‘I will not be your long-time lover. I am no one’s escape …’ He saw her eyes shutter. ‘But I will be with you tonight.’

      ‘Just tonight?’ She wanted more than that.

      ‘Only tonight …’ He looked at her, his eyes roaming the body he had been thinking about for hours now. A virgin bride, who would stay that way if not for him. ‘You come to my bed. I will show you all you miss out on if you choose to live this lie …’

      ‘I have no choice.’

      ‘Always we have choices,’ Nico said, and this was his—to choose not to examine his feelings tonight. His mind was black and here was light. The streets of Xanos had unsettled him, stirred emotions that he sorely wanted gone. He wanted diversion and here it had been delivered to him—in the shape of a tear-streaked, beautiful virgin.

About the Author

      CAROL MARINELLI recently filled in a form where she was asked for her job title and was thrilled, after all these years, to be able to put down her answer as ‘writer’.

      Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation and, after chewing her pen for a moment, Carol put down the truth—’writing’. The third question asked, ‘What are your hobbies?’ Well, not wanting to look obsessed or, worse still, boring, she crossed the fingers on her free hand and answered ‘swimming and tennis’. But, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, and the closest she’s got to a tennis racket in the last couple of years is watching the Australian Open, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!

PROLOGUE

      ‘TONIGHT they have their own rooms,’ Alexandros said. ‘Separate rooms.’

      ‘What harm …?’ Roula started and then stopped—she had learnt not to question Alexandros’s decisions, but on this one she had to stand up to him. It would be cruel to separate the babies, so she tried another route. ‘They will wake you with their tears.’

      ‘Let them cry—that is the way they will learn that at night you are with me.’ He ran a hand between her thighs, told her that tonight there would be no excuses, not that he listened when she made them.

      Her only relief was the slam of the door when he left to spend the day sitting outside the taverna, playing cards and drinking, but Roula’s relief lasted just a moment before the countdown started—dreading his return.

      Seventeen and the mother of twins, they were her only shining light. More beautiful than any other babies, she could watch them sleep for hours, the little snubs of their noses, pushed up by their fingers as they sucked on their thumbs, eyelashes so long that they met the curve of their cheeks. Sometimes one would open his eyes to look at the other. Huge black eyes would gaze at his brother, soothed by what he saw, and then close again.

      Mirror image twins, the midwife had told Roula when she’d delivered them. Identical, but opposite, one right handed the other left, their soft baby hair swirled to the right on Nico, to the left on little Alexandros.

      At almost a year, still they shared a cot, screaming if she tried to separate them. Even if their cribs were pushed together, their protests would not abate. Now tonight he would force them into separate rooms.

      And she would hear their screams all night as her husband used her body—and Roula could not take it any more.

      Would not.

      Her father would surely help if he knew. Alexandros did not like her to go out, so she had seen her father only a couple of times since her marriage—he had wanted her to marry, the little money he got for his paintings could not support them both. He had been a little eccentric since her mother’s death; he preferred to be alone, but he would surely not want this life for his daughter and grandsons.

      ‘Now,’ she told herself, ‘You must do it now.’ She had maybe five or six hours before Alexandros would return. She ran down the hallway, pulled out a case and filled it with the few clothes she had for her babies, and then she ran into the kitchen to a jar she had hidden, filled with money she had been secretly hoarding for months now.

      ‘This is how you repay me?’ Roula froze when she heard his voice and then simply detached as he beat her, as he told her she was a thief to take from the man who put a roof over her head. ‘You want to leave, then get out!’ How her heart soared for a brief moment, but then Alexandros dealt his most brutal blow. ‘You get half …’ He hauled her to the bedroom where her babies lay screaming, woken by the terrible sounds. ‘Which one is the firstborn?’ He did not recognise his own sons. ‘Which one is Alexandros?’

      And when she answered he picked up the other babe and thrust Nico at her.

      ‘Take him, and get out.’

      She ran to her father’s, clutching Nico. Terrified for Alexandros left alone with him, sure that her father would help her sort it out. Along the streets she ran, till finally home was in view, except it was boarded up. Her father was now dead, the disgusted neighbours told her, for she had neglected him in his final days and had not bothered to attend his funeral. The worst was finding out that her husband had been informed, had known, and not thought to tell her.

      ‘We will get your brother back,’ she said to a screaming Nico. The local policeman drank regularly with Alexandros so he would be no help, but she would go to the main town of Xanos, which was on the north of the island, to the lawyer that was there.

      She took a ride on a truck and had to pay the driver in the vilest of ways, but she did it for her son. She did it many times again when she found that the rich young lawyer wanted money upfront before helping her.

      A little cheap ouzo from the lid meant Nico slept at night and she could earn more money. The rest of the bottle got her through.

      And she tried.

      Till one day, sitting holding her baby in an alleyway, she heard a man’s voice.

      ‘How much?’

      Roula looked up and she was about to name her paltry fee, but there was a woman standing next to him, and that was one thing Roula would not do.

      ‘I’m not interested.’

      Except he did not want her body. ‘How much for him?’

      And he told her they were childless—that they were on holiday from the mainland to get over their grief. He told her about the money and education they could give her beautiful boy, that they would move to the neighbouring island of Lathira and would raise him as their own. She thought of Alexandros, who was still with that monster, and somehow she had to save him. She thought of the ouzo and the clients she would service tonight and all the terrible things she had done. Surely Nico deserved better.

      Nico would settle, Roula told herself again as the couple left the rich lawyer’s ofice with her baby. Soon