what letter is that?’ he enquired disingenuously. ‘I receive many letters in the course of a working week. So many, in fact, that I can barely recall some of them. Refresh my memory for me, Victoria. What did it say?’
Don’t let him intimidate you. You’re no longer nineteen and madly in love with a dream. You’re an independent businesswoman—even if you’re not a terribly successful one. She gave a thin smile … understatement of the century.
‘You know very well what it said. It was a letter from my lawyer,’ she said flatly, ‘telling you that I intend to file for divorce.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s pointless ignoring it, Alexei—it isn’t going to go away.’
‘You want a divorce?’ He gave a soft, taunting laugh. ‘What makes you think I’ll give you one?’
‘Give me one?’ she echoed. ‘It isn’t your gift to make! You don’t have a choice!’
They had married young—Alexei had barely been out of college at the time, but his power and authority had grown in the intervening years. There were few people—in fact, not one—who would have dared to speak to him in such a way. His face darkened—and yet didn’t he feel the delicious thrill of conflict? Wasn’t there a tremor of excitement at the thought of doing battle—especially with her? For, deep down, didn’t the corroding thought remain that he had never really crushed her—as she deserved to be crushed. The woman who had cuckolded him with another man!
‘There is always a choice, Victoria mou. But what is this sudden rush? For seven years we have been apart, and you have shown no signs of wanting to be legally free of me. Why now? Have you decided to marry ….?’ He said something harsh in Greek which caused the brunette to look at him in shock. ‘To marry your lover?’ he finished in English—making the word sound as if it had nothing whatsoever to do with love. And it didn’t. It was all to do with possession—and even now the thought of his wife having another man do to her the things he had once enjoyed filled him with a murderous rage.
‘Is that why you want a divorce, Victoria? To please the man who has replaced me? Is it the same one you broke your marriage vows with? The one you took into your body before our marriage was a year old?’
Victoria swayed, a horribly familiar nausea clutching at her stomach—but she didn’t bother trying to correct him. He wouldn’t believe her if she told him that there was no replacement man waiting in the wings—as if anyone could replace him, even if there was! It was just another of Alexei’s accusations and it was pointless trying to deny it. Her pleas of innocence had fallen on deaf ears in the past and always would.
He had painted a picture of her as unfaithful, and nothing would ever rid him of that image—no matter how far from the truth it was. Alexei saw the world as he wanted to. Maybe that was what all rich men did. He had a single-mindedness which was both his strength and his weakness, and nothing would ever sway him.
What had her lawyer said? ‘Keep it short and keep it sweet—it’s best that way. After seven years apart, there can’t be a lot to say to say to each other.’
Her lawyer, of course, did not know of Alexei’s burning desire to always have the last word. To always be in the right. To get his own way, as he had spent his life doing. And—in spite of her intention not to do so—Victoria could not resist probing. But of course she was curious—what woman in her situation wouldn’t be?
‘You must be fairly keen to get divorced yourself, I would have thought?’ she questioned innocently. ‘I’m sure there must be a long line of women who are eager to become the next Kyria Christou?’
Of course there was! His cruel lips curved in anger. Did he mean so little to her that she could casually enquire about the women who had taken her place in his bed? The bitter seed of resentment, which had been planted so long ago and lain dormant for so many years, now began to spring into rampant and dangerous life.
Furiously, he acknowledged that she had somehow managed to kill his arousal stone-dead, and his fury grew. He waved the brunette away with an impatient hand and got up from his chair, going over to the window to stare out at the matchless blue of the Aegean sea, which was a sapphire stripe of ribbon in the distance.
‘Naturally, I remain a magnificent marital prize in most women’s eyes,’ he boasted softly. ‘But, unlike you, I have no desire to get divorced.’ He saw the brunette turn around and stare at him reproachfully, and remembered that she knew more than a smattering of English. He pointed to the door and indicated five minutes with his fingers—softening his dismissal of her by blowing a kiss, and seeing her grudging smile in return. Some men might have felt guilty at such cavalier treatment of a woman, but not Alexei.
He never promised what he couldn’t give—which was zero in the way of commitment. But he was never less than completely honest with the women who shared his bed, or who arrived on a whim to pleasure him when he was bored at work. From him they gained access to the most glittering parties around the globe. He bought them trinkets and jewels, and flew them around on his private jet.
Most importantly, he made them gasp with pleasure. Every single woman he had ever had sex with had told him that he was their greatest lover ever—and Alexei didn’t doubt them for a moment. He prided himself on his sexual prowess—but to him it was yet another thing to excel at.
So what if the lovers in his life were foolish enough to believe that they would be the one to change his mind about settling down? Sometimes women only believed what they wanted to believe—which was nothing like the harsh reality. And that was not his problem. Either they faced the truth of what he could offer them—or they were history.
‘You’re saying you want to stay married?’ Victoria was asking in disbelief as the penthouse door quietly closed and the brunette disappeared from his office with a final delectable wiggle of her lush bottom.
Alexei gave a humourless smile. ‘That is not what I am saying at all,’ he reprimanded softly. ‘I said that I did not wish to get divorced—the two concepts are quite different.’
At that moment she hated him, and his clever, slick way with words—the way he could twist things round to make her sound completely stupid. And in a language which was not even his mother tongue!
‘You’re talking about interpretation,’ she protested.
‘We both know what I’m talking about, Victoria,’ he retorted softly. ‘I didn’t get a lot from my marriage to you—but at least now it serves the purpose of keeping ambitious women off my back!’
Victoria bit back her outrage, knowing that Alexei’s appalling attitude towards women had nothing to do with her—but her future was.
It was time to stop tiptoeing around his feelings. She had rights—and all she wanted was her freedom.
‘Well, I do want a divorce,’ she said coolly.
‘Do you now?’ He gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Then we seemed to have reached a sort of impasse.’
She heard the silken taunt in his voice and—despite all her vows not to let it—her temper flared.
‘You can’t stop me from getting one!’
‘Can’t I?’
There was a pause, and when Victoria spoke
