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slurred, ‘What I’m holding is the deepest, darkest secrets of the Parnassus family and their fate. Georgios Parnassus’ final will and testament . I now know everything. About all their assets, exactly how much they’re worth, and how he plans on distributing it all. I also know that his first wife killed herself. They must have hushed that up. Can you imagine what would happen if this was leaked to the right people? I can take them down with this.’
    I can take them down with this. Nausea had risen from Angel’s gut to think that after all these years, and after what the Parnassus family had been through, her father still wanted to fuel the feud. He was so blinded by bitterness that he couldn’t see that doing something like this would make him and his family look even worse. Not to mention cause untoldpain to the Parnassus family in revealing family secrets, if what he said about the suicide was true.
    â€˜How did you get it?’
    Her father had waved a dismissive hand. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    Familiar cold disgust had made Angel bite out, ‘You sent one of your goons to the villa to steal it.’
    Her father’s face had grown mottled, confirming what she’d said, or at least the fact that he had stolen it. She’d no idea how he had actually done it, but some slavishly loyal men still surrounded her father.
    Her father had become belligerent, clearly done with her. ‘What if I did? Now, get out of here. You make me sick every time I look at you and am reminded of your whore of a mother.’
    Angel was so used to her father speaking to her like that she hadn’t even flinched. He’d always blamed her for the fact that her glamorous Irish mother had walked out on them when Angel had been just two years old. She’d left the room, then waited for a while and gone back. Sure enough her father had passed out in his chair, one hand clutching the thick document, the other clutching an empty bottle of whisky to his chest. He’d been snoring loudly. It had been easy to slide the sheaf of pages out from his loosened fingers and creep back out.
    Early that morning she’d gone straight to work, taking the will with her, knowing that her father would still be passed out cold. And then, late that evening, she’d taken the journey up to the Parnassus villa, but had panicked momentarily when faced with a security guard and the enormity of what she had to do. She’d blurted out something about being at the function some weeks before and leaving something valuable behind.
    To her intense relief, after the unsmiling guard had consulted with someone, she’d been let in. To her further relief,when she’d reached the kitchens, she’d found no one and had crept up through the silent house, praying that she’d find the study. She’d leave the papers in a drawer and slip away again.
    She was not going to let her father create more bad feeling between the families. That was the last thing they needed, the last thing Delphi needed. Every day now Stavros was begging Delphi to elope, but she was standing strong and refusing, determined not to ruin Stavros’ prospects and be responsible for tearing his family apart.
    The flaring up of their old feud with the most powerful family in Athens would make any prospect of marriage between them even more impossible. Angel heard her sister sobbing herself to sleep every night, and knew that a very real rift could break the young lovers apart for ever if something didn’t happen soon. On top of everything else, Delphi had important law exams to think about.
    The enormity of it all threatened to swamp Angel for a moment.
    She emerged into the huge reception hall and stood for a moment, trying to calm her nerves, to stop her mind from spiralling into despair. Her breath was coming fast and shallow. She felt a prickling across the back of her neck and chastised herself. There was no one there.