The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TWO days later Homer and Estelle made a grand and glorious return, under the gaze of carefully arranged cameras. Plans for the party started at once, although first Aminta had a servant problem to deal with. Nikator had made certain accusations against the maids, who pleaded with Petra for help, which she gave.

‘I’m sorry, Homer, I don’t want to quarrel with you or your son,’ she said, ‘but Nikator was limping when he left and I’m afraid the maids saw. So now he has a grudge against them.’

Homer was a wise man and he knew his son’s bad side. He believed her, thanked her, told Nikator to stop talking nonsense and made him apologise to Petra. Instead of the explosion of temper she’d feared, Nikator seemed to be in a chastened mood.

‘Which means he’s more dangerous than ever,’ Lysandros said as they dined together. ‘The sooner you’re out of there the better. In the meantime I’ll have a quiet word with him.’

‘No, don’t,’ she begged. ‘I’m quite capable of having my own quiet word, as he’s already discovered. I’m only afraid he’ll spin you some silly story about him and me-’

‘Which you think I’ll be stupid enough to believe?’ Lysandros queried wryly. ‘Credit me with more intelligence than that.’

Nikator seemed to be making an effort. She went downstairs once to find him with a large painting that he’d bought as a gift for his father. It depicted the Furies, terrifying creatures with snakes for hair and blood dripping from their eyes. Petra studied the picture with interest. She’d been conscious of the Furies recently, but now she felt free from them.

‘The point was, they never let up,’ Nikator said. ‘Once they started on you, they’d hound you for ever.’

She wondered if he was sending a message that he would never forgive her for offending him. He would harm her or Lysandros if he could, she was sure of it. But they were both on the watch for him, and surely there was nothing in his power.

The party was going to be the society event of the season. Fellow film stars from Hollywood were flying in to dance, sing and raise their glasses in the fake Parthenon. Every businessman in Athens would be there, hoping to meet a film star, plus some film makers hoping to secure backing from rich men.

When the night came there was no sign of Nikator. Homer grumbled about the disrespect to his bride, but Petra also thought she detected a note of relief.

‘Maybe when you and Lysandros are formally engaged it might be easier,’ her mother said quietly. ‘He’ll have to accept it then. Just don’t take too long about it. It might be the best thing for everyone.’

‘But surely Lysandros is the foe?’

‘A rival, not a foe. If the two families could come together Homer thinks it might be wonderful.’

‘What about Nikator? Surely Homer wouldn’t cut his son out?’

‘Not out of his life or his heart, but out of the shipping business, yes. He could buy him a gaming house, or something else that would give him a good life without threatening people’s jobs in the shipyard.’

It seemed the perfect solution, but Petra wondered if it would offend Nikator’s pride and increase his hatred of Lysandros. Mentally she put it aside to be worried about later. For now all she cared about was the coming evening, when she would see her lover again and dance in his arms.

She’d chosen a dress of blue satin, so dark that it was almost black. It was a tight fit, emphasising her perfect shape, but with a modest neckline, to please Lysandros.

How handsome he was, she thought, watching him approach. Homer greeted him enthusiastically; he replied with smiles and expressions of civility. Petra remembered how Lysandros had cleared Homer of any involvement in Brigitta’s tragedy, saying, ‘To do him justice, he’s a fairly decent man, a lot better than many in this business.’

So it was true what Estelle had suggested. Her marriage to Lysandros might signal a new dawn in the Greek shipping business, and everyone knew it. Including Nikator.

Lysandros did the usual networking with Petra on his arm, and everyone had the chance to study them as a couple.

‘Has anyone told you what they’re all thinking?’ he murmured as they danced.

‘They were lining up to tell me,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We were watched in Corfu. Estelle says we were seen together, driving through the streets and on the boat.’

He shrugged. ‘They’re public places. People were bound to see us. When we marry, I suppose that will be in public as well-’ He smiled and added softly, ‘At least, the first part of it will.’

‘Oh, really?’ she murmured. ‘I don’t remember getting a proposal.’

‘You’ve had a proposal every minute of the last few days and you know it,’ he said firmly. He rather spoilt the autocratic sound of this by murmuring, ‘Siren,’ so softly that his breath on her cheek was almost all she knew.

‘Don’t I get an answer?’ he asked.

‘You had your answer the first time we made love,’ she said. ‘And you hadn’t even asked me.’

‘But now I’ve asked and you’ve answered, we might tell them,’ he suggested.

‘Tell this crowd? I thought you’d hate to be stared at.’

‘As long as they see what I want them to see, that’s all right. If they watch me walking off with the most beautiful woman in the room, I can live with that.’

He tightened his arm around her waist, swirling her around and around while everyone laughed and applauded. Petra remembered that later because it was almost her last moment of unclouded joy.

As they came out of the swirl and her head began to clear she saw something that made her sigh. Even so, she didn’t realise that disaster had walked in. Disaster was called Nikator, and he had a smile on his face. It was a cold, tense smile, but even so it gave no sign of what was about to crash down on her.

‘What’s he up to?’ she asked as he embraced Homer and Estelle.

‘Trying to win forgiveness for turning up late,’ Lysandros remarked. ‘Pretend he doesn’t exist, as I’m doing.’

His words reminded her of how hard it must be for him to appear at ease in Nikator’s presence, and she smiled at him in reassurance.

‘Better still,’ Lysandros said, ‘let’s show him exactly where he stands.’

Before she knew what he meant to do, he’d pulled her closer and laid his mouth on hers in a long kiss, whose meaning left nothing to the imagination.

Now he’d made his declaration to the world. This man, who’d spent so long hiding his true self behind protective bolts and bars, had finally managed to throw them aside and break out to freedom because the one special woman had given him the key. He no longer cared who could look into his soul because her love had made him invincible.

As the kiss ended and he raised his head, his manner was that of a victor. A hero, driving his chariot across the battlefield where his enemies lay defeated, might have worn that air of triumph.

‘Let him do what he likes,’ he murmured to her. ‘Nothing can touch us now.’

She was to remember those words long after.

‘Ah!’ cried Nikator. ‘Isn’t love charming?’

His caustic voice shattered her dream and made her shudder. Nikator had marched across the floor and stood regarding them sardonically, while Homer hurried behind and laid an urgent hand on his son’s arm. Nikator threw it off.

‘Leave me, Father; there are things that have to be said and I’m going to enjoy saying them.’ He grinned straight at Lysandros. ‘I never thought the day would come when I’d have a good laugh at you. You, of all men, to be taken in by a designing woman!’

‘Give up,’ Lysandros advised him gently. ‘It’s no use, Nikator.’

‘But that’s what’s so funny,’ Nikator yelped. ‘How easily you were fooled when you fancied yourself so armoured. But the armour doesn’t cover the heel, does it?’

Even this jibe didn’t seem to affect Lysandros, who continued to regard Nikator with pity and contempt.

‘And your “heel” was that you believed in her,’ Nikator said, jabbing a finger at Petra. ‘You’re too stupid to realise that she’s been playing you for a sucker because there’s something she wanted.’

‘Hey, you!’ Estelle thumped him hard on the shoulder. ‘If you’re suggesting my daughter has to marry for money, let me tell you-’

‘Not money!’ Nikator spat. ‘Glory. Anything for a good story, eh?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Lysandros demanded. ‘There’s no story.’

‘Of course there is. It’s what she lives by, her reputation, getting a new angle on things that nobody else can get. And, oh, boy, did she get it this time!’

Even then they didn’t see the danger. Lysandros sighed, shaking his head as if being patient with a tiresome infant.

‘You won’t laugh when you know what she’s been doing,’ Nikator jeered. ‘Getting onto the press, telling them your secrets, repeating what you said to her-’

‘That’s a lie!’ Petra cried.

‘Of course it’s a lie,’ Lysandros said.

The smiling confidence had vanished from his face and his voice had the deadly quiet of a man who was fighting shock, but he was still uttering the right words.

‘Be careful what you say,’ he told Nikator coldly. ‘I won’t have her slandered.’

‘Oh, you think it’s a slander, do you? Then how does the press know what you said to her at the Achilleion? How do they know you showed her Brigitta’s grave and told her how often you’d stood there and begged Brigitta’s forgiveness? Have you ever repeated that? No, I thought not. But someone has.’

‘Not me,’ Petra said, aghast. ‘I would never-you can’t believe that!’

She flung the last words at Lysandros, who turned and said quickly, ‘Of course not.’

But his manner was strained. Gone was the relaxed joy of only a few minutes ago. Only two of them knew what he had said to her at that grave.

‘It’s about time you saw this,’ Nikator said.

Nobody had noticed the bag he’d brought with him and dropped at his feet. Now he leaned down and began to pull out the contents, distributing them to the fascinated crowd.

They were newspapers, carrying the banner headline, The Truth About Achilles: How She Made Him Talk, and telling the story of the well-known historian Petra Radnor, who’d first come to prominence when, little more than a girl, she’d published Greek Heroes of the Past.

The book had been such a success that it had been revised for a school edition and was now being considered for a further revision. This time the angle would be more glamorous and romantic, as Ms Radnor considered Greek men today and whether they really lived up to their classical reputation. For the moment she was working on Achilles.

There followed a detailed description of the last few weeks-their first meeting at the wedding, at which Ms Radnor exerted all her charms to entice her prey, the evening they had spent together dancing in the streets, and finally their time on Corfu in the villa where ‘Achilles’ had once lived with his other lover, who was buried there.

Together they visited the Archilleion, where they stood before the great picture of the first Achilles dragging the lifeless body of his enemy behind his chariot, and the modern Achilles explained that he was raised to do it to them before they did it to him.

Which was exactly what he’d said, Petra thought in numb horror.

It went on and on. Somehow the people behind this had learned every private detail of their time together at the villa, and were parading it for amusement. ‘Achilles’ had been trapped, deluded, made a fool of by a woman who was always one step ahead of him. That was the message, and those who secretly feared and hated him would love every moment of it.

All around she could see people trying to smother their amusement. Homer was scowling and the older guests feared him too much to laugh aloud, but they were covering their mouths, turning their heads away. The younger ones were less cautious.

‘Even you,’ Nikator jeered at Lysandros. ‘Even you weren’t as clever as you reckoned. You thought you had it all sussed, didn’t you? But she saw through you, and oh, what a story she’s going to get out of it, Achilles!’

Lysandros didn’t move. He seemed to have been turned to stone.

Nikator swung his attention around to Petra.

‘Not that you’ve been so clever yourself, my dear deluded sister.’

Estelle gave a little shriek and Homer grabbed his son.

‘That’s enough,’ he snapped. ‘Leave here at once.’

But Nikator threw him off again. Possessed by bitter fury, he could defy even his father. He went closer to Petra, almost hissing in her face.

‘He’s a fool if he believed you, but you’re a fool if you believed him. There are a hundred women in this room right now who trusted him and discovered their mistake too late. You’re just another.’

Somehow she forced herself to speak.

‘No, Nikator, that’s not true. I know you want to believe it, but it’s not true.’

‘You’re deluded,’ he said contemptuously.

‘No, it’s you who are deluded,’ she retorted at once.

‘Have you no eyes?’

‘Yes, I have eyes, but eyes can deceive you. What matters isn’t what your eyes tell you, but what your heart tells you. And my heart says that this is the man I trust with all of me.’ She lifted her head and spoke loudly. ‘Whatever Lysandros tells me, that is the truth.’

She stepped close to him and took his hand. It was cold as ice.

‘Let’s go, my dearest,’ she said. ‘We don’t belong here.’

The crowd parted for them as they walked away together into the starry night. Now the onlookers were almost silent, but it was a terrible silence, full of horror and derision.

On and on they walked, into the dark part of the grounds. Here there were only a few stragglers and they fell away when they saw them coming, awed, or perhaps made fearful, by the sight of two faces that seemed to be looking into a different world.

At last they came to a small wooden bridge over a river and went to stand in the centre, gazing out over the water. Still he didn’t look at her, but at last he spoke in a low, almost despairing voice.

‘Thank you for what you said about always believing me.’

‘It was only what you said to me first,’ she said fervently. ‘I was glad to return it. I meant it every bit as much as you did. Nikator is lying. Yes, there was a book, years ago, but I told you about that myself, and about the reissue.’

‘And the new version?’

‘I knew they were thinking of bringing it out again, but not in detail. And it certainly isn’t going to be anything like Nikator said. Lysandros, you can’t believe all that stuff about my “working on Achilles” and pursuing you to make use of you. It isn’t true. I swear it isn’t.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ he said quietly. ‘But-’

The silence was almost tangible, full of jagged pain.

‘But what?’ she asked, not daring to believe the suspicions rioting in her brain.

‘How did they discover what we said?’ he asked in a rasping, tortured voice. ‘That’s all I want to know.’

‘And I can’t tell you because I don’t know. It wasn’t me. Maybe someone was standing behind us at the Achilleion-’

‘Someone who knew who we were? And the grave? How do they know about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know. I never repeated anything to anybody. Lysandros, you have got to believe me.’

She looked up into his face and spoke with all the passion at her command.

‘Can’t you see that we’ve come to the crossroads? This is it. This is where we find out if it all meant anything. I am telling you the truth. Nobody in the world matters more to me than you, and I would never, ever lie to you. For pity’s sake, say that you believe me, please.’

The terrible silence was a thousand fathoms deep. Then he stammered, ‘Of course…I do believe you…’ But there was agony in his voice and she could hear the effort he put into forcing himself.

‘You don’t,’ she said explosively as the shattering truth hit her. ‘All that about trusting me-it was just words.’

‘No, I-no!’

‘Yes!’

‘I tried to mean them, I wanted to, but-’

Her heart almost failed her, for there on his face was the look she’d seen before, on the statue at the Achilleion, when Achilles tried to draw the arrow from his foot, his expression full of despair as he realised there was no way to escape his fate.

‘Yes-but,’ she said bitterly. ‘I should have known there’d be a “but”.’

‘Nobody else knows about that grave,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t get past that.’

‘Perhaps Nikator does know. Perhaps he had someone following us-’

‘That wouldn’t help them find the grave. It’s deep in the grounds; you can’t see it from outside. I’ve never told anyone else. You’re the one person I’ve ever trusted enough to…to…’

As the words died he groaned and reached for her. It would have been simple to go into his arms and try to rediscover each other that way, but a spurt of anger made her step back, staring at him with hard eyes.

‘And that’s the worst thing you can do to anyone,’ she said emphatically. ‘The more you trust someone, the worse it is when they betray you.’

He stared at her like a man lost in a mist, vainly trying to understand distant echoes. ‘What did you say?’ he whispered.

‘Don’t you recognise your own words, Lysandros? Words you said to me in Las Vegas. I’ll remind you of some more. “Nobody is ever as good as you think they are, and sooner or later the truth is always there. Better to have no illusions, and be strong.” You really meant that, didn’t you? I didn’t realise until now just how much you meant it.’

‘Don’t remind me of that time,’ he shouted. ‘It’s over.’

‘It’ll never be over because you carry it with you, and all the hatred and suspicion that was in you then is there still. You just hide it better, but then something happens and it speaks, telling you to play safe and think the worst of everyone. Even me. Look into your heart and be honest. Suddenly I look just like all the others, don’t I? Lying, scheming-’

‘Shut up!’ he roared. ‘Don’t talk like that. I forbid it.’

‘Why, because it comes too close to the truth? And who are you to forbid me?’

If his mind had been clearer he could have told her that he was the man whose fate she held in her hands, but the clear-headedness for which he was famed seemed to have deserted him now and everything was in a whirl of confusion.

‘I want to believe you; can’t you understand that?’ He gripped her shoulders tightly, almost shaking her. ‘But tell me how. Show me a way. Tell me!’

His misery was desperate. If her own heart hadn’t been breaking, she would have been filled with pity for him.

‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing you must find for yourself.’

‘Petra-please-try to understand-’

‘But I do. I only wish I didn’t. I understand that nothing has changed. We thought things could be different now. I love you and I hoped you loved me-’

‘But I do, you know that-’

‘No, even you don’t know that. The barriers are still there, shutting you off from the world, from me. I thought I could break them down, but I can’t.’

‘If you can’t, nobody can,’ he said despairingly. Then something seemed to happen to him. His hands fell, he stepped back, and when he spoke again it was with the calm of despair. ‘And perhaps that’s all there is to be said.’

There was a noise from the distance, lights; the party was breaking up. People streamed out into the garden and now the laughter could be clearly heard, rising on the night air.

And the derision would torture him as well as the loss of his faith in her. Bleakly she wondered which one troubled him more.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told her. ‘There are ways of getting to the bottom of this.’

‘Of course,’ she said formally, waiting for his kiss.

Briefly he rested his fingertips against her cheek, but apart from that he departed without touching her.

The detective work was relatively easy. It didn’t take long to establish that the ‘newspaper copies’ were forgeries, specially printed at Nikator’s orders, the text written to Nikator’s dictation.

But that helped little. It was the overheard conversations that were really damaging, the fact that they couldn’t be explained, and the fact that hundreds of people at the party had read them.

Calling her publishers, Petra told them to abandon plans for a reissue of her book. They were dismayed.

‘But we’ve heard such exciting stories-’

‘None of them are true,’ she snapped. ‘Forget it.’

She and Lysandros were still in touch, but only just. They exchanged polite text messages, and she understood. He was avoiding her and she knew why. If they had met face to face he wouldn’t have known what to say to her. He was back stranded again in the sea of desolation, unable to reach out to the one person who’d helped him in the past.

Or perhaps he just didn’t know how to tell her that the break was coming and there was no escape.

It might have been different, she knew. By quarrelling, they had done exactly what Nikator had wanted.

But it went deeper than that. However it looked, Nikator hadn’t really caused the chasm between them; he’d merely revealed its existence. Sooner or later the crack in their relationship would have come to light.

Sometimes she blamed herself for the anger that had made her attack him when he was wretched, but in her heart she knew it changed nothing. He was the man he was, and the hope she’d briefly glimpsed was no more than an illusion.

In her present bitter mood she wondered how much of her view of him had been real, and how much she’d shaped him to fit her own desires. Had he really needed her so much, or had she just refused to see that he was self-contained, needing neither her nor anyone else? It was suddenly easy to believe that, and to feel alone and unwanted as never before in her life.

‘Surplus to requirements,’ she thought angrily as she lay in bed one night. ‘A silly woman who reshaped her image of a man to suit herself. And got her just deserts.’

In a fury of despair and frustration, she began to bang her head on the pillow and only stopped when she realised that she was mirroring his movements. She wished he were there so that she could share it with him.

But would he ever be with her again?

In Homer’s library she found her own volume, the one on which Nikator had built his attacks.

‘Now I know where he got the idea,’ she thought wryly, turning to the Achilles section and reading her own text.

His name had been linked with many women, but the one for whose love he’d given his life was Polyxena, daughter of King Priam of Troy. His love for her had held out the hope of a peace treaty between the Greeks and the Trojans, and an end to the war. But Paris was enraged. Such a treaty would have meant he had to return Helen to her husband, and that he was determined not to do.

Through his spies he knew that Achilles could only be destroyed through his heel and he haunted the temple, waiting for the wedding. When Achilles appeared Paris shot him in the heel with a poisoned arrow.

In a further twist to the tale, Achilles’ ghost was reputed to have spoken from the grave, demanding that Polyxena be sacrificed and forced to join him in death. Whereupon she was dragged to the altar and slain.

And what happened after that? Petra wondered. Had he met her in a boat on the River Styx, ready to convey her to the underworld? Had she told him that he couldn’t really have loved her or he would have behaved more generously? Or had he accused her of betraying him, giving that as his reason for condemning her to death? One way or another, it had ended badly, as many love affairs did.

Or was the story wrong? Had he not forced her to join him in death, but merely implored her, knowing that she would be glad to join him? When they met at the Styx had he held out his arms to her, and had she run to him?

I’m going crazy, she thought. I’ve got to stop thinking like this.

Stop thinking about him. That was all it would take.

It would never happen unless they could find some point of closure. And she could think of nothing that would provide a definite answer.

Unless…

Slowly she straightened up in her seat, staring into the distance, seeing nothing but the inspiration that had come to her.

That’s what it needs, she thought. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before?