CHAPTER SIX

      UPSTAIRS, NIKOLAI HAD stirred when the doorbell had rung and had then flinched when the front door had slammed loudly on Max’s exit. When his cell phone began ringing beside the bed, he groaned in frustration and gave up the attempt to continue sleeping.

      He checked his watch as he lifted his phone. He had had a couple of hours and that would have to do, he reasoned, springing out of bed and raking his fingers through his tousled black hair. Talking on the phone, he strode into the bathroom to splash his face and froze halfway there as his brain kicked in and he recognised the controlled distress in the voice he was listening to. His shoulders slumped as he voiced his sympathy at yet another piece of bad news and then he tossed his phone down in disgust. The bar manager had passed away shortly after Nikolai had left the hospital.

      He had pulled on jeans and was wandering barefoot back into the bedroom when a flash of bright colour outside attracted his attention. The drapes hadn’t been pulled properly. A very distinctive car was parked on the other side of the road. It was a bright yellow Ferrari and Nikolai knew exactly who that car belonged to. For a split second he couldn’t credit the coincidence and then it dawned on him that Ella was in the house and he couldn’t relax until he had checked on her. He raced downstairs, saw the drawing-room door ajar, heard Ella’s muffled shriek of pain and kicked the door wide.

      Suddenly the weight pinning Ella to the sofa was gone. She blinked in bewilderment and shock as Cyrus went flying back against the wall opposite where Nikolai had flung him after dragging him off her. She sat up just as Nikolai punched the older man hard in the stomach and shouted at him in Greek. Cyrus had attacked her, had torn at her jeans and she was bruised and sore and shaken and frightened. Only the fear that Nikolai might kill Cyrus made her intervene. She stumbled across the room and wrenched at Nikolai’s arm.

      ‘No...no, don’t hit him again. You’ve hurt him enough!’ she gasped as Cyrus, blood running down his face, which was already swelling from several hits, dragged himself up clumsily from the floor and stumbled frantically towards the door.

      ‘He hurt you!’ Nikolai vented between gritted white teeth as he strode after the fleeing older man.

      Again, Ella grabbed his arm to hold him back and give Cyrus enough time to make it out through the front door. ‘If you kill him you’ll go to prison for it...is that what you want?’

      A string of Greek curses erupted from Nikolai as Ella slammed the door protectively in his enemy’s wake. ‘I should’ve warned you about him.’

      ‘You told me not to be alone with him. I didn’t pay any heed,’ she mumbled guiltily.

      ‘He’s been accused of getting rough with women before,’ Nikolai divulged.

      Blood dripped down onto the polished wooden floor and she grabbed his hand to examine his bruised and bleeding knuckles. ‘You need cleaning up,’ she said, angling him towards the stairs.

      ‘What happened before he attacked you?’

      ‘He asked me to marry him and when I told him I wasn’t interested he went off in a rage,’ she told him in a daze. ‘If Gramma hadn’t already hinted to me that she thought he had a more than personal interest in me, I would’ve been gobsmacked. As it was, I tried to be polite. It never once occurred to me that he could be thinking of me like that.’

      So, Cyrus had proposed. He had intended marriage. It should’ve been a moment of triumph for Nikolai but it fell resoundingly flat. He had wounded his opponent but Ella had been wounded too. He was appalled that Cyrus had contrived to violently assault Ella and he felt incredibly guilty about that reality. After all, he knew exactly what Cyrus was like and he had virtually set Ella up as a target for the older man’s frustrated rage. She could’ve been raped just as his sister had been and the mere concept of Ella enduring such a violation made Nikolai feel sick with guilt and self-loathing. He was supposed to be in control of events, but somewhere along the line of his plotting he had become selfish and reckless and Ella had very nearly paid the ultimate price. How irresponsible was that?

      Even worse, Ella was now valiantly trying to urge him up the stairs as if he were the injured party and in need of the support of her tiny frame. In another mood he would have laughed at the incongruity of her sympathy for him at that moment. But he was not in a laughing mood any more than he was in a triumphant one.

      ‘What did he do to you?’ Nikolai demanded, thrusting open the bedroom door.

      ‘He was trying to kiss me and I twisted my face away and he yanked at my hair. I swear he pulled a handful of it out by the roots,’ she whispered, massaging her sore scalp. ‘He flattened me on the sofa and started pulling at my clothes. I never thought of him as a big, strong man but he was much stronger than me. I don’t think I could’ve got him off me without your help... Thank you.’

      ‘No, don’t thank me,’ Nikolai said with distaste. ‘This is all my fault.’

      ‘I don’t see how,’ Ella pronounced, dabbing the blood from his hand and applying an antiseptic she had found in the cabinet. She was still trembling in shock from Cyrus’s assault and wondering in disbelief what had come over the older man. Had he simply lost his head in temper? Would he really have raped her? Fear and revulsion curdled low in her stomach. He had tried to rip off her jeans, she recalled with a shudder. There could be no mistake about the motivation of his attack.

      ‘His conduct is nothing to do with you,’ Ella continued a little unevenly as her breathing began to settle back to normal levels. ‘I was the one who kept up the friendship with Cyrus after Paul died. I used to talk about Paul with his uncle. I needed that outlet after the funeral.’

      She fell silent, finally allowing herself to consider what Cyrus had told her about Paul. All the insecurities she had ever felt in her fiancé’s radius briefly returned to haunt her. Paul had been a real extrovert and very popular and when she had first known him she had very quickly fallen for him and longed for more than friendship. But nothing had come of her hopes until Paul had fallen ill. That was when she had become important to Paul and when he had first told her that he loved her. Her eyes prickling and burning, she crushed the