The last of the guests were entering while organ music piped portentously in the air. In less than an hour I would be married to a man I’d never exchanged a single word with. A man who had somehow fallen in league with my father for reasons I still didn’t know.

I glanced at my father, desperate to ask why. His stony profile warned me not to push my luck. Like my heartache, I smothered my rebellion.

My father stepped out of the carriage and held out his hand. Mine shook, and again I was glad for the veil’s cover to hide my tear-prickled eyes.

A small part of me was grateful that my father didn’t seem in a hurry to march me down the aisle because he was basking in the limelight that momentarily banished the shadow of scandal and humiliation he’d lived under for the past eight years. For once people weren’t talking about his wife’s infidelity. Or the fact that the woman who’d deserted him had returned in a wheelchair. Or that he’d taken her back just so he could keep her firmly under his thumb in retribution.

Today he was simply the man who’d seemingly bagged one of the most eligible bachelors in the world for his daughter—not the once illustrious but now downtrodden businessman who’d lost the Petras fortune his father had left him.

The doors to the church yawned open, ready to receive their unwilling sacrifice. My footsteps faltered and my father sent me a sharp look. Unable to meet his eyes without setting off the spark of mutiny attempting to rekindle itself inside me, I kept my gaze straight.

I needed to do this for my mother.

I spotted her in the front row, her head held high despite her fate, and it lent me the strength to put one foot in front of the other. The slight weight of my grandmother’s envelope in my pocket helped me ignore the rabid curiosity and speculative whispers of three hundred strangers.

Unfortunately there was only one place left to look. At the towering figure of the man waiting in perfect stillness facing the altar.

He didn’t twitch nor fidget. Didn’t display any outward signs of being a nervous groom.

His broad back and wide shoulders seemed to go on for ever, and his proud head and unyielding stance announced his power and authority. He didn’t speak to the equally tall, commanding figure next to him, as most grooms did with their best man. In fact both men stood as if to military attention, their stance unwavering.

My gaze flicked away from Axios Xenakis, my breath stalling in my throat the closer I approached. Even without seeing his face I sensed a formidable aura—one that forced me again to wonder why he was doing this. What did he have to gain with this alliance?

He could have any woman he wanted. So why me?

And why had several butterflies suddenly taken flight within my belly?

Wild instinct urged me to fan my rebellion to life. Fight or flight. Pick one and deal with the consequences later.