A Shameful Consequence - By Carol Marinelli Page 0,53

on his way there now.’

Paulo’s car was no match for Nico’s. It was small, ancient, and Paulo wasn’t up for a car chase. He ambled along the roads, even when she begged him to go faster, but they had Leo in the car, Paulo pointed out, and no car seat … and she looked at her baby and had to bite her lip in frustration as Despina attempted to reassure her.

‘He’s a good man,’ Despina soothed.

He was a good man, a just man, Connie knew that, but a terrible injustice had been done to him and when Paulo asked at the road toll if they had seen him, a man in silver sports car, her heart sank further. They were told how he had been, angry and blasting his horn then driving off as if the devil had been chasing him.

Paulo knew Xanos well and did not need directions, but as they turned at the market square into her street and drove up the hill, she was petrified what she might see. She braced herself for a police car or for neighbours on the street, for Nico’s sleek sports car, but there was nothing, no sign of Nico, or that he had even been here. She asked Despina to wait with Leo as she ran up to her front door, hammering on it, frustrated at the long wait for her father to open it.

Slowly he did so and frowned at the sight of his estranged daughter and then behind to where Despina stood, holding his grandson.

‘I don’t take in beggars.’ He went to close the door and, Connie realised Nico didn’t need to do it, she could quite happily have killed him herself.

‘That’s your grandson.’ She barged in, powered on her own anger, proud, so proud to say it, for the truth to be known. ‘His father is Nico Eliades.’ And she watched her father’s hand reach to his chest and she shook her head, for she would not let him manipulate her, would not let him hide behind a bedroom door with a nurse standing guard. ‘He knows,’ Connie said. ‘He knows what you did and he’s on his way here.’ And she told him to get up when he fell to the floor. She told him to grow up when he begged out excuses and she told him to give her his office keys, to face Nico when he arrived and give him what he deserved.

His identity.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

NICO had screeched to a halt at the toll barrier, blasting his horn impatiently for the watchman to lift it, ready to spring out and raise the thing himself, and the wait did not calm him, the pendulum did not swing backwards. It just surged higher towards hatred, to filth, to violence, and the rule would be broken, Nico knew as his car swept into town, for this time the pendulum would never swing back.

No one would give him the address of Constantine’s parents. As he stopped his car and demanded to know, people shrugged and walked on.

Why would they give directions? Nico realised. Who would give directions to a man raging? He stopped the car and forced himself to think.

She had lived near the taverna, Constantine had told him that, but he could not knock on every door. Someone would warn the bastard, or ring the police. Instead, he would go to the taverna and get directions. He would not get Charlotte involved with this.

And he forced himself calm, to appear just another customer, and this time he did not take his coffee outside but drank it at the bar and chatted to the owner as he looked through the menu, saw hot peppered calamari and wished, how he wished, that he had tasted it with her. He wished they had bought it from here and then sat on the beach as young lovers rather than the nightmare that things were now.

Then he caught his reflection in the mirror, saw eyes that were his, that were surely the same as his twin’s, and eyes, too, that were Leo’s and Constantine was right—she should not have had to say.

He did not need to be told that Leo was his son.

Which meant he was a father. And even if his mind screamed for revenge, there was part of his mind that was stronger, that waited, that paused as he drank his coffee and, despite the hour, accepted the ouzo. He tasted the anise on his lips and his mind went to his