Claiming My Hidden Son / Bride Behind The Billion-Dollar Veil. Clare Connelly

in the media, have to gain by shackling himself to me?

      I knew it had something to do with the supreme smugness my father had been exhibiting in the last several weeks but he had refused to disclose. Somehow, behind the sneers and bitterness whenever the Xenakis name came up over the years, my father had been scheming. And that scheming had included me.

      In all my daydreams about attaining my freedom, marriage hadn’t featured anywhere. I wanted the freedom to dictate who I socialised with, what I ate, the pleasure to paint my watercolours without fear of recrimination, without judgement… The freedom to live life on my terms.

      The hope of one day achieving those things had stopped me from succumbing to abject misery.

      But not like this!

      I forced my gaze to the mirror and promptly looked away again. My eyes were desolate pools, my cheeks artificially pink with excess rouge. My lips were turned down, reflecting my despair since learning that I was promised to a stranger. One who’d demanded a wedding within twenty-eight days.

      My flat refusal had merely garnered a cold shrug from my father, before he had gone for the jugular—my one weakness.

      My mother.

      As if summoned by my inner turmoil, the electric whine of a wheelchair disturbed the excited chatter of the stylists. The moment they realised the mother of the bride had entered the bedroom, their attention shifted to her.

      Taking advantage of the reprieve, I surreptitiously rubbed at my cheeks with a tissue, removing a layer of blusher. The icy peach lipstick disappeared with the second swipe across my lips, leaving me even paler than before but thankfully looking less of a lost, wide-eyed freak. Quickly hanging the thick lace veil over my face to hide the alteration, I stood and turned, watching as the women fawned over my mother.

      Iona Petras had been stunningly beautiful once upon a time. Growing up, I was in awe of her statuesque beauty, her vivacity and sheer joy for life. Her laughter had lit up my day, her intelligence and love of the arts fuelling my own appreciation for music and painting.

      Now, greying and confined, she was still a beautiful woman. But along with her broken body had come a broken spirit no amount of pretending or smiling, or even gaining the elevated position as mother of the bride, soon to marry a man most deemed a demigod, could disguise.

      She withstood the stylists’ ministrations without complaint, her half-hearted smile only slipping when her eyes met mine. Within them I saw ravaging misery and the sort of unending despair that came with the life sentence she’d imposed on herself by returning when she should have fled.

      But, just as I’d had to remain here because of her, I knew my mother had returned home because of me. And somewhere along the line Iona Petras had accepted her fate.

      ‘Leave us, please,’ she said to the stylists, her voice surprisingly steely.

      The women withdrew. She wheeled herself closer, her face pinched with worry. For the longest minute she stared at me.

      ‘Are you all right?’

      I tensed, momentarily panicked that she’d learned what I’d hidden from her for the last few weeks. As much as I’d tried to ignore the ever-growing pain in my abdomen, I couldn’t any more. Not only had it become a constant dull ache, it had become a reminder that even health-wise my life wasn’t my own. That I might well be succumbing to the very real ailment that had taken my grandmother—

      ‘Callie? Are you ready?’

      Realising she was talking about the wedding ceremony, I felt the urge to succumb to hysteria pummel me once again. As did the fierce need to be selfish just this once…to simply flee and let the chips fall where they may.

      ‘Is anyone ever ready to marry a man they’ve never met?’ I asked. ‘Please tell me you’ve found out why he’s demanding I do this?’ I pleaded.

      Eyes a shade darker than my own lapis-lazuli-coloured ones turned mournful as she shook her head. ‘No. Your father still refuses to tell me. My guess is that it has something to do with your grandfather and old man Xenakis.’ Before I could ask what she meant, she continued, ‘Anyway, Yiannis will be looking for me, so I need to be quick.’

      She reached inside the stylish designer jacket that matched her lavender gown and produced a thick cream envelope, her fingers shaking as she stared at it.

      ‘What’s that?’ I asked when she made no move to speak.

      Within her gaze came a spark of determination I hadn’t seen in years. My heart leapt into my throat as she caught my hand in hers and squeezed it tight.

      ‘My sweet Callie, I know I’ve brought misery to your life with my actions—’

      ‘No, Mama, you haven’t. I promise,’ I countered firmly.

      She stared at me. ‘I’m not sure whether to be proud or to admonish you for being such a good liar. But I know what I’ve done. My selfishness has locked you in this prison with me when you should be free to pursue what young girls your age ought to be doing.’ Her fingers tightened on mine. ‘I want you to make me a promise,’ she pleaded, her voice husky with unshed tears.

      I nodded because…what else could I do? ‘Anything you want, Mama.’

      She held out the envelope. ‘Take this. Hide it in the safest place you can.’

      I took it, frowning at the old-fashioned cursive lettering spelling out my name. ‘What’s this?’

      ‘It’s from your grandmother.’

      ‘Yiayia Helena?’ A tide of sorrow momentarily washed over me, my heart still missing the grandmother I’d lost a year ago.

      My mother nodded. ‘She said I’d know when you needed it. And even if I’m wrong…’

      She paused, a faraway look in her eyes hinting that she was indulging in all those might-have-beens that sparked my own desperate imagination. When she refocused, her gaze moved dully over my wedding dress.

      ‘Even if this…alliance turns out to be tolerable, it’ll help to know you were loved by your grandmother. That should you need her she’ll be there for you the way I wasn’t.’

      I held on tighter to her hand. ‘I know you love me, Mama.’

      She shook her head, tears brimming her eyes. ‘Not the way a mother should love her child, without selfish intentions that end up harming her. I took the wrong turn with you. I left you alone with your father when I should have taken you with me. Maybe if I had—’ She stopped, took a deep breath and dabbed at her tears before braving my worried stare again. ‘All I ask is that you find a way to forgive me one day.’

      ‘Mama—’ I stopped when she gave a wrenching sob.

      Her gaze dropped to the envelope in my hand. ‘Hang on to that, Callie. And don’t hesitate to use it when you need it. Promise me,’ she insisted fervently.’

      ‘I… I promise.’

      She sniffed, nodded, then abruptly turned the wheelchair and manoeuvred herself out of my bedroom.

      Before I could process our conversation I was again surrounded by mindless chatter, unable to breathe or think. The only solid thing in my world became the envelope I clutched tightly in my hand. And when I found that within the endless folds of tulle the designer had fashioned a pocket, I nearly cried with relief as I slipped the envelope into it.

      Even without knowing its contents, just knowing it came from my grandmother—the woman who’d helped me stand up to my father’s wrath more times than I could count, who’d loved and reassured me on a daily basis during my mother’s year-long absence when I was fifteen years old—kept me from crumbling as my father arrived and with a brisk nod offered his stiff arm, ordered me to straighten my spine…and escorted me to my fate.

      The chapel was filled to the brim, according to the excited chatter of the household staff, and as my