Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 281(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“Right. Uh, thanks, I guess?”
She waves me off again and sighs as she closes her eyes. “These things, these parties, they are so boring. I have been to so many of them now and they are all the same. The men drink, they smoke, they laugh and joke, until they disappear into a room and talk business. That’s what they’re doing now. It’s how I got away.”
“Peter’s discussing business with your husband?” I frown slightly and look back toward the house. The Balaska mob is one of the more powerful criminal families in Greece. Aside from them, the Filos and the Galatas are also present, along with several other minor crime lords and their various soldiers and wives and girlfriends. Peter tried to explain it all to me, but I chose to tune him out. I’m here for a little while until it’s safe to go back home and then I’m never thinking about criminals or mafioso or Greek crime lords again.
“That’s what it seems,” she says and tilts her wine glass from side to side. “The American Greeks are so different though, I don’t see how it could possibly work. But you never know.” She gestures at me. “Are you one of them? The American Greeks?”
I shake my head. “My father was English and my mother was French.”
“Was? Are they both gone now?”
“Both gone,” I confirm.
“Pity. Here’s to them then. And to my lovely Papa and Mama, may God rest their souls.” She toasts the stars and drinks.
“Adrienne!” My name sounds like a gunshot. A figure stands at the top of the dunes, tall and dark and masculine. He’s backlit, and his face is in shadow, but I know Peter’s silhouette well enough after spending three weeks with him in his house.
“There’s your minder now,” Katarin says and waves at Peter. “Tell me something. Are you afraid of him? Is that why you’re standing down in the water and dreaming about escape?”
I walk from the waves, holding my dress up with my hands. It’s a nice dress, pretty, silk, emerald green. It works with my tan skin and sun-lightened hair. But I hate it because it was a gift from him.
“I don’t think afraid is the right word,” I say as I drift past Katarin. “More like tired. Exhausted. Sick of him. Ready to go back home.”
“And when are you going back?”
“Hopefully soon. It was nice meeting you.”
“Lovely meeting you as well, dear.”
I trudge up the beach toward where Peter’s waiting with his hands on his hips.
That man knows how to look at me like I’m a piece of trash washed up on the shore. He acts as though I’m the source of all his problems in this world, like I’m a bad smell, like I’m a stretch of failing crops or a wide tract of rotten land. He tolerates me, but barely, and his disdain seeps into the house and colors everything we do. It fills the silences with disgust.
I dislike him just as intensely.
His dark eyes, his heavy brows, his handsome lips. That cocky smirk. That know-it-all smile. How he laughs at his own jokes in a way he never laughs at mine. The way he looks at me like I’m the only person in a given room, his attention so complete and utter that it makes me wonder if he’s really seeing me at all.
Three weeks in a house together and we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words, and yet he’s a constant lurking presence. I dream about him half the time. I wish I wouldn’t.
“What were you doing down there?” he asks as I get closer. Then, glaring, “You ruined your dress.”
“It’s wet. It’ll dry.”
“That’s Versace. You know how much I spent on it?”
“Send me the tab.”
“You’re a problem, Adrienne, and I don’t know how I got stuck with you.”
“So leave. I can feed myself. Do I really need you around?”
“And let my father eviscerate me? No, thank you.” He glances over my shoulder toward where Katarin stands alone in the sand with her back to us. “Is that Balaska’s wife?”
Not Katarin but instead Balaska’s wife. That’s how it is with these Greek men. “Yes, that’s her. She says you have business with her husband.”
He nods slowly and doesn’t look at me. “We’re leaving tomorrow for Athens.”
I let that sink in. I’m not sure what it means to leave Crete for Athens except that it wasn’t part of the plan. I came to Greece three weeks ago because I got pulled into a dangerous war between the Greeks, the Italians, and the Russians back in the States, and this is supposed to be a refuge from the fighting. My best friend, Kacia, set it all up while she remains behind with her new boyfriend, dealing with the fallout from the war. If the Russians hadn’t nearly killed me, I might be back there with her.