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Yet another party-girl approached hiain he dismissed her, to her displeasure His eyes flicked back to the dancers, to keep Georgias in his view But as he did so, there was a sudden gap in his eyeline to the far side of the room

Everything stopped Every faculty he possessed stopped working Except one

Vision

And one other Memory

Burning, coruscating, vicious memory

Like a zombie, he started to walk forward His face was a mask, his pulse insensible

Into the vortex

Towards the one huain for the rest of his life, but as standing there, across the roo at him with an expression of absolute shock on her face For a uts His eyes flicked to the man beside her

What the hell—? Nikos recognised him, but not with pleasure Cosmo Dimistris was a man well at home at parties like this And well at home with the kind of women who frequented them Nikos’s eyes lasered back to the wo hi there

Cos him exactly why she was there

So she was still playing the sa out with rich men

E up fro since buried Shock was still upper it Focussing it Targeting it

Targeting it on the one person who had been his sole lapse of judgement His one mistake

Sophie Granton

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Sophie felt her face beneath the h the numb miasma in her head, it couldn’t be! It just couldn’t! Not him—not here—not now

But it was hi her fate Her doom

Her eyes could not tear themselves from him Could not move from the hard, sculpted planes of his face, the sable hair, slashing cheekbones and the night-dark eyes Could not ht, the lithe length of his leg, the panthered grace of his stride

Nikos Kazandros—walking out of the past Making her oblivious to everything—everything except him Oblivious to the man she ith, whose co

She had h drinks at the hotel bar, followed by dinner, over which he had regaled her with boasting about his wealth and possessions, while she had s questions as if she cared less Then they had arrived at this nightmare party that they see around her te at what she was doing, and why Sophie had tried desperately to cling to the nuh the re

And now that numbness had been blasted away as if by nuclear detonation, in one hideous, appallingtowards her