Chapter 23: TWENTY TWO

Chapter 22

Panic clamped down on her chest as bile surged in her throat.

Her dress—her dress was open from the middle. She hadn’t noticed before, but now every thread out of place, every inch of exposed skin screamed at her. She pulled the fabric up with trembling hands, nausea rising as her entire body began to shake. Her legs wouldn’t obey her. Her mind was racing and failing at the same time—grasping for answers that simply weren’t there.

What happened?

The juice. The party. That man… Roger?

Then nothing.

Just darkness.

And now this.

She looked up, eyes pleading, terrified, confused—reaching for the only face she knew in the room. “Nic…” she tried, her voice barely a croak.“Nic, please…” Her voice trembled, fragile and raw, barely more than a whisper. She swallowed hard, the dryness in her throat scraping against her vocal cords like sandpaper. “I don’t… I don’t know what happened.”

Horror churned inside her — the terrifying thought that she might have been violated seizing her heart for a moment. But no. She knew. She knew deep down that her body was untouched, unharmed. Somehow, that only deepened the confusion. What was she doing here, like this, in this bed, with this stranger? She had no answers. Just fear and shame and a desperate need to explain herself.

She swallowed again, eyes pleading as she fought to find the right words, to make him understand. She needed to reach him — to break through this wall of cold judgment he’d built. Her hands trembled as she lifted them, reaching out to touch his forearm, seeking some connection, some reassurance.

But he recoiled violently, shaking her off as if she burned him.

“Don’t touch me!” he hissed, the sharp edge in his voice cutting through the fragile silence like a blade.

Her hand fell to her side, stunned, and she watched the bitter fury flicker across his face. “I want you out of my house. Out of my life. Out of my eyesight.”

The words hit her like a blow, knocking the breath out of her. Her chest heaved with a sob, tears threatening to spill over. “Nic… please, listen to me… this is all a mistake. There was something in my drink — I don’t know what, but—” She tried to rise, to move closer, to plead again, her voice cracking with desperation.

But he would not have it.

What came next was a blur — a jumble of frantic words tumbling from her lips, desperate pleas that seemed to vanish into the thick wall of silence and anger between them. She tried to explain, stumbling over her own voice, begging him to hear her, to believe her. But it was as if her words fell into an abyss, unheard, ignored. The memory itself had become a ghost, a fragment too painful to hold onto. Her mind, almost mercifully, had blurred the details, erasing the sharp edges of humiliation and heartbreak. The cruelness in his eyes, the coldness of his voice — those moments were swallowed by a dark, suffocating fog.

All she could recall was a black void in her memory, a dark and endless haze where all she could feel was humiliation and heartbreak. The cruel man she once loved had become a stranger — merciless and distant. The words, the looks, the silence between them — all erased now, buried beneath a thick fog of despair.

Only the sting of rejection remained, raw and relentless.

That fateful night, he accused her of betrayal—of lying with another man—shattering whatever fragile threads still held their marriage together. That night the problems disappeared, the unhappiness faded away, and the marital struggles were over because their marriage had ended.Isabelle knew she would never forget that night—the horrific nightmare etched deep in her soul. The humiliation burned into her memory like acid. But above all, what haunted her most was Nic’s harsh, unforgiving face—carved seemingly from fire itself. His eyes, cold and brutal, bore into her like she was the vilest stain on the earth. He looked at her with a cruelty that echoed the judgment of his mother, as if confirming the worst insults ever thrown at her—that she was nothing more than a worthless slut, just like her mother had been.

That was the final straw—the breaking point that shattered everything. For as long as she could remember, the world had branded her a whore’s child, treating her with contempt and disdain from birth. And now, the one man she had clung to—the man she had believed was her savior, her protector, her lover—had joined in the condemnation.

At first, she begged. Pleaded with him to listen, to understand, to see the truth. But his heart was already frozen. Without a word, he tore his hands from hers and spat with icy disdain, “Go waste your lies on some other rich man. Nickolous Dimetriou doesn’t settle for second-hand goods.”

And just like that, their tragic marriage ended.

By the time Sophie was born, whatever fragments had remained of their relationship had been ground into dust. The only connection Nic had maintained with her came in the form of cold, impersonal letters—legal documents signed by his attorneys regarding custody. There had been no calls. No questions about how she was coping. Just paperwork and rigid visitation schedules. At first, it was once or twice a month—short, mechanical visits that felt more like an obligation than anything resembling fatherhood. One of his assistants would arrive, always punctual, always distant, to collect their daughter and ferry her off to whatever impersonal hotel suite he was staying in that week. The visits never lasted more than an hour or two. Then Sophie would be returned to her with a plastic smile on the nanny’s face and the faint scent of hotel soap clinging to her tiny hands.

She’d always wondered if he’d secretly ordered a DNA test. After all, she could never forget the scorched look in his eyes that night—the way he spat, "Is this really my child?" as if the very idea of sharing blood with her had turned to poison on his tongue. She had no doubt that, in those early months, he’d taken his suspicions and her baby’s innocence to some lab to seek the truth. The thought haunted her.

As Sophie grew older, and the courts allowed it, he began taking her away for longer—first weeks, then entire summers spent in Greece. She remembered packing tiny suitcases with trembling hands, afraid of how her little girl would be treated by a man who had once looked at her mother with so much hate. But Sophie had always returned whole, giggling about sea turtles and sunshine, leaving Isabelle to smile tightly and choke on her own silence.

She hadn’t seen Nic—really seen him—in years. Not until a month ago. The accident. The hospital. That moment when time folded in on itself, and she’d turned a corner to find him standing there, tall and rigid, the same fire in his eyes but dulled now, as if age or pain or regret had finally begun to thaw the ice. It had taken everything in her not to crumble right there, because no matter how much time had passed, no matter how strong she had forced herself to become, there was no armor thick enough to keep out the memory of what he had once said. Or the man he had once been—to her.

PRESENT DAY, ATHENS

As the taxi rolled to a stop in front of the grey-blue house, Isabelle felt her breath catch in her throat. It had been years, but the place still looked achingly familiar—the curved iron balcony above the porch, the climbing ivy now left untamed, the weathered brass number plate that still clung stubbornly to the chipped gatepost. But something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

She stepped out of the car, her heels crunching against gravel, and her eyes widened as they landed on the heavy iron chain wrapped around the front gate—thick, rusted links looped and padlocked shut. Her heart gave a hard, painful thump. The house was locked. Deserted. The once well-kept lawn was wild and overgrown, tufts of grass pushing up between cracked flagstones, and the front windows were dark, curtains drawn like closed eyes in mourning. A layer of dust clung to the panes. It was as if time had frozen here, years ago—and no one had dared to touch it since.

She stood frozen, staring, her fingers slowly tightening around the handle of her suitcase. This had been their house. The one Nic had brought her to after they were married. The place where Sophie had taken her first steps. The kitchen where she had burned her first pie. The hallway where their voices had echoed—sometimes in laughter, sometimes in rage. And now it was locked away. Sealed shut like a memory neither of them wanted to revisit.

Before she could gather her thoughts, a small voice tugged her back to reality.

“Mummy?” Sophie asked curiously, pulling on her coat. “Why are we here? I thought we were going to see Daddy.”

Isabelle blinked, dazed. “He… he doesn’t live here anymore?” she said, but the words weren’t really a question. They came out broken, almost breathless—as though someone had punched the air from her lungs.

But Sophie, ever the observant child, nodded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “No, Daddy and Grandma’s house is over there now,” she said brightly, pointing her tiny finger down the street, past the U-turn. “It’s that big white one with the flowers.”

Isabelle followed the direction her daughter pointed in, her eyes landing on the grand ancestral house just beyond the bend—a place she had never been welcome in. Her stomach twisted. So, Nic had left this house behind and gone back to his family’s estate. Of course he had. That house, filled with history and pride, was where the Dimitriou legacy lived. And maybe now, so did he. Without her.