Page 52 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

She couldn’t help it. She stumbled back a step as though she’d been stabbed, then quickly spun away from him, needing privacy and concealment, to hide the hurt on her face. “Convenience,” she repeated, shaking her head, rejecting that immediately.

“You were here. I needed you.”

“But you don’t now?”

There was a long pause. “I don’t need anyone.”

Emma dug her fingernails deep into her palms. “You don’t want to need anyone,” she corrected, trying to piece it all together. “You’re grieving for Costa,” she said quietly. “You’re hurting. I get it. But don’t push me away, Vasilios.”

“What did you expect would happen? This was never meant to last.”

“Says who?”

“You,” he responded swiftly, and then he came around to stand in front of her, staring at her intently. “You said that, and it’s the only reason I let this go on as long as I did. We both agreed to the terms of this, to the clear boundaries. I know that losing Costa has been hard, on both of us, but don’t mistake your sadness for anything else. Costa’s gone, and now it’s time for this to end.”

It was so logical, it hurt all the more. As though pieces had simply clicked into place for Vasilios and that, therefore, was the end of it. But Emma knew, deep down, that it wasn’t that simple. He was pushing her away because he didn’t want to need her, didn’t want to rely on her, especially not now. She ground her teeth, tried to get through to him. “I’m scared too, Vasilios. I have lost a husband, a baby, and a whole future I thought I had planned out. I know how hard it is to put your hand in someone else’s, to really open yourself up to them, but when you look at me, when you think ofus,do you honestly want me to leave right now? Do you really want this to be the end?” She needed him to understand. She waited, hopeful, heart hurting, head spinning, everything hanging on his response.

“I am not scared, Emma.” He spoke without emotion, so she had to swallow back a sob of her own. “I am simply ready to put all this behind me now and get on with—,”

“Your life,” she interrupted, holding up a hand, not wanting him to say anything like that again.

“You are special, you are…wonderful,” his voice was wooden. “But none of this was real.”

Every single word had cut him to say, and yet he hadn’t been able to stop. The more Emma pushed him to admit that what they shared was special, the more Vasilios had felt the need to push back, to emphasise how meaningless it all was. Clinging to the way he’d lived his life for so many years he could remember nothing else, Vasilios did the only thing he knew how: and iced over his heart.

True, Emma had penetrated his defences. She’d made her way into his being. Maybe because of who she was, or maybe because of where she’d been—at his side during a moment of deep grief and trauma, sharing those feelings with him every step of the way. He would have been a robot not to feel something in the face of that, but something wasn’t everything and it sure as hell wasn’t enough.

So Emma had left.

And he’d let her.

Hell, he’d even escorted her to her cab—to show her how little any of this had meant. He’d been cold and certain to the last.

So why did he now feel as though all of his insides, every organ in his body, had been scraped out? It was almost midnight, and Vasilios was alone, properly alone, and he felt it in a way that chilled him to the core.

Emma stared at the sea with a frown, despite the warmth and the sunshine. She was shell-shocked.

The last few weeks had taken their toll, adding as they did to the trauma she’d already endured back in Australia, so that even the view of this picturesque beach couldn’t ease her pain.

She missed…everyone.

She missed home and Jack’s family and the life she’d once thought she’d live, but most of all, she missed Costa. And Vasilios, she ached for in a way she almost couldn’t believe. Not as he’d been at the end, but the man she’d fallen head over heels in love with, even as she was protesting that none of it meant a damned thing. It had, in the end, meanteverythingto Emma. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let him come to matter so much to her when it was clear that he felt the exact opposite?

This was about convenience.

God, what a fool she was not to have understood that! She’d been there, desperately hungry for him anytime he so much as looked in her direction, when he’d needed an outlet for his worries and sadness. It was all so perfectly clear now. She’d provided a necessary distraction at a time of great hardship, but for Emma, she’d misread all of the signs and had truly believed he cared for her.

What. A. Fool.

She took a scoop of the gelati and as she tasted the first bite, a single tear rolled down her cheek—the first she’d allowed herself to spill since leaving Puglia.

The gelati reminded her of Costa, reminded her of what she’d lost, and finally, Emma was completely broken.

Vasilios had told himself that by leaving Costa’s home behind and returning to work, to his apartment in Rome, he’d be halfway done with forgetting Emma, but apparently, geography wasn’t sufficient to get her out of his head. As with his trip to New York, she haunted him, dogged him, invaded his senses and mind so she was all he thought of, even when he needed to focus on work. He could be in a meeting, talking with his executives about some vital matter or other and suddenly her breath would seem to travel across the back of his neck and he’d hear her voice, the faintest whisper, so he’d whip his head around, searching for her, desperate to see her, to reach out and grab her, but she was only ever a figment of his imagination or a tribute of his memories, neither of which was satisfying or enough.

He wanted to see her again.

He wanted to see her so badly it hurt.

---