Page 113 of Sigma
He retains his casual, devil-may-care posture, slumped in the booth with a chipped porcelain mug clutched in his hand, but his eyes are sharp and heated and…emotional. “I heard you speaking to Tomás at the door.”
I laugh, nod. “Well, I suppose I’m caught out by my own words. I’m the daughter of a billionaire. You’ll find it rather difficult, I think, to impress me with displays of wealth.”
“I know this,” he says. “I did not choose this location in an effort to impress you.” He waves at the window. “I could have bought any restaurant in the country and flown you to it. I chose this one for a different reason.”
“And that reason is?”
“You are here, therefore you read my letter, yes?”
I nod. “Of course.”
I’m holding back. I want to climb across the table and into his lap—he’s more handsome than ever, and I’ve been oh, so lonely. He’s let his hair grow, and now it’s past his shoulders, bound back in a loose braid, a pair of sunglasses on his head. He’s also grown a beard, short and neat. God, he’s so fucking…gorgeous. His cheekbones are perfect. The beard emphasizes his incredible jawline. His eyes are deep and dark—and where they’d once been unknowable and impenetrable, they’re now open and vulnerable and full of a thousand emotions, scanning me, searching me.
He gestures. “This chain is owned by a cousin.”
“On your father’s side,” I surmise.
“Correct.” He shrugs. “They were…struggling. As was the parent company. Poor management all the way around, many unsound investments, sloppy infrastructure. I bought the whole thing. I am reorganizing, streamlining, these things.”
“Do your cousins know it’s you?”
He looks away, shrugs again—this time it’s uncomfortable. “No. I am not so sure how to…approach them. I am the bastard secret cousin no one knew existed. My father had a life before my mother. A wife, children. But he became so addicted to alcohol and gambling that he lost them. Or rather, they lost him, I think would be more accurate. He just…slipped away from them, drinking himself to death. My mother subsidized this, providing him money and a place to live so she could use him for her own purposes. For sex, if I am to be blunt.” His accent is more pronounced, more thickly Greek than when I last was with him. “It prolonged his life by some years, I suppose. It did not do him any favors, and his family, my cousins and their mother, never saw him again, and never knew what became of him.”
“So all they know is they’ve been bought by a mysterious benefactor.”
He nods. “Quite. Their mother will discover some time in the next few days that her bank has somehow made an internal error which resulted in her mortgage being discharged to her benefit. I own that bank, of course. Another cousin is a builder in Athens. He will bid for a contract he would normally never have a hope of getting, and he will get it.”
“But they’ll never knowyou.”
“I think not. Why? It would only create pain for them. To know the circumstances of my birth? No favor to them.”
“I think maybe you’re only looking at that through the lens of your own fear, Apollo.” I swallow hard, reach out to rest my hand on top of his. “And that’s understandable. But I can’t help wondering if they’ve spent the last thirty or however many years wondering what happened to their father, with no way of knowing or ever finding out. Never having closure. Never knowing they have a cousin—who they would otherwise maybe come to accept. If not love.”
He shakes his head. “You are too optimistic.”
“Realistic.”
He sighs, smiles. “Five minutes you are here and already you push me beyond my boundaries.”
I withdraw my hand. “Sorry.”
He shakes his head and catches my hand, holds it curled into a ball inside his. “No, don’t be.” He sets his mug down and abandons the casual posture, leaning across the table toward me. “I was worried that I’d imagined the connection I felt with you. I thought maybe it was…that it would not live up to how I remembered it being.”
I swallow hard again. “I had the same worry.”
“And?”
“And, so far…” I open my hand in his, press my palm to his. “So far I don’t think I was imagining it.”
He stares at me in silence for a long time. “You were with me in my castle for a day. Two? It’s hard to remember precisely how much time has passed. How can it be real, Corinna? How can your soul have imprinted upon mine so swiftly, yet so indelibly?”
I shake my head. “I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times since Spain, Apollo. I’ve never come up with an answer.”
“I did not—and except for you, I think—still do not believe in love. My mother did not love me. My father did not know me. Gemma did not love me—she was tasked with and paid for the responsibility of keeping me fed and clothed. Koslov the same for my education. My life after them was professors at university, advisors for management of my wealth, business partners, associates, subordinates, hirelings, clients. No one who knew me. No one who could care. So…how love? Where? What is this love? Only those who wanted something from me. That’s all.” A harsh snort, wave of his hand. “So even less do I believe in love at first sight. But yet, I met you, brought you to my home and suddenly, somehow, you were…insideme. Like a parasite, you burrowed into my fucking brain. Into my heart. Into the synapses and the arteries.”
I cackle. “Ah yes, that age-old metaphor from love poetry—being compared to a parasite.”
He sighs. “Not what you were hoping to hear, I suppose. It’s maddening. Because I do not know what to do with how I feel. Never have I needed anyone. Wanted anyone. Wanted anything. I want, I buy. Cars, houses, businesses. I’ve never wanted something I could not simply purchase. Even so with…companionship. This too was purchased. Not in the sense of hiring prostitutes, but in a thin guise of it, nonetheless. I know nothing about caring for people. I use them. Pay them, discard them when they have served a purpose.” He glances at the door, where Tomás stands discreetly just inside. “He is a sole exception. I pay him well, but he declines any offer of raises or bonuses or gifts—especially since…you. Since I have left the world of drugs and guns. This he approves of. He never liked that line of things or the tasks I occasionally assigned to him.”