Free The Highest Stakes of All by Sara Craven

‘I have negotiations to conduct tomorrow. A deal to make, therefore I need to get some sleep.’
    Sleep? In spite of herself, Joanna found her gaze turning to the bed, a quiver of apprehension running through her.
    He noticed and laughed. ‘No, pedhi mou. I cannot spare the time or energy for your kind of distraction just now, when I have business to transact. But when we meet again on Pellas you will have no cause to feel neglected, I promise you. You will make a most interesting diversion for my leisure hours.’
    He walked to the door and called, ‘Stavros.’
    The door opened so promptly that Joanna wondered if the Gordanis chief dogsbody had been standing with his ear pressed to the panels.
    Vassos Gordanis spoke to him quietly in Greek, and he nodded impassively and came over to Joanna, holding out the trench coat he was carrying over his arm.
    ‘You will wear this, thespinis, if you please.’
    ‘Why should I?’ She squared her shoulders mutinously, putting her hands behind her back.
    ‘Because I wish it,’ Vassos Gordanis interposed, his tone level. ‘Let this be your first lesson in obedience to me, Joanna mou. From now on you will dress and behave with modesty. Do you understand?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
    But you don’t. Do you imagine that these clothes were my choice? That I liked pretending to be something I’m not? Something I never will be, no matter what happens?
    She took the coat, which clearly belonged to someone male and very much larger who could even be Vassos Gordanis himself, she thought, shuddering inside, and put it on, tying the belt round her waist with an angry jerk to keep it in place.
    Then she walked to where he was standing.
    ‘I understand completely,’ she went on, biting out the words. ‘You appalling bloody hypocrite.’ And she swung back her arm and slapped him across the face with such force that her shoulder felt jarred. But it was like punching a marble statue. Even taken off-guard, he did not move an inch, or as much as put a hand to his cheek where her finger marks were immediately and clearly visible.
    He said quietly, ‘You will pay for that insult when we meet again, thespinis, and in coin of my choosing that you may not like. Because we already have another score to settle, you and I. The matter of Petros Manassou. Or did you think you had got away with it?’
    She cradled her stinging hand in the palm of the other, staring at him in open bewilderment. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘No?’ There was a jeering note in his voice. ‘Then think back, Joanna mou. You will have plenty of time to do so while you are waiting for me to come to you on Pellas.’
    He watched the angry colour drain from her face and nodded, his mouth twisting in a smile that did not reach his eyes.
    ‘Now go,’ he directed curtly. ‘And have the wisdom to learn some manners—and perhaps a little remorse—before our next encounter.’
    He turned away and walked towards the bed, casually loosening the concealing towel as he went, and Joanna hastily spun in the opposite direction, heading blindly for the door, her teeth sinking painfully into her lower lip before she could be subjected to another glimpse of her persecutor naked.
    In the room beyond she paused momentarily, steadying herself with a hand on the back of the sofa. Another score to settle.
    Revenge, she thought, horrified, her mind reeling away from the implications of the night’s discoveries. I’m being taken away for some kind of revenge. Nothing else.
    In his own words—'used, then discarded'.
    But why? she asked herself, her heart thudding painfully against her ribcage. What can I possibly have done to deserve this treatment from someone I’d never even heard of yesterday? There—there has to be some mistake.
    Stavros touched her arm, urging her onwards, and she shook him off almost savagely.
    The hired help could keep his hands to himself. It was enough to know that some time