Chapter 3
Angelos Mavromatis always got what he wanted. And tonight, what he wanted was her.
- One Week with the Greek
NIKOS
“ D oc! A?e!”
I gripped my pen as the howling started, determined to finish the last sentence of the paragraph I’d been working on: The island was hidden by a sorceress’s spell and the constellations were the only sign the sailors had to guide them to its rocky coast. But the singing of the sirens near the shore was said to make the stars tremble in the sky . . .
“Doc!” The all-too familiar voice cried again; this was no singing siren but the holy terror of the island.
With a heavy sigh, I set my notebook aside and opened my office door.
Sure enough, there was Dimitris, grasping his twisted arm in his hands, eyes glassy with pain.
So much for finishing the translation of my grandfather’s book today—my one day off.
It looked like I’d be setting bones instead.
“Only twelve years old and I’ve already mended a third of your body,” I complained an hour later after I’d X-rayed the bone and had begun wrapping the cast on Dimitris’s scrawny arm. This was the third bone he’d broken in the past two years. “I hope this time will be the last.”
“Pfff!” He waved me off. “I never learn, Doctor.”
“Just like your brothers.” His older brothers were also regulars in my tiny office. On an island of just over three hundred people, you got to know everyone intimately. And as the only doctor, I was especially familiar with the more accident-prone residents.
When the cast had set, I warned, “Now, don’t get this wet. No swimming or fishing for a few weeks.”
He slapped his forehead with his good hand. “Why didn’t I think of that? What am I going to do with myself?”
The kid was in constant movement. He reminded me of a younger version of myself, only slightly more insolent. I pulled a book from the shelf behind me and handed it to him. He stared at it as if I’d just offered him a steaming pile of donkey shit instead of a well-worn copy of The Hobbit .
“ Ti sto kal ó ?! ”
“In English, please,” I warned. I’d been talking to him almost exclusively in English for the past few months because he was clever and wanted to become a YouTube influencer—of what I had no idea; apart from skinned knees and broken bones, he wasn’t exactly an expert in anything yet.
“Do you see me read books? Never!” I pushed him out into the miniscule waiting room where three pairs of dark eyes followed us from beneath smoky eye makeup. Where had they come from? They must have snuck in when Dimitris left the front door open.
“ Kalispera , Niko,” they said in unison.
“ Kalispera .” I nodded my head at them and glanced at my watch. I was late. The ferry would be arriving in less than two hours.
“Why are there always so many girls in your waiting room, Doc?” Dimitris asked as I forced him out onto the sidewalk.
“Remind me to teach you about the concept of supply and demand next time you break a bone,” I said as I slipped him a honey lozenge and closed the door so he couldn’t ogle my patients.
Sprinting back into my office, I palmed some Benadryl and anti-inflammatory cream, determined to deal with all three patients at the same time.
I knew that whatever “illness” had brought the women to the office was most likely not very serious.
One of them had an allergy to tomatoes and kept eating them anyway—I saw her at least once a week.
The other two were more creative when it came to inventing sudden ailments that needed my attention, but I’m sure it was nothing that couldn’t be solved by a little ibuprofen.
After seeing them out, I sprinted home to grab my toolbelt and nearly stumbled over Argos, who was curled up like a giant shaggy rug outside the door. I clicked my tongue at him, and he yawned, then followed me up the hill toward the other side of the island.
At the top of the rocks, I paused and let my eyes wander over the hills that dipped into valleys, where spring wildflowers and herbs had just begun peeking through the brown rocks.
Soon everything would be in bloom. A rugged paradise framed by the brilliant blue sea, the vista never ceased to take my breath away.
As far as my grandfather was concerned, our island was the center of the world.
He used to bring me to this very spot when I was a kid and, pointing his fingers in different directions, tell me stories from the book that was his life’s work.
The book that I’d been translating for the past year.
I could still hear his voice as I looked toward the horizon.
“There, over that ridge is Crete, and to the east is Turkey, farther still to the north, Italy. The Ottomans, the Venetians, they tried to hold on to this island, but they couldn’t.
It’s ours, we’ve been here since it emerged from the sea. ”
The sea. It held miracles and mysteries, and I’d always had a connection to it.
“All good things come from the sea, Niko,” my grandfather liked to say.
He always insisted that we were descended from ancient sea people, ones that had inspired myths and legends.
Despite his pragmatic tendencies, he had a superstitious streak that drove my mother crazy.
It was one of the reasons she’d left years ago to make a new life in the States.
Funny how all I ever wanted was to come back to this place. And I had. When my grandfather got sick three years ago, I took over his practice, and since he’d passed away, I was doing my best to safeguard the island’s history.
My eyes wandered over the visible vestiges of that history.
From the crumbling pillars of the ancient temple on the highest peak, to the white clay church and tiny monastery behind the old stone walls of the Venetian kastello .
When my gaze landed on the silver-leafed cluster of ancient olive groves on the far side of the island, a ball of resentment formed in my chest. In a few short months, they could be gone, replaced by a white, rectangular monstrosity of a resort, with an infinity pool and nightclub to boot.
I cursed at it and continued over the hill, stopping to peek into the old shepherd’s cottage that used to belong to Kyria Antonia.
Everyone had believed she was a witch, and she had terrified me as a kid.
But once I’d taken over my practice, I’d made frequent house calls to her, and, in a weird twist of fate, she’d left the place to me.
No explanation—she just said I’d need it one day.
So far, however, I’d abandoned it to Giorgos’s goats.
The sound of the goats bleating in the distance made Argos bark. I patted his head and shooed him away. “Go find your friends.”
He took off, his massive body loping over the rocks.
I called him “my dog” because I’d found him scrawny and abandoned near the refugee camp on Lesbos where I used to volunteer.
But as soon as I brought him to Lyra, he’d adopted the entire island.
The crazy son of a bitch even thought he was a goat now.
“You’re late, maláka ,” Panos said when I finally made it to the construction site.
He’d been helping rebuild the old hotel near the port after it had nearly burned down last year.
It was owned by an elderly couple with limited resources and no family on the island, so I lent a hand whenever I could.
Since Panos was already sitting on a plastic chair drinking beer, I didn’t feel too guilty for being late.
“Sorry, Pano. There’s been another outbreak of hives,” I explained and he laughed. He knew all too well about the made-up illnesses that found their way into my office every week. Last week it had been a mysterious eye condition, the week before an unexplained fever.
It was flattering, I suppose, that so many single women would make up illnesses just to have me examine them, but I didn’t let it go to my head.
There weren’t that many single guys to choose from.
At least not ones they hadn’t known all their lives.
Anyway, I wasn’t interested. I’d sworn off relationships since my marriage had imploded three years ago.
“I wonder if they consult each other before they show up in your office?”
“Couldn’t say.” I took a swig of cold beer. It was warm already for early April and the beer hit just right. “So how’d the call go?”
Panos heaved a sigh and cracked open another beer. “Why don’t you ask him?” He nodded at Yiannis who came stalking up from the port, a deep frown on his face. Yiannis was about as happy-go-lucky as they came, so this was a bad sign.
“Florakis says they’re meeting with a government official tomorrow.” Yiannis spat on the ground. He didn’t need to elaborate on who “they” were. The Greystone Group, an international group of developers and bloodsuckers who were determined to build a new trendy resort on the island.
Florakis had sold them the land after his father died a few months ago.
He’d moved to Athens years ago and no longer gave a damn about the island.
We’d been working for weeks to block the sale—unsuccessfully.
The mayor had agreed to go along with it and had been strutting around boasting that we’d soon be the next Mykonos, with celebrities and millionaires basking on our rocky coast.
All I imagined, as he tried to convince me of the benefits of a five-star resort, was the pollution, the crowds, the destruction it would bring to our peaceful island.
“Word is the Greystone heir is preparing for investors and is here to oversee the construction.”