Bond of Hatred Read online

  Bond of Hatred

  Lynne Graham

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  SARAH stood still as a statue at the glass viewing window. Her wide emerald eyes were burning. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension. Every muscle ached. Only the most fierce self-discipline held back her exhaustion. It had been a long night and a devastating dawn. And every minute, every agonising hour of it was etched into her soul. The nurse wheeled over her nephew’s cot and displayed him with a wide smile.

  She probably didn’t know, Sarah thought numbly. She looked back at the nurse, her fine-boned face ashen and strained, her facial muscles frozen into a mask. The nurse stopped smiling but Sarah didn’t notice. Her attention had locked into her nephew. He had a shock of black hair and a pair of furious dark eyes.

  There was nothing of Callie in him. He was Mediterranean-dark, his foreign ancestry clearly apparent. He was screaming. He looked so unhappy. She wondered if on some strange wavelength he knew that his mother was dead. Dead. She flinched inwardly away from the word and began to walk up the corridor on legs that didn’t feel strong enough to support her.

  Women didn’t die in childbirth these days. Or so she had believed. And Callie hadn’t even been a woman in her sister’s opinion. At eighteen, Callie had been on the shady boundary line between child and adult. A golden girl with beauty, intelligence and everything to live for...until Damon Terzakis had come into her life and laid it to waste. An immense bitterness gripped Sarah. The emotion was so intense, it literally frightened her.

  ‘Miss Hartwell...’

  The sound of that voice halted her in her tracks. That dark, accented drawl cut into her like a razor. She shuddered. Slowly she raised her head. He stood several feel away. A male few would overlook. He had to be at least six feet three. His superbly tailored dark grey suit outlined broad, muscular shoulders and long, lean legs. The fabric and the cut alone screamed expense. He had the lethal, inborn grace of a wild animal and the intimidating and instinctive authority of a man born to command.

  Sarah stared in disbelief as he extended a lean brown hand. The long fingers, she noticed absently, were beautifully shaped. ‘Please permit me to offer my most sincere condolences on your sister’s tragic death,’ he murmured in a taut undertone.

  Sarah took a quick backward step, repulsed by the threat of any form of bodily contact. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded shakily.

  ‘You left an urgent message with my secretary,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Callie made me phone, but I didn’t ask for you to come, Mr Terzakis,’ Sarah breathed jerkily. ‘I asked for your brother.’

  ‘Damon is in Greece.’ Alexis Terzakis watched her with impassive eyes as dark as a winter’s night. ‘I have already informed him of your sister’s death. He is most deeply distressed,’ he asserted.

  A hysterical laugh escaped Sarah. ‘Really?’ she gasped incredulously.

  ‘I would like to see my nephew,’ Alexis responded, ignoring her response with supreme cool.

  ‘No!’ Sarah gritted, her slight body stiffening with a sudden rush of raw aggression that came from fathoms deep down inside her. She hated and detested Alex Terzakis more than any man alive. Her hatred had festered over many months. Now it was like a cancer inside her, eating away until it consumed every other emotion.

  ‘Your right is no greater than mine—’

  ‘Right?’ Sarah echoed half an octave higher. ‘You dare to talk about rights after what you did to Callie? You have no rights over Callie’s child, no rights whatsoever! You sicken me!’

  ‘You are distraught,’ Alex Terzakis informed her with apparent calm, but she was not fooled. A dark line of blood had risen over his high cheekbones and his mouth had flattened into a pale line.

  People did not speak to Alex Terzakis in such a tone. He was fabulously rich and terrifyingly powerful. His minions bowed and scraped. His family walked in awe of him. His word was law. He did not expect opposition. The media had published several bloodcurdling stories about what happened to those foolish enough to challenge Alex Terzakis in business. But Sarah had no fear of him. Sarah would have given twenty years of her life to have the power to hurt Alex Terzakis as he had hurt her sister.

  ‘You murdered her...you killed her with unkindness. I hope you’re satisfied now!’ Sarah shot back at him with raw venom.

  ‘Miss Hartwell.’ A strong hand caught her wrist as she attempted to walk past him.

  ‘Let go of me, you swine!’ Sarah hissed in outrage.

  ‘Were it not for the fact that I am capable of making allowances for your understandable grief, I would demand an apology,’ Alex slashed down at her from his imposing height, tiger’s eyes raking her enraged face. ‘But this is not the place for such a confrontation. Compose yourself before I lose my temper!’

  Sarah was shivering as though she were caught in a force-ten gale. Outright fury controlled her as he retained that bruising hold on her wrist. She lifted her free hand and hit blindly up at that dark, arrogant face with all her strength. He released her with an incredulous growl, a lean hand flying up to one sculpted cheekbone.

  Sarah staggered back. ‘Don’t ever come near me again!’ she slung wildly, dimly shocked by that raw surge of uncharacteristic violence. She could not remember ever striking another human being before. Even as a child she had been a pacifist.

  For a split-second, she collided with splintering golden eyes, incandescent with disbelief. And then she tore her gaze from his and forced herself to walk straight-backed down the corridor and out of the hospital.

  She was in shock, so deep in shock that she didn’t even know where she was going. Callie was dead. She could not yet accept that. Their parents had died in a car crash when Sarah was seventeen. There had been no money. Callie had only been eleven.

  ‘Look after Callie,’ her mother had moaned repeatedly in Intensive Care. Mary Hartwell had still been fretting about her youngest child when she’d breathed her last.

  Sarah had left school, given up all hope of any further education and concentrated on her sister’s needs. She had persuaded her father’s cousin Gina to let them live with her. With Gina in the background, the social services had allowed Sarah to keep her sister. Sarah had worked as a waitress. Every day she had come home to cook and clean and tidy up after Gina, who had regarded her as unpaid domestic help and had, in addition, taken almost every penny of her meagre wages.

  As soon as she was eighteen, Sarah had found other accommodation. She had done her utmost to give Callie a secure and loving home. She had made her sister her number one priority. And Callie had thrived. A golden girl with the long-legged lithe good looks of a Californian blonde. Smart into the bargain, Sarah observed with helpless pride. It hadn’t been easy to keep her lively extrovert sister’s mind on the necessity of studying to get on in the world.

  But Sarah had managed it. Callie had passed her A levels and gone on to university to study languages. Sarah had been as proud as any mother could have been. She had taken on another job part-time in the evenings so that Callie wouldn’t be short of money. Everything had been going so well before Damon Terzakis had entered her sister’s life.

  ‘I’ve met this truly fabulous Greek!’ Callie had gushed down the phone. ‘He’s incredibly handsome and rich and crazy about me...’

  ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Sarah had murmured tautly, disconcerted by Callie’s excitement. Callie’s boyfriends normally came and went without
Callie enthusing about any of them. A beauty from her early teens, Callie had taken young men very much in her stride.

  ‘I’ll bring him over to meet you some time soon,’ Callie had promised.

  But weeks had passed before Sarah had finally met Damon. He had been twenty-five, boyishly good-looking and full of careless charm. His lustrous brown eyes had helplessly followed Callie’s every move. He had talked to Sarah as though she were Callie’s mother rather than her sister, painstakingly courteous and deferential. By the end of the evening, Sarah had felt like a middle-aged matron of at least fifty.

  Damon had gone out of his way to stress that his intentions were serious. Reaching for Callie’s hand, he had said, ‘I love your sister very much and I want to marry her.’

  Behind her polite smile, Sarah had ironically been appalled. She had considered Callie far too young to make such a commitment. She had worried that Callie would abandon her studies outright or, at the very least, allow romance to take over to the detriment of her work. But Sarah had been too sensible to allow her feelings to show. One hint of opposition and Callie was likely to rebel. Her sister was headstrong and opinionated. Only tact and diplomacy were likely to win Sarah a hearing.

  ‘Of course marriage,’ Damon had stated smoothly, ‘it would be in the future.’

  Sarah had rewarded him with a beaming smile. ‘I think that’s very sensible,’ she had said. ‘Both of you have all the time in the world.’

  ‘Don’t talk platitudes,’ Callie had snapped, withdrawing her hand from Damon’s abruptly.

  ‘But we have already discussed this, Callie mou,’ Damon had protested and, turning his attention back to Sarah, he had added, ‘Our love must be seen to have stood the test of time if I am to have any hope of winning my brother’s consent to our marriage.’

  ‘Your brother’s consent?’ Sarah had repeated helplessly.

  ‘Greek families function on the basis of a strict hierarchy,’ Callie had intervened witheringly. ‘At the top of the family pecking order is the dominant male. Damon’s father is dead. His brother, Alexis is the big wheel in the Terzakis tribe.’

  Faint colour had darkened Damon’s good-looking features. He had cast Callie a look of surprisingly strong reproof.

  ‘I don’t think you should take cheap shots at Damon’s big brother,’ Sarah had told her unrepentant sister while she’d prepared supper in their tiny kitchen. ‘Or his family. He was offended—’

  ‘Stuff!’ Callie had muttered, still angry. ‘He’s a grown man with a responsible job. But when he talks about Alex he acts like a little boy. He never stops talking about him. Alex this...Alex that. You’d think Alex was God in his life.’

  ‘Damon is Greek,’ Sarah had reminded her gently. ‘His culture, his background and his upbringing are bound to differ greatly from yours. If you really love him, Callie...all that goes with the territory.’

  Sarah surfaced from the past and found herself perched on a bench in the park down the road from the hospital. To think that all those months ago she had actually been relieved to hear Damon mentioning the necessity of obtaining his brother’s approval before he could marry!

  Alarm bells had only really gone off the day she’d caught the name Terzakis on the evening news and glimpsed a forbiddingly handsome male, surrounded by executives and cameras, refusing to comment on his acquisition of some company in New York. She had bought a serious newspaper the next day on the way into work and she had read all about Alexis Terzakis with growing consternation. That evening she had rung Callie and asked her to come home for a night. Callie had come with bad grace, demanding to know what all the fuss was about.

  ‘You said that Damon was running his family’s hotel in Oxford,’ Sarah had reminded her. ‘What you didn’t say was that the Terzakis family are billionaires!’

  ‘Alex is the billionaire,’ Callie had said drily. ‘Damon just gets pocket money.’

  ‘I thought Damon’s family were hoteliers—’

  Callie had burst out laughing. ‘Sarah, you are dumb! Don’t you ever read the business columns? Damon’s family own a shipping line, an international string of hotels, engineering plants, finance companies...you name it, they own it!’

  Sarah had been disturbed. She had genuinely had no idea that her sister’s boyfriend was from so wealthy a background. Damon had seemed very unassuming. He had settled that evening into their shabby lounge without a shade of discomfort. She remembered Callie referring to her own job as secretarial and quickly dismissing the subject.

  Actually Sarah was a humble filing clerk in a big anonymous office and she had not climbed the ladder any higher because the frequency with which she had held down two jobs had meant that she had no time to spare for evening classes. Sarah had spent countless evenings over the past seven years waitressing or cleaning for extra money to stretch their tight budget.

  She had tried not to feel hurt that evening she’d first met Damon when Callie had asked her in advance not to mention those latter sources of income. Callie had been embarrassed by her sister’s acceptance of such low-grade employment. And, sadly, Sarah had understood. Callie had always wanted to be somebody and that vein of insecurity had been stirred when she’d found herself mixing with students from far more comfortable backgrounds than her own. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know that the source of the cheap but fashionable clothes she wore with such panache had been a sister, who regularly cleaned office blocks after closing time.

  And now Callie was gone. Sarah raised trembling hands to her face as if she could somehow contain the anguish inside her. She could not imagine life without Callie. Callie with her raw energy, boundless untidiness and quick temper. Callie had been born when Sarah was six. Sarah, a quiet, rather lonely child, had delighted her parents by displaying not the smallest atom of jealousy. She had been enchanted by her baby sister. She had read her stories, picked her up when she fell over, taught her nursery rhymes before she started school and later helped her with her homework. With two parents working full-time, there had been plenty of opportunity for Sarah to fill in the gaps in Callie’s days when their mother was too tired or too busy.

  ‘Miss Hartwell.’

  Sarah lifted her aching head like a sleepwalker and focused on Alex Terzakis in disbelief. He looked alien against the backdrop of the scruffy park.

  ‘Allow me to offer you a lift home,’ he drawled flatly.

  Sarah burst out laughing, hysteria clawing like insanity at her cracking composure. Abruptly she covered her working face again, stricken that he of all people should see her in such a state. Dear lord, what did this barbarian want from her now. Couldn’t he even leave her to grieve in peace?

  Only a couple of hours had passed since she had been bundled unceremoniously from her sister’s bedside and the crash team had attempted to get her sister breathing again. It had happened so fast and they had tried so hard. But Callie, once the leading light of her school athletics team, had died of a massive coronary, just days off her nineteenth birthday. Sarah had been shattered but she had been totally devastated by what she’d learnt from the consultant gynaecologist afterwards.

  Early in her pregnancy, Callie had been warned that she had a weak heart. Routine testing had revealed what nobody had ever had any cause to suspect. She had been advised to have a termination and she had refused. She had not shared any of that with her sister. Sarah had been surprised by the sheer frequency of Callie’s ante-natal appointments but she had had no idea that there was anything wrong.

  ‘Callie was one hundred per cent determined to have her baby,’ the consultant had told her wryly. ‘That was her choice. Possibly she didn’t tell you because she was afraid that you might try to change her mind.’

  ‘Miss Hartwell?’ Alex Terzakis persisted grimly, impatiently.

  Please God, make him leave me alone, she prayed feverishly, curving her arms round her churning stomach and involuntarily rocking back and forth on the edge of the bench.

  ‘I cannot leave you here in this
condition,’ he continued, his accent growing more pronounced with every unanswered intervention. ‘I wish to see you safely to your home. I also wish to assume responsibility for the funeral arrangements—’

  ‘You bloody savage!’ Sarah, who never ever swore, found the word flying off her tongue. A stricken sense of horror had attacked her as he’d spoken. ‘You wouldn’t let her marry into your family but you can’t wait to bury her!’

  ‘I do not intend to stand here being insulted in a public place,’ he gritted through clenched teeth, and she could feel the force of his suppressed rage licking out at her like hungry flames, desperate for fuel to feed on. It was a curiously satisfying experience, warming her chilled bones.

  ‘Then you know what to do about it, don’t you?’ Sarah collided with blazing golden eyes set between incredibly luxuriant ebony lashes and felt oddly dizzy for a split-second. She tilted her chin. ‘Get lost.’

  ‘If you were not a woman...’ he launched at her with raw, splintering aggression. He was white beneath his bronzed skin, his classic bone-structure starkly prominent. He was rigid with fury and frustration.

  ‘You’d be dead,’ Sarah murmured shakily. ‘If I were a man, I’d have killed you for what you did to Callie in your fancy big office five months ago!’

  His brilliant gaze had narrowed to piercing pin-points of light, arrowing over her very small, very slight figure and the huge green eyes dominating her triangular face. ‘On this occasion, I desired only to offer you my assistance at a time of severe trial to us all.’

  He strode off. Incredibly good carriage, she noted abstractedly, and then it hit her finally. Callie gone... Callie gone forever. She had not cried a single tear. Her eyes had burned and scorched but remained dry through-out. And now the tears came in a silent tidal wave, streaming down her quivering cheeks in agonised relief. She was so terribly grateful that it hadn’t happened in front of him.

  * * *

  ‘You’ll never guess who just walked in.’ Gina nudged Sarah in the ribs seconds after the short funeral service began, her plump over-made-up face suddenly wreathed with rampant curiosity. ‘It’s them...got to be, hasn’t it? Who else could it be?’