing her eyes, sitting on the edge of the pool and letting her legs dangle in. “What am I going to do?”

Vasilios stared at her from the safety of this room, for the first time in days, because she couldn’t see him. Here, he was free to look, to devour her with his eyes, because he couldn’t with his hands, to imagine he was reaching out to her, giving into the weakness to be with her, to hold her, to let her hold him, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He was alone, and he always would be. He was done with death, with dying, with losing people. He was done with it all.

After the funeral, Emma couldn’t ignore reality any longer.

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