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Still the Greek’s Wife
Emmy Grayson
“Tessa.”
Hearing my name on his lips has me gripping my wineglass so tight I’m afraid I might snap the stem. It pulls at my heart, but it also pulls at that part of me that was awakened nine years ago. The first time I saw Rafe through a woman’s eyes. I can still remember him crouching down next to me on a moonlit balcony, silver light glinting in his dark hair as he gave me the faintest of smiles. Can still feel the warmth of his fingers sliding over my skin when he took my hand in his. It lasted all of a second. But that one second changed everything.
My pulse kicks up as an idea glimmers at the edges of my mind. Faint at first, but then it solidifies, takes shape even as the rational part of my brain tries to squash it.
“There is something.”
I can almost feel his sense of victory as his mouth tilts up at one corner.
“Name it.”
I square my shoulders, raise my chin and look him straight in the eye.
“I want you to be my first lover.”
CHAPTER ONE
Rafe
I’VE NEVER CONTEMPLATEDmurder before. There are more logical and efficient methods of dealing with people. Having a net worth of one point seven billion euros at my disposal gives me more options than the average person.
But as I watch my wife smile up at a strange man on a Paris sidewalk, my fingers tightening on the wheel of my car as he leans down and kisses her enthusiastically on the cheek, I evaluate several possibilities. Hiring an assassin wouldn’t be hard. Or I could shove him off the top of the Eiffel Tower.
I’m not jealous. I’m angry. I’ve never tolerated anyone breaking a contract. That includes my wife, even if our marriage was a contractual arrangement in name only. The same contract that included a two-year infidelity clause. Perhaps that’s why she’s asking for a divorce just four months into our marriage. To pursue a relationship with the blond-haired man now gesturing wildly. His animated antics remind me of a circus clown. And Tessa…
My chest tightens. Tessa looks beautiful. Dark blond hair falling thick and loose to her shoulders. A light blue dress that follows the slim curve of her torso before flowing into a wide skirt that stops at the knees.
Awareness creeps over me at the sight of her bare legs. I’ve never seen her in anything but dresses, long skirts, or flowing pants. Seeing her at my brother Gavriil’s wedding four weeks ago had momentarily jolted me out of my usually apathetic state. The sight of her moving confidently with the aid of forearm crutches as she talked and laughed with strangers had kindled a flicker of pride in me. She had always been forced to stay on the sidelines by her overly protective mother, an observer of life rather than a participant.
Not anymore.
The man reaches down and hugs her, wrapping his arms around her waist with an intimate ease that propels me out of the car in the blink of an eye. I resist slamming the car door and close it quietly so I can continue to observe as I cross the street, my eyes fixed on my cheating wife.
When I walked into my bedroom the night of our wedding and found her letter on my pillow, there was a single moment when I felt like a hand punched into my chest and hollowed it out with one clawing scoop. A sensation that had happened only twice before. One I knew I needed to shove away and bury before it became a problem. I focused on the facts as she stated them in her letter: she was taking advantage of our arranged, in name only marriage to live independently in Paris and wished me the best in my future endeavors. A cold, blunt conclusion to a letter written by someone I had once considered as close to a friend as I’d ever had. No discussion, no warning.
I have never gone after a woman. I certainly wasn’t going to pursue one who had displayed a cunning I’d never seen beneath her supposedly quiet demeanor. I thought I was offering her an opportunity to move out of her parents’ home, a new life with the kind of wealth and luxury most people couldn’t begin to imagine.
But she wanted nothing to do with me or my money. Marrying me had apparently given her the fortitude to leave her former life behind. So I did what I do best; prioritized what I needed to accomplish now with an eye on the future. The wedding was over. I had what I wanted. Our marriage convinced her father to sell me the luxury real estate brokerage firm he inherited, a firm with decades of prestige and a mountain of debt that would have crippled Nolan Sullivan without my help. Investing in that project, along with my other work, kept me focused.
Until three days ago when a petition for divorce was delivered to me at my private island villa just a short boat ride away from Santorini’s shores. I’d read it on my balcony, from where I could see her modest house. The same house where I’d proposed seven months ago, months before I knew anything about Lucifer’s mad scheme.
A knot twists in my chest at the memory. Tessa had been sitting on a balcony in her wheelchair looking out over the ocean, her face so sad it had tugged at me. It had hit me then that I had seen her looking that way many times over the years. That offering marriage would not only get me what I wanted, but maybe offer her something more than the mundane existence she lived in.
I’d sat down next to her, outlined what her father and I had talked about. It hadn’t been until I’d asked her if she would be my wife that I saw the hope in her eyes, the hope and something more than casual affection. Something I had responded to, felt in that cavernous pit of nothing. Then shut down just as swiftly.
It doesn’t matter, I remind myself. None of it does. If she wants a divorce, I’ll give it to her. I have no interest in being tied to someone who doesn’t want to be married. I saw what that did to my mother.
But I need Tessa to agree to carry my last name for a little longer. Just eight more months and I will officially inherit everything my father left to me, including the company I was raised to lead. A company the old bastard tied to the condition of me being married for at least a year.
Tessa doesn’t know yet about the stipulation in my father’s will, the one that demands we must reach our first anniversary or I forfeit my entire inheritance. I didn’t know myself until just over a month ago when I attended my father’s will reading. Gavriil had wasted no time in marrying a journalist to hold on to his share. My other brother, Michail, whose existence I hadn’t even been aware of until recently, cursed our father and stormed out of the lawyer’s office.
I, on the other hand, had already fulfilled the first stipulation of my father’s will, even if I hadn’t known it at the time I’d slid my ring onto Tessa’s finger during an intimate yet lavish ceremony hosted on our island off the Santorini coast.
But there’s a second clause, one that is now in jeopardy because of Tessa’s decision to file for divorce. If we don’t reach our one-year anniversary, I lose everything. And, will or not, her trying to break our contract after less than a half a year rubs salt in a wound I hadn’t even realized existed until I’d read the letter from a high-profile lawyer in Athens.