Mandy paled. “You don’t know where she is?”
“Do not lie to me.” Terror, an emotion that he had only become familiar with since he had learned of what Mairi had gone through, made his voice especially sharp.
“I’m not lying. I don’t know where she is and you’re not helping matters when you tell me you don’t know where Mairi is either!”
Mandy’s voice had risen at the end of her outburst, and the note of panic in it was unmistakable. He knew then that Mandy was not lying, and terror swallowed more of the few remaining tendrils of hope that survived inside Damen.
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to be sharp with you. I am angry at myself, not you, for…” He almost laughed, realizing that he had no idea where to start about the innumerable things he had to be sorry for.
For every instance that Mairi had proven she loved him, there were ten things he did to make her think that he did not value her love at all.
“D-do you think she’s in trouble?” Mandy demanded.
“Her aunts should know where she is.”
There was something off in the Greek billionaire’s voice. Common sense told her that she shouldn’t believe Damen Leventis, but Mandy for once did not want to be practical. She told herself that she was just imagining things and that what Damen had said was true. Nothing bad had happened to Mairi. Her aunts would know where Mairi was and her friend would be fine. Was fine.
“How long has she been gone?”
“Five days now,” Damen said hollowly.
“Have you talked to her aunts?”
“I will call them after this.”
Another strangely tense moment of silence followed, and Mandy again felt afraid for Mairi. She whispered, “What happened?”
Damen wanted to say that nothing happened, but he knew he did not deserve to say that. He spoke tonelessly, not hiding a single fact. He told Mandy about how he had been stupidly and foolishly blind to Mairi’s suffering, how he had forced her into a situation that had almost gotten Mairi raped. He told Mandy how he had constantly doubted Mairi’s love, to the point that he had believed a stranger over Mairi, to the point that he had thrown Mairi out of his house and treated her no better than a gold-digging whore.
He waited for Mandy to shout at him.
But she did not.
When she next spoke, she was crying. “I didn’t know...Velvet or I didn’t know any of this. We told her not to apply anymore because she kept getting rejected…”
Fate, once again in a cruelly ironic mood, interfered, giving Damen’s imagination the kind of accuracy only a powerful clairvoyant would have…or one whose love was so great that when it was betrayed, its ability to hurt was unparalleled.
Damen did not have to close his eyes to imagine Mairi forcing herself to smile, to laugh and chat like she was not worried at all about what the future held for her as she received one humiliating rejection after another.
He knew how Greek society worked, knew that those who were firmly on the side of Esther Leventis and the Kokinos clan would not hesitate to treat her like a leper and embarrass her with every opportunity they had to do so.
And again, he knew that she did it because she loved him that much.
Oh God, Mairi, how can I ever make it up to you?
I’m so sorry. There are no words, Mairi. I’m so sorry.
“We told her to tell you…”
But she hadn’t wanted to. His beautiful, selfless, and courageous Mairi had refused to tell him because she had always considered herself a burden to him, someone who still had to prove that she was worthy of becoming a Greek billionaire’s wife.
He wanted to throw up, as if his system felt he was undeserving to digest anything that nourished him because he was that f**king useless. Worthless. She had it wrong. She had it the other way around. She never had a need to prove that she deserved him. With every day they spent together, it was he – Damen Leventis – who had to prove that he deserved her love, which was something not even all his billions could be enough to buy.
“But we didn’t know,” Mandy sobbed. “We didn’t know that she was almost raped. Why wouldn’t she tell us? Why?”
Because of him.
Because he was always to blame.
Because by choosing to love him, Mairi had also chosen to isolate herself, being smart enough to know that anyone she considered a friend would be a potential target of the enmity of Esther Leventis – his own f**king mother – and the Kokinos clan, a family whose fury she didn’t do anything to earn but became a target of anyway because of Damen.
It always came back to Damen.
Always.
Again, the most painful question lacerated his mind.
How many times did Mairi have to suffer just because she loved him?
“I’m sorry that my relationship with her has made Mairi avoid you and Velvet, but I promise you,” Damen vowed grimly, “I will make the man who had attempted to…” He had to stop speaking, had to unclench his fingers so he would not accidentally crush the phone in his hands. “The man who tried to violate her will pay. This I promise you.”
But even as he said the words, even though he knew he meant every word, Damen knew it was not enough. He feared that it would never be enough.
Damen
~ Five ~
Two months earlier
The man in the mirror wearily gazing back at Damen Leventis looked like hell. His hair was uncombed, his eyes were bloodshot, and his face was haggard and unshaven. He wore expensive clothes, but they were yesterday’s clothes, crumpled after he spent the whole night tossing and turning. They hung loosely about his body, which had grown noticeably thinner.
He had not been able to sleep without the aid of drugs or liquor ever since he had learned of Mairi’s attack.
How could he when he was still not sure that she was indeed fine, that she was even alive?
The rational side of his mind told Damen that he was worrying over nothing. That if something had happened to Mairi, then her two American aunts would not have been living their lives normally. He knew from the investigative report he had ordered that the two older women loved Mairi fiercely – perhaps just as fiercely as he loved Mairi. They would not be able to pretend everything was fine if something bad had happened to their beloved niece.
But the irrational part of Damen?
It worried, desperately, and it made up the larger part of his mind. It told him that if Damen had not had a single inkling of Mairi’s suffering when she was fighting off Cleon Frangos, how could he allow himself to believe that it would be different this time…that he would know if Mairi was suffering now?