Greek's Last Redemption by Caitlin Crews Page A

into traffic, “I want to try to...”
    â€œMy mother died when I was only twelve,” he told her in that abrupt way that made her think of that look he’d turned on her, cutting her off.
    He sat beside her but he might have been worlds away, that fine body of his taut and visibly furious beneath his elegant clothes, his elbow propped up against the far window. He stared out of it, out toward the delirious explosion of the city and all its fantastical structures as if she wasn’t there. But Holly didn’t make the mistake of thinking he was speaking to himself.
    â€œI know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
    â€œIt is the proper thing to murmur, as if it was a tragedy, or a mistake, but the truth is that she took too many pills with far too much alcohol and I believe it must have been a great relief to her to finally slip off into eternity.”
    Holly felt ripped wide-open. “I had no idea.”
    â€œMy father told everyone she had lost a struggle with a sudden and violent illness, and I suppose, in some way, this is also the truth,” Theo said in that same low, pointed way, as if he could have been talking of his shipping concerns as easily as these private family things Holly had never heard even a whisper of before.
    He paused for so long she thought he was finished, and wondered why she trembled, why even her bones seemed to shake, but then he turned his head to look at her instead and it pinned her to her seat.
    â€œBut another, more pertinent truth is that my father’s affairs were not only legion but common knowledge. Every piece of jewelry he gave my mother was a bribe, an apology, another young woman’s body he’d taken as his due. This broke her, jewel by jewel and lover by lover, and he knew it. But he never stopped. And she draped herself in each and every one of them, every bauble that proclaimed my father’s guilt and carelessness, when she killed herself to escape his endless stream of betrayals.”
    Holly couldn’t move. The city lights played over her face, bathing them both in intermittent light as the car navigated the streets, but all she could see was Theo and that terrible gleam in his dark gaze, that grim line of his mouth.
    She whispered his name, or she thought she did, and he ignored it, anyway.
    â€œAnd tonight,” he said quietly, with ferocious precision, “you have made me exactly like him.”
    Holly couldn’t breathe. “I thought you admired him now. I thought everything had changed between you.”
    Theo’s teeth bared in something far too stark to be a smile, and she knew he could see exactly what kind of coward she was, to avoid the point of what he’d told her. But she could hardly take it in. She wasn’t sure she could bear it.
    â€œI said he was a tough man. An excellent businessman.” Theo’s dark gaze hurt as it moved over her, Holly realized. She was half-afraid it would leave scars, to fit right in with all the rest she bore from their time together. Not to mention the ones she’d caused. “I never said he was a good one.”
    And they sat in strained silence, another wound that would leave its mark, for the remainder of the ride.
    â€œI will walk you to your door,” he told her in that harsh way of his when the car pulled up to the tall, gleaming doors of The Harrington, towering over the narrow, medieval street. He didn’t glance at her as he said it.
    Holly swallowed, hard. “I can’t think of anything less necessary than that.”
    She could simply go back to Dallas and resume her lonely, gray life, she thought. This was a terrible mistake, that much was clear, but she could remedy it. She could take the first flight out in the morning. She could stop playing stupid games with his money, her silly and childish attempts to gain his attention, and move on with her life, such as it was. All she had to do was leave.
    â€œI