Page 112 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For forty-eight hours , Zeus did very little but drink Scotch, drift on the ocean in his yacht and contemplate every single word they’d spoken.

Every emotion. Every barb. He’d accused her of lying—and she had—but he’d lied, too, in the end about his engagement.

He was ashamed of himself for doing the one thing he’d promised them both he never would: he’d hurt her.

And he’d done it deliberately. He’d wanted to dig the knife in, so to speak, because of how she’d made him feel.

So what? Didn’t she deserve it?

Of course. She’d manipulated him for financial gain. She’d been sent by her best friend to destroy the one thing that mattered most to him. By every metric, she was an awful, awful person.

So why didn’t he feel more relieved? Why was he drinking himself into a stupor rather than flying home and proposing to Philomena then and there?

Because he needed time to deal with this.

Unlike his mother’s death, he hadn’t been braced for Jane’s betrayal.

He’d trusted her, he thought, angrily. He’d let his guard down with her, something he’d never done with another soul, and she’d promised him he could.

That it was safe. She’d made him trust her.

Because it wasn’t enough just to screw with him?

What kind of sick game had she wanted to play?

Disgust—at himself and her, at his father and Charlotte—flooded his body. He poured another measure of Scotch, held it close to his chest and tried to think clearly. To contemplate his next move. Marriage. To someone else. He knew it was vital, but just the thought of it turned his stomach.

He’d loved Jane, and despite her betrayal, there was a part of him that still did. At least, that loved the version of her she’d shown him.

This is real.

Liar.

He threw back the Scotch then slammed the glass down, wondering how the hell he could get her out of his head and heart.

Four days later, Zeus arrived at his office with no outward hint of what had happened on the boat. Dressed in a suit, he strode in, determined to take charge of his company, to work out a way to keep it in his name, telling himself that was still the most important thing in his life.

Only, within minutes of sitting behind his desk and drafting an email to his lawyer, one of his assistants buzzed his phone.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s a woman here to see you.’

Images of Jane filled his mind. Was it possible she was still here? That she’d come to see him? And so what if she had? His breath hitched in his throat. His gut shanked.

‘I’m busy,’ he replied, because it was important that he not see her again. Not yet. He wasn’t prepared.

‘She says it’s urgent.’

He ground his teeth. ‘Fine,’ he said, standing. ‘But tell her I only have five minutes.’

He prowled to his floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Athens and waited, every bone in his body feeling heavy and stiff. The door opened and he made an effort to turn slowly, to brace for the impact of seeing her.

It was not, however, Jane who’d come to his office, but rather the woman he’d spent weeks hating and despising. His half-sister, Charlotte Shaw.

‘You,’ he muttered, glaring at her, surprised that she was shorter in real life than he’d expected, and far slimmer, too.

‘You,’ she spat back at him, crossing her arms. ‘Well, if I didn’t hate you before, I sure as hell have a reason to now.’

He laughed darkly. ‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Nothing about this is remotely amusing.’

‘You’re telling me?’ His eyes fell to her hand, and he saw on her ring finger a large emerald ring, so his stomach clenched—though, strangely, he’d been half expecting this, and he wasn’t even sure he could raise the energy to care anymore.

Ironic, given how focused he’d been a moment ago on securing the company. ‘You’re engaged?’

‘And you’re a Grade-A jackass,’ she snapped.

His head reeled. ‘You sent your best friend to Athens to seduce me so you could steal my company,’ he said baldly. ‘And I’m the jackass?’

She at least had the decency to look ashamed.

‘Yeah, well, you sent her home utterly destroyed, so what are you going to do about it?’

His gut churned. Pain slashed through him.

Jane, destroyed. Like she’d been on the boat, when she’d sobbed and pleaded with him to understand that she loved him.

When she’d apologised and said she wanted to explain, and he’d cut her off, because on that morning, he’d truly felt as though no explanation would ever suffice.

‘I’m sure she’ll recover.’

‘Are you? Well, that shows how well you know her, because I’ve never seen Jane like this. Not even after Steven.’ It was the worst thing Lottie could have said to him. The truth of that plunged into him like a knife.

‘And it’s my fault,’ she continued. ‘I’m the one who begged her to do this. I’m the one who pushed past her objections, who pleaded with her, because I knew that she would never say no to me. I used her,’ Charlotte continued, guilt-stricken, crossing her arms, ‘and now I have to fix it.’

‘Some things can’t be fixed,’ he said darkly, thinking of his love for Jane and how transformative it had been—and how devastating to recognise that it had also been based on a scam.

‘You’re not even going to try?’

‘Why would I?’ he demanded, blanking Jane from his mind with Herculean effort.

‘So, you don’t love her?’

He kept his expression neutral, but just barely. ‘I can’t see what business that is of yours.’

‘I’m making it my business.’

He actually laughed, a deranged sort of sound, totally lacking humour. ‘That’s not your prerogative.’

‘This makes it so.’ She lifted her hand, so the ring sparkled visibly. ‘You care about this company.’

His nostrils flared with an angry breath.

‘You want to keep it?’

He thrust a hand onto his hip.

‘Well, I will walk away, sign whatever I need to in order to give up my stake in it, if you promise to at least go and talk to her.’

The bottom seemed to be tilting out of his world.

‘I thought you wanted the company badly enough to do anything?’

‘I want my best friend to be happy more,’ she said with a withering and derisive scowl. ‘I would give up anything for her, as she would for me. Did you even know that’s what she was planning to do?’

He didn’t move.

‘She was coming home to tell me that she loved you, that she thought I’d love you, too, that she wanted us to be friends.

She knew it might mean losing you, but she was going to put you and me first, because that’s the kind of person she is.

And if you truly don’t see that,’ she said, stalking back towards the door and wrenching it inwards, ‘then you don’t deserve her.

’ She left without a backwards glance and Zeus had the unfamiliar and unwelcome experience of having been hit by a tornado.

For the first time in a week, Jane left the flat.

She didn’t feel like it. In fact, she desperately wanted to stay buried under her mountain of duvets and keep crying, but there was also a restlessness to her grief, or perhaps to her cravings for Zeus, that had her yearning to move her body.

To feel blood rushing through her, to feel alive once more.

So, she pulled on yoga pants and a loose shirt and set out for a run, targeting her favourite route through the Heath, uncaring that the day was hot and the breeze non-existent.

It felt good to sweat. It felt good to be so hot it was almost a form of torture.

It felt good to fill her lungs with air and expel it so hard and fast everything burned.

At least now she knew she was alive. She ran for almost an hour before turning back towards her flat, and when she reached her street, she was so focused on the harsh ache in her lungs that she didn’t notice the sleek black car parked in the narrow road, right outside her front door.

As she got near it, though, the driver’s door opened, and the sound caught her attention.

She glanced across and stumbled, gasped, because there was Zeus Papandreo, looking intimidating and perfectly unbreakable, looking just as he had in her dreams, looking right back at her, and she stopped walking, with no idea what she could say, nor why he was here, but just knowing that she wasn’t ready.

She couldn’t face him.

‘I’m— I need—’ She pressed her fingers to her lips and took a step backwards, her face pale.

‘Can we talk?’

She shook her head instinctively. On the one hand, she was desperate to talk to him some more, to do anything to spend time with him, but on the other, their last encounter had left her so badly bruised, she couldn’t go through it again.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered, dropping her head and staring at her feet. ‘I want to, and I probably owe it to you, but I can’t go through any more of that.’ Her voice was barely above a mumble. ‘I can’t fight with you again.’

‘I don’t want to fight with you.’

A tear slid down her cheek. She flicked a glance at him. ‘I don’t believe you.’

His eyes slammed shut on a wave of emotions she couldn’t interpret. ‘I don’t blame you.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, Jane, I was very angry that morning. I should have taken some time to get more facts, but I didn’t. I took it out on you. I’m sorry.’

She shook her head quickly. ‘More facts wouldn’t have changed your mind. I did everything you accused me of.’

‘You didn’t lie to me,’ he said, stepping closer towards her. ‘Not about us. Everything we shared was real, and true, just like you said.’

She shook her head again. It was all too much.

She didn’t want to hear this, only to have him walk away and marry someone else.

Did he have any notion how that idea had tortured her?

The thought that he’d been engaged to someone else the whole time they’d been together?

Having sex, as he’d so crudely put it. She took another step backwards, as if to repel that idea, and his features sharpened into a look of regret.