if she was on the first plane out of Athens, then what would happen to her mother and George? Nikos had said that he would not take revenge on a child, but if she did not fulfil her part of the contract then what was to stop him going back on the deal and throwing her mother and brother out of the only home where they felt safe? Her insides knotted in raw panic at the thought.
She had promised her mother that she would keep her safe in her home for as long as she possibly could, and she would keep that promise if it killed her, she told herself. The one thing she had going for her in this situation was the fact that Nikos was getting married and, for reasons known best to himself, he wanted her to plan the event for him.
She was just going to have to ignore the fact that even thinking about it brought with it a sensation like a cruel knife being scraped over raw, sensitive skin. That the concern that Nikos showed for preserving his fiancée’s anonymity, his involvement in this early stage of things, rubbed her face right in the difference between this wedding and the one he had been planning with her.
Had appeared to be planning with her, she corrected painfully.
She needed to put all those difficult feelings out of her mind. She had to refuse to let herself remember that she was trapped here, isolated with the man who had ruined her life and her family’s. A man who now seemed hell-bent on using the hold he had over her to his own advantage, and taking a cruel and sadistic pleasure in doing just that.
Somehow she was going to have to pretend to herself that Nikos was just a client. Sighing inwardly, Sadie faced the impossibility of that task. Nikos could never be ‘just’ anything. But that was her only way through this situation. The only way she could handle this. Because she did have to handle this.
The truth was that Nikos held all the cards and he could play them as he chose. The only single option left to her was to do the best job she could—and hope that Nikos had some sort of kind cell in his body that would push him to help her when she was done.
Otherwise she would be right back where she had started—or worse. And all of this would have been for nothing.
‘YOU WILL WANT to phone your mother.’
After a journey back to the villa that had been completed in almost total silence, Nikos’s first words on their arrival caught Sadie distinctly off balance, so that for a moment or two she could only stare at him in confusion, not quite sure she had heard him right.
‘Did you not tell me that you needed to check on your mother and brother?’
‘Oh, yes—but…’ But she hadn’t expected him to remember or, if he did, that he would be the one to prompt her into action rather than the other way about. After everything he’d said, she had never thought that he would be so generous—or so trusting.
‘You can use the phone in my office—it’s just through here.’
He led the way into a room at the back of the villa. One that had disturbing echoes of the office at the Konstantos building in which she had faced him—was it really only a couple of days before? Memories of that encounter threatened to drain the strength from her legs as she followed him, putting a fine tremor into the hand she held out for the phone he snatched up and passed to her.
‘If you need the code for England then this is it…’
Nikos scrawled a number on a piece of paper and pushed it towards her. Then he pulled out a chair at the head of the desk and dropped down into it, switching on the computer before him as he did so.
Not quite so generous or so trusting after all, Sadie acknowledged privately to herself. He might have handed her the phone, but he was still staying around in the office to make sure that she didn’t say anything he objected to. She was not to have any privacy with her phone call.
But she wasn’t going to look any gift horses in the mouth. Her mother’s mental balance and her own peace of mind were too important for that. So she pulled the sheet of paper towards her, punched in the numbers and pressed ‘Dial’. Perching on the edge of the desk, with her back to Nikos, she waited anxiously for her mother to answer. She would know how things were from the moment that happened.
‘H-Hello?’
Oh, no! Sadie closed her eyes briefly in distress, her shoulders tightening as tension held them taut. She knew that tone of voice and it meant there was a problem. Her mother was clearly in a very different frame of mind from the previous night.
‘Mum, it’s me—Sadie. How’s things?’
‘Sadie—where have you been all day. I’ve been expecting you to call…’
‘I had things I had to do, Mum.’
Sadie kept her voice low, hunched herself over the phone, as if by doing so she could cut herself off from the man at the other side of the desk, where she hoped that the click of keyboard keys meant Nikos was concentrating on what he was doing and so wouldn’t catch anything of her mother’s words.
‘I’m here to do a job, remember?’
‘I know you said that—but do you have to be away so long?’
Sadie’s heart sank at the querulous note in her mother’s voice, the way it rose so sharply on the final words. She was very much afraid that, without her there to supervise, Sarah hadn’t taken her medication and so was worryingly off balance.
‘It’s only a couple of days.’
But that was longer than her mother had been left alone at any time since George’s birth, she acknowledged. And clearly the older woman was finding it hard to cope.
‘What is it, Mum? What’s wrong?’
And suddenly it was as if her question had pressed a switch, making the words flow. Sadie could almost see her mother perched on the edge of her chair, her fine-boned face drawn taut with nervous tension as she gave voice to her fears. She couldn’t believe that the letter Nikos had sent yesterday was real. It seemed impossible that it was true. Impossible that they wouldn’t be forced out of their home after all.
‘It will be fine, Mum.’ She could only pray that she sounded convincing. That there was enough conviction in her words to get through the panicked haze inside her mother’s head and reassure her. ‘I promise you that everything’s going to be fine.’
If she could believe that herself then everything would be so much easier.
‘But how do you know that, Sadie? How can you be sure? How do you know that Nikos Konstantos will keep his word? What if he changes his mind?’
‘That isn’t going to happen. I won’t let it happen, Mum. I’ve made sure of that.’
What else could she say? she asked herself. When she was so far away from home, how else could she persuade Sarah to calm down? And it seemed to have worked. The nervous questions eased, and she could hear her mother’s breathing settle from the frantic, uneven gasps that had so worried her.
‘I’ve got everything in hand,’
