Page 12 of A Diamond Deal
Léon dipped his head. ‘I will.’
It didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like…nothing.
Konstantinos turned to leave…
A coldness expanded in his core, turning the blood in his body into a thick and sluggish pulp. It moved through his limbs at a glacial pace—refusing to pump into the heart now beating too slowly in his ears.
He swayed on his feet.
In slow motion, his gaze moved over the face in the doorway, watching him with blue eyes framed by obscenely long lashes, making them appear bigger—deeper. So similar to the eyes he’d searched for in every crowd these past twelve months.
His lungs forgot to inhale.
His unblinking gaze moved over her diamond-shaped face, her high cheekbones flushed with freckles, her flicked nose, her haunting rose-pink mouth wide and gaping. Her hair was loose. Longer now, skirting the open collar of her too big, long-sleeved white shirt. It came to her blue denim-clad thighs…
He took a step back on stiff knees.
It couldn’t be.
‘You…you…betrayed me,’ she said brokenly. Her eyes no longer on his, but on…
He blinked.Slowly.He followed her gaze.
‘Forgive me, Poppy,’ Léon pleaded. ‘You will see—in time—it was the right choice to bring your husband here tonight. Theonlychoice. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I knew you’d flee…’ Léon’s voice spoke softly beside him. ‘But I will stay here withyou. Ifyou want me to.’
Konstantinos’s mind whirled.
Léon was the mediator?
He turned his gaze back to her.
His wife.
For a year, Konstantinos had searched. The night terrors had returned. Crashing waves and seaweed. But it hadn’t been his mother he’d fought against the current to save. It had beenPoppy, caught in the green weeds of the sea.Drowning.
Flashlights on the heads of the specialist teams searching the island’s waters, the whoosh of the helicopters swarming over the hills, and the cliffs, trying to find her the night she’d vanished, pummelled his mind’s eye.
She was the one he’d vowed to keep safe. He hadn’t been able to keep his mother safe. He hadn’t protected her from the monsters in her head or the real live monster—his father—who had berated her for being sick.
His father had abandoned his mother.
He…he hadn’t abandoned Poppy. Not when she was physically sick, not when her mental health had failed her.He’dprotected Poppy.Hewas not his father. Butshehad walked away anyway.
Abandoned him.
Just like your mother?
His chest squeezed.
You failed your mother.
You failed Poppy.
You let your son die.
You failed them all.
