Chapter One
“THE MAN WE’RE going to for help, Constantine Xenakis, he’s the one who broke your heart all those years ago, isn’t he?”
Aliyah Remington stilled in the act of rearranging paperwork in her lap and swallowed. She shouldn’t have been shocked at her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Rose’s perceptiveness.
The car slipped through mid-morning traffic, weaving toward downtown Athens and the gleaming tower that finally bore his name. Just hearing it spoken aloud was enough to send a shiver down her spine.
In those early years when Aliyah had met Richard—her now late husband—and his daughter, Rose, she hadn’t told them the truth of her identity.
She had wanted nothing to do with either her parents or…
him. She had wanted to start afresh, be someone different from the clingy, heartbroken creature her family had reduced her to.
But of course the past never just stayed there.
After running away from a charity ball at the Plaza one evening a few years ago, she’d finally admitted to Richard that she was indeed the daughter of Theo Andros—the Greek millionaire.
That she was in touch with her mother but mostly estranged from her father.
That the Constantine Xenakis—the CEO of Andros International, the very man she had run from at the ball—had been her first love.
“Aliyah?” Rose prompted, tone laced with worry.
Aliyah worked hard to keep her expression steady, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded. With Richard gone, the teen’s trust and affection meant the world to her.
“It is the same man,” Aliyah admitted.
Memories threatened to overwhelm her—the anger, the betrayal when Constantine had chosen to be her father’s heir over living a life of penury with her. The final admission to herself that without her brother, Julian, around, no one truly cared about her.
She twisted the plain gold band on her finger, seeking solace from the warm metal.
It had been fifteen months since Richard had passed suddenly, peacefully in his sleep, but she hadn’t taken the ring off.
It served as a reminder that she wasn’t the naive, helpless girl she’d been more than a decade ago.
She met Rose’s eyes. “I think the worst thing though is that he broke my trust. Although, in hindsight, I think that’s on me.”
“How?” Rose said fiercely, always her staunch defender.
“I was young and lonely and even silly maybe, with all kinds of ideas about finding a grand romance. It’s very possible that I mistook convenient attraction and lust for real love.”
She unclasped her fingers and pulled her shoulders down from her ears, forcing herself to relax. If she got this twisted just talking about him, how the hell was she going to face Constantine and ask for help? Maybe it was better to get the rising emotional surge out of her before she faced him.
“After Julian, my older brother, died, it broke our family apart. Constantine, our groundskeeper’s grandson, was Julian’s best friend and my father’s ward since he was a kid.
Not that it was pure charity, mind you. My father’s a ruthless businessman with a practiced eye for finding talent.
And Constantine, from a young age, possessed a razor-sharp brain for numbers.
So of course my father got his hooks into him early on. ”
Only now, years later, could she finally see how her father had capitalized on both Constantine’s talent and his hunger to make something of himself.
“You fell in love?” Rose prompted, with all the eagerness of a teen.
“Without Julian, Constantine and I grew close. He was kind, affectionate, attentive to me. I did fall in love with him, made grand plans for our future together, and I assumed that he felt the same.”
Not that the stoic, self-contained Constantine had said so much in words. She shook her head, as if that might dislodge the memories that hadn’t budged for years.
“Grief over my brother’s loss might have been the true thing that brought us together. It’s very possible that Constantine had always thought of me as a fun side entertainment while he climbed the ladder.”
She hated how awful that sounded, but it was better than the lies and delusions she had swallowed back then.
Once again, she looked out the window of their rental car, forcing herself to breathe.
June sunlight gleamed off ancient stone facades, casting sharp shadows across the narrow streets.
The scent of oranges, heat and exhaust wafted in through the half-open window.
The city was arrogant and golden and unapologetically alive—everything she’d once adored about Constantine.
“What did he do to make you leave your home? Your country?”
Aliyah looked back at Rose and sighed. Clearly, she wasn’t going to let go until Aliyah told her the whole tale.
“When my father discovered that Constantine and I were together, he…lost it, as you would say.” The words felt like thorns in her throat, but she pushed on.
Her mother had relayed the whole episode with relish to a heartbroken Aliyah.
“With Constantine, you see, he had a puppet he could control and maneuver, not a young man with dreams for himself.” At least she could sound objective about that, whatever wounds he’d left behind.
“As for me, while Papa never paid any attention to me my whole life, apparently he’d promised my hand to some ally as part of a business deal.
He didn’t like it one bit that the two of us were derailing his plans. ”
Blinking at the sudden prick of tears, she swallowed hard. “Anyway, he presented Constantine with a deal. Give me up or lose everything he had worked for at Andros International. Constantine chose power and wealth, and I fled.”
If Richard hadn’t passed away suddenly, Aliyah wouldn’t have come back, ever.
Having enjoyed perfect health for years, he hadn’t changed his old will in more than a decade—which gave custody of Rose to his brother in case of his demise—or made any new arrangements for Rose.
Of course, his cunning brother, who had never warmed to Aliyah, had pounced within days.
He’d claimed rights to Richard’s finance firm and Rose, his greedy eyes on her vast inheritance.
So here Aliyah was, desperate enough to knock on Constantine’s door.
“I’m sorry, Aliyah,” Rose whispered, her round face flushing.
Aliyah jerked straight in her seat. “I’m doing this for us, Rose,” she said softly. “You are my family, sweetheart, and I would do anything to keep you with me.”
Rose’s eyes welled up. “I hate that you have to go back to a man who hurt you. Because of me.”
Aliyah reached across the seat and squeezed the teen’s hand. “Remember that dinner party ages ago and that horrible friend of yours you saved me from?” The memory filled her with light and joy, and Aliyah clutched it tight.
“She was going to get you fired,” Rose said with solemn eyes. “And I begged Dad to step in.”
“You were my hero. I mean, I was a horrible waitress. I had no other skills, I was behind on rent, had no friends. All I knew was how to play the piano. If it weren’t for your insistence that he hire me to teach you piano and your dad’s generosity, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“You nearly spilled the champagne on Dad,” Rose said, giggling.
Aliyah laughed, loving the sound of the teen’s laughter. It had been far too scarce in the last few months. “Yes. And not only did he not get mad, but he was so kind to me.” She straightened and began to pack up the papers. “So, no tears, sweetheart. Especially not where we’re going.”
Rose’s lips trembled as she nodded. “We stick together?”
Aliyah brushed a strand of hair from the girl’s face. “Always. Whether in front of your uncle or in front of Mr. Xenakis. Okay?”
Another nod.
Aliyah turned back to the window, the good memory bolstering her resolve.
Outside, Athens looked shinier, more vertical—glass and chrome jostling for space where dusty courtyards and crumbling facades had once stood. The pace seemed faster too, its old, languid charm swallowed by a hard new sheen of wealth and ambition.
But she had changed too.
She wasn’t that girl, longing to be loved, anymore. Not the fragile daughter of a broken family, desperate for someone to see her.
She had devoted thousands of hours and built herself a career as a renowned concert pianist. She had grown into herself under Richard’s easy, quiet affection. And now, she would bargain with Constantine for Rose’s safety.
And she was betting that her shares in Andros International that her mother had gifted her last year—which she wasn’t allowed to sell—would be of great interest to him.
She wouldn’t have needed him if she’d been sitting on a pile of personal money or had access to Richard’s vast estate so that she could deal with Rose’s uncle herself.
But all she had was a modest income that she’d emptied to arrange Richard’s funeral, to buy the air tickets for her and Rose and to pay for their living expenses since he’d passed away.
But Constantine, and his renowned team of lawyers, could resolve the custody and estate problems once and for all. Rose’s uncle was a well-connected, powerful man and she needed a bigger predator to make him back down.
It was the one favor she’d ask of a man she never wanted to see again.
Telling herself that this would be her last trip to Greece helped just a little.
Constantine Xenakis didn’t usually feel impatient or anxious. Or uninterested when a beautiful woman, currently sitting against his desk in a very provocative pose, was vying for his attention.
He had long eliminated such weaknesses from himself, for he couldn’t afford them. Not when he swam daily with the hungry sharks that made up the board of Andros International—the old-money fools who enjoyed the rising stock under his rule but were still always circling for faults.