When she drew back to see his face the bitter anguish had gone, leaving it sad and resigned, as though he’d found a kind of peace, albeit a bleak and despairing peace.

At last Lysandros gave her a faint smile, feeling deep within him a desire to protect her as she had tried to protect him. There was still good in the world. It was here in this girl, too innocent to understand the danger she ran just by being here with him. In the end she would be sullied and spoiled like the rest.

But not tonight. He wouldn’t allow it.

He tapped a number into the code pad and the glass panel closed.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, leading her away from the roof and down into the hotel.

Outside her door he said, ‘Go inside, go to bed, don’t open this door to anyone.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to lose a lot more money. After that-I’m going to do some thinking.’

He hadn’t meant to say the last words.

‘Goodnight, Achilles.’

‘Goodnight.’

He hadn’t intended what he did next either, but on impulse he leaned down and kissed her mouth gently.

‘Go in,’ he said. ‘And lock your door.’

She nodded and slipped inside. After a moment he heard the key turn.

He returned to the tables, resigned to further losses, but mysteriously his luck turned. In an hour he’d recovered every penny. In another hour he’d doubled it.

So that was who she was, a good luck charm, sent to cast her spell and change his fortunes. He only hoped he’d also done something for her, but he would probably never know. They would never meet again.

He was wrong. They did meet again.

But not for fifteen years.

CHAPTER ONE

THE Villa Demetriou stood on the outskirts of Athens on raised ground, from which the family had always been able to survey the domain they considered theirs. Until now the only thing that could rival them had been the Parthenon, the great classical temple built more than two thousand years before, high on the Acropolis, far away across the city and just visible.