Modern Romance June 2025 #1-4

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

The cold blast of emotion to his heart was unprecedented and extremely unwelcome.

Oblivious to the chill of the February day, or the spray of the speedboat as it powered towards the shore, Odysseus narrowed his eyes to stare at the instantly recognisable skyline.

La Serenissima, they called her. Venice.

He had seen pictures of the place. The dark, silent waters.

The intricate buildings which edged the canals.

The spellbinding light, even in winter. At times he had even dreamt about it.

But this was his first visit. His mouth flattened into a grim line. Surprising, really, given his ancestry.

With the faint mist of rain clinging to his face, he tensed as the boat approached the Academia Bridge and once again found himself asking the question which had been plaguing him for weeks.

Why the hell had he come here?

To free himself from the ghosts which had haunted him for as long as he could remember?

Or was it something more primitive? Something bone-deep and atavistic for the Greeks had a very satisfying word. A word he could almost taste on his lips—bitter and sweet.

Ekdikisi.

Revenge?

No.

His lips curved into a smile which people always observed never really reached his eyes.

Revenge implied victimhood and Odysseus had never considered himself a victim, despite the savage circumstances which had forged him and spat him out.

This trip to his mother’s homeland was motivated by curiosity, or perhaps that was too mild a description for something which felt like the drawing of a final line.

A desire to meet with his only living relative before the old man died.

‘Siamo qui, signor,’ announced the driver as he anchored the bobbing boat and turned to his passenger, his gaze watchful.

What did the boat keeper see? Odysseus wondered, pressing a wad of notes into the man’s palm before leaping from the boat with an athlete’s natural grace.

A powerfully built man with an unruly mane of dark hair who would have looked equally at home on a ramshackle old fishing boat?

Or did he simply register the expensive clothes—the sophisticated exterior which marked him out as one of the richest men in his native Greece and beyond?

The costly coverings which hid the true nature of the man within.

A man who women complained had a heart of ice.

A man his rivals described as unknowable.

The lone wolf, they called him in the handful of the countries in which he operated, but he could live with that.

In fact, he rather approved of the soubriquet, even though it wasn’t intended to be flattering.

His mouth hardened. But other people’s approval had never been high on his wish-list.

The ancient edifice of his hotel was only a few steps away from the mooring and the doorman sprang to attention as Odysseus walked up to the main desk.

One of the female receptionists automatically pulled her shoulders back to draw attention to her breasts, but he failed to react as he signed his name.

Registering her disappointment, he gave the ghost of a smile as she handed his passport back and he headed for the elevator.

Within minutes he was established in a suitably lavish suite overlooking the Grand Canal, which his assistant had booked, along with the requisite costume for tonight’s ball, which was hanging in the wardrobe, awaiting his arrival.

He cast a curious gaze over it, for it was essentially a fancy dress costume.

But he had wanted a condensed Venetian experience, and this was all part of it.

Satin breeches. A voluminous cloak. Buckled shoes and a tricorn hat.

And the mask of course. An elaborate covering of the eyes, which should guarantee him a certain anonymity.

Not that anyone knew him here.

Not even his grandfather. At least, not yet.

He turned away from the wardrobe to study the milky waters of the lagoon.

Tomorrow he had an appointment to meet with Vincenzo Contarini though he hadn’t yet worked out what he intended to say.

A pulse began to beat at his temple as he thought about all the things he could say.

About how much blame and bitterness he could apportion towards the old man.

But that was not his style. He didn’t do emotion.

He had learnt to temper his reaction to things beyond his control because in every aspect of life there was immense power and advantage to be gained from not reacting.

But he wasn’t going to think about that. Not tonight. Tonight he would watch the Venetians at play—for his assistant, Andreas, had procured him a ticket to the city’s most exclusive ball.

‘Only one ticket, Kyrios Diamides?’ Andreas had enquired curiously.

‘Neh,’ Odysseus had growled. ‘Only one.’ For although a hundred women would have dropped everything to be seen on his arm, he did not need the distraction of a partner.

He was here as an observer, nothing else.

To confront the past, after so many years of ignoring it.

Would it achieve some kind of closure? His mouth hardened.

Who knew? Maybe it would be better to leave the wound open and untreated.

To remind himself of how toxic families could be and thus reinforce his determination never to have one of his own.

But for tonight, at least, he would participate in something he’d never done before and the novel was always a tantalising prospect.

So many of life’s big prizes had come glittering his way at a prodigiously young age.

Money and women had been there for the taking and Odysseus was aware that lately his attitude had grown jaded—a crazy situation for a man barely thirty-four years old and at his sexual peak.

Didn’t Andreas and even his personal pilot sometimes drop large hints that all work and no play posed their own danger?

Perhaps once he had attended to this assignation and returned from Venice, he would address the recent absence of sexual intimacy in his life, which certainly wasn’t due to a lack of opportunity.

Yes, recreation would definitely go to the top of his to-do list.

But not right now.

For now there was work. There was always work. His refuge and salvation. Opening up his computer, Odysseus sat down at the antique desk, the beauty of the Grand Canal forgotten as he stared intently at the screen.

‘Oh, Grace. You look gorgeous ! Like something out of a film!’

But Grace barely registered her friend’s excitement, or the lavish compliment, even though she wasn’t usually known for her looks or her dress sense.

She stared in the mirror of the staff restroom, at the very summit of the fifteenth-century Venetian palace which Kirsty had smuggled her into earlier.

A whole hour ago actually, but it had taken that long to shoehorn her into this elaborate costume.

She knew the whole point of a masked ball was to disguise the way you looked, but even so. Who could have thought she could ever look like…

This?

The flowing scarlet silk dress was cinched in so tightly around the waist that she could barely breathe.

It was doing things to her body she hadn’t thought possible.

The boned bodice clung to her ribs, pushing her modest breasts upwards and close together, resulting in the rather startling effect of making her look incredibly busty, so that she was practically spilling over the embroidered edge of her bodice.

An elaborate hat covered most of her chestnut-brown hair with a cascade of scarlet feathers, and the gleaming golden mask left only a pair heavily kohled eyes and vermillion lips on show.

What on earth had happened to Grace Foster, the colourless mouse who always faded into the background with her nondescript clothes and ordinary features?

That woman was nowhere to be seen. Tonight, she looked like an exotic bird. In other words, nothing like her at all. The bland functionary was nowhere to be seen—her usual uniform a distant memory. She’d never done anything remotely like this. Never even imagined she could. Yet here she was…

‘I don’t know if I can go through with it, Kirsty,’ she gulped.

‘Are you kidding?’ Her friend’s voice was disapproving as she indicated her own black waitressing dress with a disparaging wave of her hand.

‘If you really think I’ve gone to all the trouble of sneaking you in and risking my job, only for you to have cold feet at the last minute—you’re wrong!

I’ve worked out exactly how to get you in there without having to go through the official entrance bit. ’

‘But what if I can’t carry it off?’ Grace swallowed. ‘With no ticket?’

‘Of course you can carry it off!’ retorted Kirsty. ‘Nobody’s going to bother asking for your ticket. Anyway, the others are in there and they’ll be looking out for you.’

This much was true. Grace made another unnecessary adjustment to her hired dress.

Over the years she’d built up a small network of friends and Cara and Sophia were both here…

somewhere…with legitimate tickets they’d saved up for, unlike her.

But they didn’t have her responsibilities, she reasoned.

And although she happily sent most of her wages to pay for her grandmother’s care in England, it did mean she missed out on a lot of the stuff which other women her age were doing.

She didn’t spend much on clothes. She didn’t go out much.

Which was why she occasionally found herself wishing that life could be a bit more… well, exciting.

But wasn’t that the whole point of tonight?