The Heiress Bride. LYNNE GRAHAM

with bitter hindsight, for she had not planned it well enough and had merely forewarned her father of her intentions.

      At the time, she had been receiving regular orthodontic treatment in Athens, and it had been relatively easy to slip out of the dental clinic past her unsuspicious bodyguards and dive into a taxi to head to the airport. But she had not had the foresight to check the timetables in advance and had not had the wit to just buy a ticket for the first available seat on any international flight. No, her goal had been London and she had sat around like a fool awaiting that flight only to be cornered and forced from the airport by her bodyguards before the plane had even landed. She shuddered at the recollection of the welcome home she had received from her outraged and incredulous father, who had never dreamt until that day that she might dare to try and escape his bullying tyranny.

      After all, her mother never had. But then any spirit Amanda Gakis had ever had had been crushed out of her by her husband’s sneering verbal attacks and even more punishing fists.

      ‘Where would I go?’ her adoptive mother had once asked Ione with open disbelief when her teenage daughter had suggested that leaving her abusive marriage was the only solution to her unhappiness. ‘How would I live? Wherever I went, your father would find me. He would never let me leave…he loves me too much!’

      Love, Ione thought with a pained cynicism far beyond her years. Love had made a victim of the beautiful mother she had adored. Love had been one of Amanda’s favourite excuses for the violence she had accepted as her lot in her life, along with the stress of her husband’s workaholic ways on his temperament and her own inexcusable stupidity. She had blamed herself. Even while she had lain terminally ill, she had blamed herself for lingering long enough to distress and inconvenience her husband and her son.

      Eyes stinging as she realised just how much she still missed the woman whose love had cocooned her from the worst of her father’s abuse, Ione stiffened with dread as the older man’s smooth executive assistant emerged with a surprisingly unctuous smile on his face.

      ‘Miss Gakis…come this way.’

      Minos Gakis stood below his own flattering portrait in the lofty-ceilinged room. He was a big thickset man with an imposing presence but he had yet to recover the weight he had shed while he was being treated for cancer. Indeed, although his illness had been a well-kept secret and had been successfully treated, his harsh features looked even more lined and gaunt to her than they had months earlier and his complexion was the colour of putty. For the very first time, it occurred to Ione that his recovery seemed much slower than might have been expected for a man of his former health and vigour.

      ‘Are you well, Papa?’ she heard herself ask in instinctive dismay, for it had been several weeks since she had seen him as he had been abroad on business.

      ‘I can see that my caring, compassionate daughter will be sadly missed in this household,’ Minos responded with cutting amusement.

      Embarrassed colour washed over Ione’s pallor and only a second later did she begin wondering where she could possibly be going that she might be missed. Hope sprang up in her in so fast and strong a surge that her knees trembled as she stood there. Had he finally forgiven her for trying to run away? Was he now willing to consider allowing her to lead a more normal life?

      ‘After all these years, you are finally going to be of some use to me,’ the burly older man informed her with satisfaction.

      Ione stiffened, recognising the foolish aspect of her wild hopes of being permitted a life of her own. When had her father ever done anything that had pleased her? He had broken down at her mother’s graveside, but her surprise and relief that he had shown that amount of humanity had been ruined by her painful memories of the mental and physical damage he had inflicted on a woman who had never hurt another living soul by word or by deed.

      ‘I have found you a husband,’ Minos announced and paused for effect.

      The shock of that revelation rocked Ione on her feet and, though she struggled not to betray any reaction, a faint gasp was muffled low in her throat. Her heart was racing but her keen mind was racing even faster. A husband? Why on earth would he find her a husband? There had to be a reason. It would have to be of profit to him in some way. She knew better than to utter a single question or exclamation for he would react to either response as if she had been impertinent.

      ‘Speak when you are spoken to,’ had been a lesson etched into Ione’s soul during childhood. ‘A respectful daughter does not question a parent.’

      The silence lay like concrete slowly setting her feet into greater rigidity while she waited for him to speak again. A husband, she thought with dazed incredulity. Why had she not foreseen such a possibility? Well, principally she had not anticipated the development because she was painfully aware that her father revelled in keeping his family at his beck and call and wholly dependent on him in every way.

      ‘If Cosmas had not died,’ the older man stated with harsh exactitude as he referred to her older brother, who had been killed when his private plane had crashed the year before, ‘I would have scorned any thought of making such a marriage for you. But you are all that I have now and some day you will inherit Gakis Holdings.’

      If his first announcement had shaken her, that second made her lips part in shock and she whispered, ‘I’m…to be your heir?’

      He vented a sardonic laugh. ‘Who else is left? In the eyes of the law, you are my daughter even though you do not possess a single drop of my blood.’

      Yet she was proud that she was not a Gakis, relieved that she need never fear the taint of his genes, and she stood there lost in her own increasingly frantic thoughts. She did not want to inherit Gakis Holdings. His huge international business empire was the monster that had created his unfettered power. Enormous wealth had made him untouchable. Without hesitation, he destroyed those who antagonised him and his sphere of influence stretched terrifyingly far and wide. Time and time again the greed of others had protected him for he bribed those who might have exposed his corrupt business methods…or even what went on in his own home.

      Perspiration beaded her short upper lip as she registered the peculiar direction of her thoughts at that particular moment. Her father had just told her that he had found her a husband. Why wasn’t she thinking about the shattering statement? As the silence buzzed around her she felt faint and sick and the sound of her own heartbeat seemed to be thundering in her own ears.

      Suddenly she understood why she could not dwell on the news that she was to be married off like some medieval bride without any right to have a say in her own future. What was the point of agonising over what she could not prevent? For if she defied him, he would hurt her and harm what mattered most to her. He was remorseless and the process of intimidation would begin the instant she voiced a word of objection. He had turned her into a coward, a lousy, grovelling thing without the guts to take on a fight she knew she could not win.

      ‘I’m impressed,’ Minos Gakis informed her with a quietness of tone that sent a cold shiver down her rigid spine. ‘You know your place in life now. That’s good, for I won’t take any nonsense over this matter. As your father, I know what is best for you.’

      ‘Yes, Papa,’ she muttered sickly.

      ‘Don’t you even want to know who your husband will be?’ he mocked, revelling in her submission to his dictates.

      ‘If you want to tell me,’ she intoned half under her breath.

      ‘Alexio Christoulakis.’

      Her knees almost gave beneath her in shock. She glanced up and encountered her father’s cold look of amusement. ‘Alexio…Christoulakis?’

      Slowly, painfully slowly, her triangular face drenched with colour for she recalled the night she had met Alexio Christoulakis with too great a clarity for comfort. Her long, naturally dark lashes dropped again to conceal her transfixed gaze. Alexio Christoulakis…the numero uno womaniser, who seemed addicted to making headlines in both the business section and the society pages. The guy who didn’t like to sleep on satin sheets and who had insisted she changed them even though it had