Читать книгу Kyriakis's Innocent Mistress - Diana Hamilton - Страница 5

DIMITRI KYRIAKIS stared fixedly at his father’s home and told himself he wasn’t overawed. No way. The villa—what he could see of it at the end of the straight tree-bordered drive—was immense: a gleaming white monument to wealth and power. No way could he walk up that driveway without knowledge of the correct sequence of numbers needed to activate the high-tech mechanism that would open the massive wrought-iron gates. And to attempt to climb them would without doubt bring security guards running.

But he’d find a way. He had to. For his mother’s sake, he had to.

She was owed.

He was fourteen years old. A man. Or almost. And he’d come to collect. No power on earth could keep him from what he had to do.

Straightening his bony shoulders, he set off, scouting the high perimeter wall of the estate, the hot Greek sun burning through the cheap white fabric of his best shirt. If his mother knew what he was doing she’d throw a fit. Or several.

He tried to smile at the mental image of the gentle, frail Eleni Kyriakis losing it, but the lump in his throat rose like a spike of hot lava and pushed any attempt out of existence.

Late last night she’d told him. Returning from his after-school stint dogsbodying in the sweltering kitchens of one of Athens’ most prestigious hotels—owned as he now knew by his father—to the mean, claustrophobic rooms they rented in a narrow back street, he’d found his mother bent over a pile of ironing. It was part of the one-woman laundry service she’d instigated several years before, to augment the money she earned from her daily cleaning work.

She had pushed a strand of greying hair from her forehead, and her smile had been as gently welcoming as ever, giving no clue to what was to come.

‘Sit with me, my son. I have something to tell you.’ She sighed softly. ‘Many times you’ve asked who your father is, and many times I’ve answered that I’d tell you all about him when you were older, when maturity has brought the wisdom to see things clearly without the fog of childish emotions. But circumstances have changed.’

Her eyes had glittered with rare tears and he’d known then that something was wrong. Very wrong.

He could still feel echoes of the stomach-looping, throat-clogging sensation that had weakened his bones as she’d told him that she’d been undergoing tests. There was something wrong with her heart. It could fail her at any moment. She’d smiled then, bravely, and it was a smile he’d remember for the rest of his life.

She had taken his hands. ‘But what do they know? I’m tough. I’ll prove them wrong—you’ll see! But just in case they’re right I must tell you about your father. He was so handsome, so magnetic, and I loved him very much.’

It had been then, as she’d given him the identity of the man who had sired him, that he’d seen his beloved mother with fresh eyes. As he’d taken in the lines of exhaustion on her once beautiful face, her sunken cheeks and the tell-tale blue of her lips, he’d known exactly what he had to do.

With the determined tightening of his young jaw that was to become habitual, he began to climb the wall, muscles straining as he sought foot and handholds, his tension released as he swung over the top and dropped silently onto the long grass.

Beyond the belt of trees, the seeding grasses, he could see the sweep of an immaculately manicured and watered lawn—could smell, from somewhere, the evocative scent of summer-flowering jasmine, and could hear distant voices. A male, clipped and harsh, a petulant female whine.

Emerging into the full, relentless beat of the sun, Dimitri saw them. The man wearing a cream linen suit was his father. His photograph was splashed across the financial pages often enough to be instantly recognisable. The woman—young, supple—was dressed in something that floated around her body with every shift of the breeze, with every movement. She was carrying a parasol, her blonde head turned slightly away from his father. He could see the icy glint of diamonds hanging from her ears. The amount the gems must cost would have meant his mother wouldn’t have had to work herself half to death for at least a couple of years.

So this had to be the second wife his mother had spoken of.

Resolve spurred him towards them, his long, gangling legs automatically taking him out into the open, where he could be seen. This wretched man, already married for the first time, with a young son, had seduced a servant in his employ and instantly dismissed her when she’d told him she was pregnant.

With him!

For that he would be made to pay!

He’d been seen; his intrusion had registered. Every nerve in Dimitri’s skinny body stretched and his mouth went dry. But his chin came up as the man who was his father walked towards him, leaving the woman who was his wife standing.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ The voice carried the harshness of the despot he was, secure in his kingdom, the wealthy owner of cruise liners and swanky hotels. One hand, Dimitri noted, went to an inner jacket pocket. Did he carry a gun? he conjectured wildly. Did he mean to shoot the shabby peasant and claim self-defence? Or was he about to use some device to summon his security officers, have him tossed back over the wall with as much ceremony as the disposal of a bundle of unspeakable rubbish?

Refusing to let his tautened nerves get the better of him, he spoke, deploring the wretched highpitched squeak his breaking voice sometimes embarrassed him with. ‘I’m DimitriKyriakis, son of Eleni. Your son.’

Silence, thickening in the heat of the sun. His father’s hand slid back to his side. Empty.

A broad, stocky figure, black-suited, approached along a path that snaked from the villa. The woman began to move towards them. His father motioned them both back with an impatient arm movement. ‘An easy claim to make! And even easier to dismiss. What do you want with me?’

The handsome features were marred by what was doubtless a perpetual sneer. Dimitri reddened. He took insults from no one, but he had no pride where his mother’s wellbeing was concerned. She had worked her guts out to provide for them both, gone without food sometimes so that her son shouldn’t go hungry. Never complained.

He squared his bony shoulders. He was almost as tall as the older man. He willed his voice to remain steady. ‘You are Andreas Papadiamantis. Everyone knows how rich and powerful you are—all those fancy hotels and cruise liners. You have everything; my mother has nothing. Fifteen years ago Eleni Kyriakis worked here for you, as a domestic servant. You told her your marriage was finished. You seduced her. She was beautiful then and she was in love with you.’ His heart leaped when he saw the unmistakable flicker of recognition in his father’s eyes. He remembered her—remembered what had happened! It made what he had to say, ask, so much easier. ‘But she became pregnant, and when she told you you dismissed her. I guess you broke her heart.’

She hadn’t said as much, but Dimitri had sensed deep sadness when she spoke of what had happened all those years ago.

He met his father’s narrowed, contemptuous eyes and stated vehemently, ‘She doesn’t know I’m here, speaking to you. She would never ask for anything for herself. Ever. But I will. She is ill. Her heart is exhausted. She needs rest, decent food. I do what I can. At weekends and after school I work in the kitchens at one of your hotels here in Athens. It is some help, but it’s not enough.’ He took a deep breath. ‘All I ask is that you make her a small monthly allowance. Just enough to mean she doesn’t have to work to pay the rent and buy food.And only until I am able to provide for her myself. She needs to rest, to live without anxiety,’ he stressed, his voice cracking.

Rumoured to be one of the wealthiest men in Greece, Andreas Papadiamantis wouldn’t miss the outlay of a modest monthly allowance. He would probably spend more on an evening dining out with his beautiful second wife.

Refusing to let himself squirm under the relentless stare of his father’s hard black eyes, Dimitri blurted, ‘I want nothing for myself, and I will never ask anything else of you but this. A small allowance would mean little to you, but it would make the difference between life and an early death for my mother. Consult with her doctors if you don’t believe me!’

The man who was his father smiled then. A humourless twisting of his hard, handsome mouth. And his voice was harsh. ‘I don’t give in to blackmail—as smarter people than you have learned to their cost. Breathe one word of this to anyone else and I will squash you and your mother as if you were beetles beneath my feet. Even if your story is true, Eleni Kyriakis knew what she was doing when she opened her legs for me. And learn this and learn it well: dog eats dog in this world, and the weak go to the wall.’

An abrupt arm movement had the security guard advancing. He had hands like hams, Dimitri noted with the small part of his mind that wasn’t seething with impotent rage.

‘Spiro, see this person off my property.’ Not even looking at him, Andreas Papadiamantis turned and strolled back to the waiting woman, and Dimitri found himself ignominiously frogmarched to the main gates and tossed out onto the white dust of the road.

Hearing the gates clang shut, Dimitri hoisted himself back to his feet, his jaw set.

His mother had been insulted. He had been insulted. He hated the man who was his father. He would have his revenge. He brushed himself down and, his dark head held high, began the long trudge back to the city.

He would make his father pay for his callous insults. He would find a way.

His vow was strengthened when he discovered that there was to be no more work for him in the kitchens of his father’s hotel. The loss of his meagre pay was a spiteful act on his father’s part.

And the vow was set in impermeable stone when ten months later his mother died of a heart attack.