Page 33 of A Diamond Deal
‘Konstantinos?’ Her voice was tentative—quiet—but it boomed in his ears, and his eyes, they opened.
His gaze drifted across the vulnerable softness of her mouth. He lifted his gaze, met the deep blue of hers. And her eyes, they were questioning.Wary.
Her distrust mocked his whole life.
It was a betrayal of his entire existence.
It erased the man he’d made himself become. An honest man. A man she could rely on.Trust.But she was abandoning him anyway. She wanted to leave him behind as if he was nothing. Like everyone else. His father. His mother…
It was because she saw it, didn’t she?
She hadn’t been running from the darkness in herself for all these months.
She’d been running from the darkness inhim.
She saw what he’d tried to hide his whole life. The man beneath the suit. A man capable of unthinkable things. Not the man who tried to fix the world. Not the man who had wanted to fixher. But a man ready to let it fall to ruin, so he could stand on the apocalypse beneath him as king.
He’d never wanted to fix her, had he? She had been nothing but a cover-up. A façade to keep the lie of himself alive. He’d wanted to find her so he could continue to live the lie that he wasn’t his father’s son. But hewas.Andhecouldn’t be trusted.
He swallowed down the burn of rage in his throat.
‘Then it is agreed,’ he said, his voice a brutal husk.
‘What is?’
‘I’ll give you all you have requested.’
She frowned. ‘You will?’
He nodded. A too tight dip of his head. ‘The agreement will last for one year.’
Her brows rose. ‘A year?’
‘Three months of public appearances until the renewal of our vows,’ he declared with an ease he didn’t feel.
‘And then?’
‘Youwill stay on the island for the rest of our contract.Alone.’
Shadows grew inside the blue swirls of her irises. ‘Alone?’
‘I will commit to working engagements abroad.’
‘You’ll be working in another country?’ Her nostrils flared. ‘And I’ll be…there?’
For the last year, they’d been apart. Not by his choice. This was his choice now. He was in control. He would use this year to restore everything she’d broken. And yet the idea of her in their home without him… It tugged at something in his chest. Made it ache.
He dismissed it.
‘I will, of course, return in those nine months for the odd engagement where we will be seen together. We will have to continue to be seen in public as man and wife, but sporadically to make enough of a convincing PR campaign,’ he said, changing tack, andthatsomething in him eased.A little.‘At the end of the year, my reputation restored, we’ll divorce.Quietly. We’ll tell them the truth, that our marriage could not recover after the death of our son,’ he continued, the admission in his mouth a heavy thing. Isaak had shattered everything. ‘Then I’ll set you free,poulaki mou.’
The silence pulsed.
‘A year it is, Konstantinos,’ she agreed.
He swallowed.Heavily. ‘The contract will be ready tomorrow,’ he said, and he knew in the morning he’d have figured it out. A way to take back the control she’d stolen from him.
So far, the plan was primitive.
