Modern Romance Collection March 2025 #1-4

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

“You don’t have to keep taking this job.”

Lynna Carew continued to assemble her brownie sundae as a last hurrah before she traveled to Mykonos for a job. Her coworkers—and friends—were all on video chat as she worked.

The four of them made up Your Girl Friday. Freelance assistants who operated with the upmost discretion. They assisted the richest of the rich with different aspects of their lives, Irinka managed personal affairs, Maude handled the rehabilitation and management of the elaborate grounds of ancient estates, and Augusta, better known as Auggie, was a jill-of-all-trades, and oftentimes the driving force behind the business.

And of course, her friends were right in this instance. She didn’t have to keep taking this annual job, as Irinka always reminded her. But Lynna would take it, as she always did, just the same.

“I feel like we’ve been over this,” Lynna said, adding the homemade chocolate sauce she always kept stocked in the fridge.

“We just don’t get it,” Auggie groused. “You hate him. You complain about this job every time. And we all know he’s hiring you just to be an ass.”

He was indeed doing it just to be an ass. That’s what Athan Akakios did best, in Lynna’s opinion. Well, maybe not best. His best skill was being a backstabbing villain. The ass just came naturally along with that.

But that was just the thing. He wanted to twist the knife in her back. Why? She didn’t have a clue. Her father’s untimely death, after the Akakios empire had ruined him, was punishment enough, Lynna figured. But Athan wanted something more from her.

She refused to give it—whatever it was. Refused to let him hold anything over her. Even though he continued to try. “The best revenge is a superior dish served to haunt his dreams for the remaining days of the year I’m cooking for someone else.”

“That is not how the saying goes,” Maude said grimly.

“It’s how my saying goes,” Lynna returned. She surveyed her brownie sundae. Perfect. She grabbed it and the tablet where her friends were faces in boxes. She moved into the living room of her cozy flat in London and settled into her overstuffed armchair. “Besides, this isn’t the normal month of work for him. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll prepare for the wedding, cater the wedding, then I’m just on call for the remaining two weeks.”

“You’re catering the wedding of a man who destroyed your family. It’s an affront.”

Lynna took a bite of her sundae, reveled in the homemade whipped cream. The brownie and ice cream she’d made lovingly from scratch. “I happen to like catering weddings, Irinka. Regardless of the bride and groom.”

She supposed this was something of a ritual. Her friends and coworkers protested. She listened to each of their concerns and dismissed them one by one.

Because Lynna Carew did not need anyone’s approval. She never had.

Maybe she didn’t relish the feeling of waiting on Athan. But the higher insult would have been if he’d forgotten her and her family entirely. Clearly, the Carew name—or at least the dishes she made—still haunted him in some way, or he wouldn’t keep hiring her, year after year. He wouldn’t have asked her to handle the food for his very private, very exclusive and expensive if small, upcoming wedding.

Maybe he thought he was torturing her by hiring her a few weeks out of every year, but she never let on that she hated him. Never made a bad meal to punish him. She behaved like the consummate professional every year for the past five years.

And then took her paycheck straight to the bank.

If he wanted emotion, he was barking up the wrong tree.

“You’re going to poison him this time, aren’t you?” Maude asked. With just a little too much hope in her tone.

“Not at all. That hardly helps business. But do you know how many people are going to want me to cater weddings like this, make cakes like this after I succeed? It’s going to set me, and us , up for life. I happen to think there’s a kind of poetic justice to the whole thing.”

It didn’t bring her father back, but nothing did. It didn’t pay for her brother’s education, but her work at Your Girl Friday was doing that. It didn’t change what the Akakios family had done, but nothing would.

So why not profit off them?

Perhaps once upon a time she might have considered Athan a friend—a family one, if not a personal one. She might have thought of him and his father as good men, just like her father.

And then almost six years ago, they’d both betrayed her father so deeply—stealing away from him every last share of the business he’d built from the ground up. Making the public think Aled Carew was a criminal and the mighty Akakios family had righted a wrong.

They had succeeded. Her father had not recovered. Financially or from the shock and pain and stress of being treated this way by people he’d not just trusted, but loved like family.

An aneurysm had taken his life not six months later. It had nearly destroyed her family. Would have if Lynna hadn’t determined that no one else got to destroy them.

So no, she didn’t mind her yearly job for Athan. She didn’t mind catering his wedding. She might hate him. She might hope to one day see his and his father’s end.

But for now, she would happily take his money to do what she was good at, to do what she loved and to set her on the path to her own wealth. Eventually.

A wealth no one else, especially an Akakios, could take away.

* * *

Athan Akakios had arranged everything almost exactly as he wanted it. He would be marrying Regina Giordano, daughter of his father’s current business partner, in two days’ time. And once he had taken over the Giordano half of the company, he would oust his father.

Once and for all.

It seemed only fitting that Lynna Carew be involved, all in all.

For five years, he had watched for some crack in her armor. He’d waited for her to refuse the job. To approach him, accuse him, tear him into pieces.

He’d deserved it.

And maybe, what he really wanted, was some reaction from her to wipe away the memory of her crying at her father’s funeral. Hidden in a little room because she’d remained strong for her mother and brother all through the burial.

She had never given him the satisfaction of outwardly hating him, and part of him couldn’t help but respect her for it.

Sometimes, he worried that she was a little too much the personal touchstone from which he’d made every choice since. Because the moment of her father’s death had changed him, set him on a new course, and her crying in a corner had started that change.

Except it wasn’t her , he reminded himself. It was simply what she had represented.

A realization that his father was a viper. There was no amount of business acumen Athan would ever employ enough to earn his father’s respect, no matter whom he betrayed. And if he couldn’t get that respect, he did not want to continue down the path to be like his father.

Athan Akakios would be his own man. Maybe his past transgressions would never be forgiven—by Lynna or anyone else—but he had set out to be a good man in the time since.

Well, once he got his revenge.

After the wedding, he would pull the rug out from under his father. He would do to his father what Constantine Akakios had once done to Aled Carew.

Maybe Lynna wouldn’t pretend she didn’t care so much then.

Athan had gotten word she’d arrived this morning, but he hadn’t seen her. Usually he liked to seek her out, try to get a rise out of her. She never took the bait, but he tried all the same.

Tonight, his father was arriving at the estate to prepare for Saturday night’s wedding. Along with Athan’s bride, they would all sit down to a dinner where they pretended to laugh and celebrate over one of Lynna’s incomparable meals.

But Athan would know it was all a lie. His father wasn’t happy for him and would be even less so once the papers were signed. Because once they were, Athan would have the shares to handle the company his way.

And it would be without Constantine. In any role. Anywhere. Athan would make AC International legitimate. Respectable. No more shady deals to save a dollar. No more questionable alliances. Athan would make everything as it had once been, before he’d been young and naive enough to betray a good man.

A good family.

Thinking about that good family had him going in search of his hired chef. She was in the kitchen, dressed as she almost always was on these jobs. Head-to-toe black, and a colorful apron. Her thick brown hair was always pulled back in some complicated twist with colorful fastenings Athan wouldn’t have the first idea the names of.

“Good evening, Lynna. So good to have you back.”

She didn’t immediately turn. She didn’t stiffen. She, in fact, did not react to his presence or his voice in any way. She finished what she was doing—something fussy looking with herbs over some tiropitakia .

She made him wait—he liked to think it was on purpose, but she was a focused soul. Once she was satisfied with her work, she motioned for one of the kitchen staff to add them to a platter of hors d’oeuvres.

Then, very slowly and with the blandest of pleasant smiles, she turned to face him. Though he liked to think her blue eyes reflected a malice she tried to hide. “Hello, Mr. Akakios.”

He scowled at her, unable to stop himself. He tried to have as little of reaction to her as she did to him.

He never succeeded. “I have asked you not to call me that. Repeatedly.”

Her eyes went wide—she always had a flair for the dramatic, though she did such a good job of pretending otherwise. “My apologies. I must have forgotten. I have many clients.”

He wanted to point out that they’d known each other since she’d been born , and he was hardly just another client. But she would just say something else equally infuriating.

Besides, a staff member came in and hailed him.

“Mr. Akakios is here.”

Athan nodded. “What about Miss Giordano?”

“I will have someone track her down.”

“Very good. Have my father seated at the dining room table. I will be there momentarily.” He looked over at Lynna, wondering if the mention of Constantine might be enough to see a crack in her armor.

No such luck.

“This is your first time feeding my father,” he said to her, needling the point. “I hope we won’t require medical intervention after eating your food.”

She didn’t so much as blink. It was as if her blandness intensified. The all-black outfit that hid any hint of a figure, boring brown hair pulled up and away aided in her attempt.

But her apron was still the color of the Aegean. Her eyes had just the faintest hint of silvery-gray flecks in all that blue. There was something deep inside her expression close enough to hate to suit him.

“I would never risk Your Girl Friday in such a way,” she said. Pleasantly. Then she hefted the platter beautifully appointed with a wide variety of offerings, despite the fact only three of them would be dining tonight.

Unsatisfied, and knowing sparring with her would never bring any satisfaction because she refused to fight back, Athan grunted and moved his way from kitchen to dining room. Lynna followed, carrying her fancy and no doubt delicious platter of hors d’oeuvres.

But when they entered the dining room, there was only one person.

Athan regarded his father. The great, feared and ruthless Constantine Akakios. Sometimes Athan wished he knew how to be more like his father. To have absolutely no regard for anyone or anything besides his own success.

But mostly, he understood. His father was as close to evil as one got without full-on murdering people—not that Athan would put it past the man given the right circumstances.

Constantine stood by the exit, still wearing a jacket, like he wasn’t planning on staying.

“Did Christos forget to take your coat, Father?”

“I’m afraid not. I can’t stay as planned, Athan. Well, that isn’t true. I could, but I doubt that’s going to be on the table.”

An old foreboding feeling, one that spoke of a lack of agency and control over his own life, wriggled to life deep in the pit of his stomach. As a grown man, he’d done everything short of leaving his father’s company to solve that feeling. To grasp his own life by his own hands. All so he could change the fate of AC International.

But his father had flipped some kind of script, and Athan knew the only answer in the moment was to brace himself.

“Regina won’t be attending your little dinner either. To start.”

Athan stood, a head taller than his stylish father these days, and still it was like he was already shrinking.

“What do you know of Regina’s plans?”

“I’ve put her on a private jet back to Athens. You see, it turns out, she’s decided to marry me instead.” Constantine said it with a kind of offhanded, charming smile, as if this new information was accidental . Unavoidable .

Athan stared at his father for far too long, trying to understand how those words in that order made any kind of sense.

Marry…

“I am sorry, son,” Constantine said, and that was his great skill. To sound genuinely sorry, when Athan knew he wasn’t at all. He’d never been actually sorry a day in his life. He reveled in other people’s suffering—especially if he was the one to cause it.

“It’s a shame to have to do this. But you didn’t really think you’d pull one over on me, did you?” Constantine shook his head, as if saddened when it was clear he was actually enjoying himself. “You were never quite smart enough for subterfuge. Regina will be mine, and so will the Giordano shares. And it will be you out of AC International.”

Athan’s hand curled into a fist, but he knew better than to advance on his father. Constantine reveled in playing the victim, particularly physically. He’d had more men than Athan could count thrown in jail for the weakest of punches.

“You can’t kick me out of AC.” Athan had spent the past few years making certain his position was protected.

“It’ll be interesting to see if that holds true once I control the Giordano shares.” His gaze darted to Lynna. And he smiled in a way that had Athan wanting to move between the two.

“If you’ve forgotten how the shares and control work, I’m sure you can ask the Carew girl how me controlling the majority of shares turns out for my second-in-command.”

Athan was sure he had a million strong comebacks when it came to his father, but in this moment, he’d been rendered utterly speechless. He’d thought he’d won already.

He should have known better.

“ Adío , Athan. And sorry about the wedding costs. Perhaps you can get partial refunds if you beg enough.” Then Constantine exited with his usual dramatic flair.

And Athan was left standing in his dining room, all his plans thwarted, and his father winning.

Yet again.