The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel

Achilleion-’

‘Someone who knew who we were? And the grave? How do they know about that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know. I never repeated anything to anybody. Lysandros, you have got to believe me.’

She looked up into his face and spoke with all the passion at her command.

‘Can’t you see that we’ve come to the crossroads? This is it. This is where we find out if it all meant anything. I am telling you the truth. Nobody in the world matters more to me than you, and I would never, ever lie to you. For pity’s sake, say that you believe me, please.’

The terrible silence was a thousand fathoms deep. Then he stammered, ‘Of course…I do believe you…’ But there was agony in his voice and she could hear the effort he put into forcing himself.

‘You don’t,’ she said explosively as the shattering truth hit her. ‘All that about trusting me-it was just words.’

‘No, I-no!’

‘Yes!’

‘I tried to mean them, I wanted to, but-’

Her heart almost failed her, for there on his face was the look she’d seen before, on the statue at the Achilleion, when Achilles tried to draw the arrow from his foot, his expression full of despair as he realised there was no way to escape his fate.

‘Yes-but,’ she said bitterly. ‘I should have known there’d be a “but”.’

‘Nobody else knows about that grave,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t get past that.’

‘Perhaps Nikator does know. Perhaps he had someone following us-’

‘That wouldn’t help them find the grave. It’s deep in the grounds; you can’t see it from outside. I’ve never told anyone else. You’re the one person I’ve ever trusted enough to…to…’

As the words died he groaned and reached for her. It would have been simple to go into his arms and try to rediscover each other that way, but a spurt of anger made her step back, staring at him with hard eyes.

‘And that’s the worst thing you can do to anyone,’ she said emphatically. ‘The more you trust someone, the worse it is when they betray you.’

He stared at her like a man lost in a mist, vainly trying to understand distant echoes. ‘What did you say?’ he whispered.

‘Don’t you recognise your own words, Lysandros? Words you said to me in Las Vegas. I’ll remind you of some more. “Nobody is ever as good as you think they are, and sooner or later the truth is always there. Better to have no illusions, and be strong.” You really meant that, didn’t you? I didn’t realise until now just how much you meant it.’

‘Don’t remind me of that time,’ he shouted. ‘It’s over.’

‘It’ll never be over because you carry it with you, and all the hatred and suspicion that was in you then is there still. You just hide it better, but then something happens and it speaks, telling you to play safe and think the worst of everyone. Even me. Look into your heart and be honest. Suddenly I look just like all the others, don’t I? Lying, scheming-’

‘Shut up!’ he roared. ‘Don’t talk like that. I forbid it.’

‘Why, because it comes too close to the truth? And who are you to forbid me?’

If his mind had been clearer he could have told her that he was the man whose fate she held in her hands, but the clear-headedness for which he was famed seemed to have deserted him now and everything was in a whirl of confusion.

‘I want to believe you; can’t you understand that?’ He gripped her shoulders tightly, almost shaking her. ‘But tell me how. Show me a way. Tell me!’

His misery was desperate. If her own heart hadn’t been breaking, she would have been filled with pity for him.

‘I can’t tell you,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing you must find for yourself.’

‘Petra-please-try to understand-’

‘But I do. I only wish I didn’t. I understand that nothing has changed. We thought things could be different now. I love you and I hoped you loved me-’

‘But I do, you know that-’

‘No, even you don’t know that. The barriers are still there, shutting you off from the world, from me. I thought I could break them down, but I can’t.’

‘If you can’t, nobody can,’ he said despairingly. Then something seemed to happen to him. His hands fell, he stepped back, and when he spoke again it was with the calm of despair. ‘And perhaps that’s all there is to be said.’

There was a noise from the distance, lights; the party was breaking up. People streamed out into the garden and now the laughter could be clearly heard, rising on the night air.

And the derision would torture him as well as the loss of his faith in her. Bleakly she wondered which one troubled him more.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told her. ‘There are ways of getting to the bottom of this.’

‘Of course,’ she said formally, waiting for his kiss.

Briefly he rested his fingertips against her cheek, but apart from that he departed without touching her.

The detective work was relatively easy. It didn’t take long to establish that the ‘newspaper copies’ were forgeries, specially printed at Nikator’s orders, the text written to Nikator’s dictation.

But that helped little. It was the overheard conversations that were really damaging, the fact that they couldn’t be explained, and the fact that hundreds of people at the party had read them.

Calling her publishers, Petra told them to abandon plans for a reissue of her book. They were dismayed.

‘But we’ve heard such exciting stories-’

‘None of them are true,’ she snapped. ‘Forget it.’

She and Lysandros were still in touch, but only just. They exchanged polite text messages, and she understood. He was avoiding her and she knew why. If they had met face to face he wouldn’t have known what to say to her. He was back stranded again in the sea of desolation, unable to reach out to the one person who’d helped him in the past.

Or perhaps he just didn’t know how to tell her that the break was coming and there was no escape.

It might have been different, she knew. By quarrelling, they had done exactly what Nikator had wanted.

But it went deeper than that. However it looked, Nikator hadn’t really caused the chasm between them; he’d merely revealed its existence. Sooner or later the crack in their relationship would have come to light.

Sometimes she blamed herself for the anger that had made her attack him when he was wretched, but in her heart she knew it changed nothing. He was the man he was, and the hope she’d briefly glimpsed was no more than an illusion.

In her present bitter mood she wondered how much of her view of him had been real, and how much she’d shaped him to fit her own desires. Had he really needed her so much, or had she just refused to see that he was self-contained, needing neither her nor anyone else? It was suddenly easy to believe that, and to feel alone and unwanted as never before in her life.

‘Surplus to requirements,’ she thought angrily as she lay in bed one night. ‘A silly woman who reshaped her image of a man to suit herself. And got her just deserts.’

In a fury of despair and frustration, she began to bang her head on the pillow and only stopped when she realised that she was mirroring his movements. She wished he were there so that she could share it with him.

But would he ever be with her again?

In Homer’s library she found her own volume, the one on which Nikator had built his attacks.

‘Now I know where he got the idea,’ she thought wryly, turning to the Achilles section and reading her own text.

His name had been linked with many women, but the one for whose love he’d given his life was Polyxena, daughter of King Priam of Troy. His love for her had held out the hope of a peace treaty between the Greeks and the Trojans, and an end to the war. But Paris was enraged. Such a treaty would have meant he had to return Helen to her husband, and that he was determined not to do.