FIVE
CHAPTER 5
This time, when Isabelle woke, her left arm was aching like someone had tried to tear it apart from her body, and her head throbbed like the world was about to end. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision – and suddenly there he was, sitting in the chair beside her bed, with his muscled legs crossed and stretched like he was the lord of the place, in his signature three piece black suit, his expression brooding as he continued to look at her.
Isabelle felt like someone had just dropped a bucket of cold water all over her body, drenching her and freezing her……She had never realized how afraid she was of him until now, when, after three long years, he had appeared in front of her.
“Mrs. Demetriou, feeling better?” The doctor who had injected her with the sedative earlier was there too, checking her charts. She was suddenly very glad of that. “Uh-huh.” She nodded; her throat was dry. He pointed a small torch into her eyes, which made her head hurt, before reliving. “All seems fine to me for now. I will tell one of the nurses to carry out the rest of the tests later. For now, I will leave you alone with your husband, who has been waiting for you to wake up for a long time. Her eyes, despite hesitation, went to him for a second. He looked older, mature, and…..Scarier. yes, his eyes as cold as hardened ice crystals, stared right into her soul. he didn’t say a word, but she knew, she had always known that he carries a streak of violence in his soul, a streak that only shows itself at times of turmoil through his eyes. Once, she had seen it once, on the day they had met after he had accused her of sleeping with another man. He hadn’t said much, and he hadn’t listened to anything she had to say, but she had seen it in his eyes that day, a violence – if unleashed, would kill her. Isabelle looked pleadingly at the doctor; she didn’t want to be left alone with him.
Once he left, though, Isabelle gulped down the bile that had risen in her throat before speaking. “Where is Sophie?” She wished her voice hadn’t been so shaky.
“My daughter is exactly where she should be.” Was his scathing reply.
“She is my daughter, too, Nic.” It wasn’t a reminder; it was a painful taunt. Because she knew Nikolaus Dimitrious in his perfect life hated nothing more than the reminder that the precious daughter, he loved so much was a part of Isabelle Mercer, a characterless whore. Shame he couldn’t do anything about it.
“And a pawn in your game to hurt me!” Suddenly, he didn’t just sound like he wanted her dead, he acted like it, too. With jaws locked tight and his eyes reflecting the depths of hell, he walked closer to her bed. “You are trying to drive a wedge between me and Daphne by using your own daughter as a pawn!” Isabelle flinched. “You are spewing nonsensical poison into that little girl’s head about my fiancée Daphne. So, much so that she made Daphne cry this morning, when we came to pick her up from school, she refused to speak to her, to even greet her.” He was grinding his teeth as he spoke.
“She had been spouting lie after lie about Daphne, and that innocent little girl isn’t coming up with it on her own. You are doing it for her.” He ranted at her.
But she didn’t reply, she had nothing to say to him in fact. “So, that’s it, no excuses?”
Isabelle sighed sadly, because the more he spoke, the more he was convinced his daughter had lied, convinced now that not just Isabelle, now his own kid was a liar too. The more her daughter would grow apart from her own dad. She started to hate the man whom she had loved so much, and it would be such a tragedy. She knew what was going to happen next, it was funny how she could see it already, and still helpless to stop it. They are going to convince him that little Sophie wasn’t just a liar but also very jealous of Daphne, too, and hates her in fact. Spoilt brat, liar, and disobedient, once it gets to that stage, it will be over, the final nail in the coffin between the daughter and her father.
But she will try her best to protect Sophie from bearing that pain. “If you were going to take Sophie out of school for the day, you should have told me.” Isabelle had almost died, convinced that he had taken her away, which he had, but clearly not to Greece since he was still here.
“I don’t need your permission to see my own daughter,” he was begging for a fight, Isabelle realized, his whole body tight and starched, his face thundering with a kind of rage that used to send Isabelle into flight mode when they were still together. But Isabelle was no longer his punching bag.
“Where is Sophie? I would like to see her, please.” She spoke again, calmly determined not to make a scene here. “She is downstairs at the cafeteria with my mother.” He told her. “I will call them up.”
Two minutes later, a joyous bundle ran through the door and straight into her mother’s aching arm. “Mummy, you are awake.” She cried with such happiness that Isabelle felt herself tearing up a little. “Yes, darling.” And behind them stood Callista Demetriou, the matriarch with a sullen expression on her face at the door.
“I was so fraid…” She mumbled. “You were not speaking, even when I called for Mummy so many times.” “I was so fraid, I cried…..but daddy said, you will wake up. You were just resting, and he will not let anything happen to you.” Isabelle looked up at her estranged husband, who was looking right back at her, something uncomfortable passing between them.
“Nickolous…Can I talk to you for a second outside?” His mother interrupted them, and Nic went out, leaving her with their daughter. “Darling, Mummy is hurting a little on the left side, can you shift a little?” The boisterous child shifted, butting her head accidentally right into her aching ribs. And Isabelle had to clamp down from crying out and hold her arms out for her daughter.
A few minutes later, Nic stormed back into the room, his face dark with rage. The storm in his eyes hadn’t passed—it had only worsened.
“Sophia Marie Demetriou,” he thundered, his voice echoing off the sterile hospital walls. “Get. Down. Here. Now.”
Isabelle froze, arms instinctively tightening around her daughter. Sophie didn’t move, but Isabelle felt her tiny body press deeper into her embrace, trembling.
“Nic, what on earth is going on—”
“She’s turning into an entitled little brat!” he snapped, cutting her off, his voice sharp as broken glass. His fury didn’t falter; it only climbed. “You think it’s acceptable to call someone a bad lady and say you don’t have to listen because ‘she’s not your mom’? Is that how you speak to an adult who’s trying to care for you?!”
Sophie flinched, and Isabelle felt her daughter clutch her tighter, small hands fisting her gown, her breath coming faster, uneven.
“She doesn’t care about me!” Sophie suddenly shrieked, her voice cracking with fury and pain. “She hates me, and I hate her back!”
Her scream was loud enough that the nurse came rushing in, startled. At the door stood Nic’s mother, arms folded like a sentinel, lips curled in disgust.
“Well, if she were mine, she wouldn’t dare speak that way. I’d thrash the arrogance right out of her. Appalling behavior.” Her voice was ice, sharp and cold. “Absolutely disgraceful.”
That was it.
Isabelle’s spine straightened like steel. She pulled Sophie tighter, eyes blazing. “So what, you hurt my daughter when I’m not around? Is that what you’re saying?” Her voice trembled with fury, her words cutting through the thick tension. “Because if anyone—anyone—lays a finger on her, I swear I’ll go to the police.”
Nic’s glare shifted to her, cold and commanding. “No one’s hurting her,” he said flatly, voice like a warning. “So stay out of this. This is between me and my daughter.”
“She’s just a child, Nic!”
“She’ll go out there and apologize to Daphne. For everything she said. For how she’s behaved all day. Now.”
His voice was final. Harsh. But what he didn’t expect—what shattered his control completely—was the explosion of heartbreak from the little girl trembling in Isabelle’s arms.
“No!” Sophie screamed, her tiny chest heaving, tears pouring down her face like a flood let loose. “I’m not sorry! I hate her! She’s a bad lady! I hate her! Hate her! And I hate you too!”
The room fell dead silent.
Nic’s face blanched for just a second—but Sophie wasn’t done.
Gripping her mother’s hospital gown, her sobs became gut-wrenching, like her tiny heart was splitting open. “Mummy, please don’t send me back to live with Daddy! Please! They’re all so mean to me. I don’t want to go there again. I want to stay with you. He doesn’t love me anymore. I hate him—I hate him and I never ever want to talk to him again!”