Bride Behind The Billion-Dollar Veil

Kosta let out a laugh of disbelief that had Alice slipping her gaze to focus on the older man’s face. ‘You think I would trust you with my company?’

‘Why should you not?’ It was a banal enough question, but Alice heard the undertone of steel and looked to Thanos once more. A tight smile was cracking his face but waves of anger were shifting off his frame.

‘Because you are your father’s son, and I will not have my family’s legacy dragged through the mud.’

Alice sucked in a sharp breath, surprised at how offended she was by the scathing indictment. Thanos turned to face her, the noise apparently drawing his attention, and when their eyes locked, sympathy exploded inside her.

‘I know you are not like him,’ Kosta hastened to add, an apology inherent in the words. ‘You are different. But the potential for scandal is the same.’

Thanos dipped his head forward, so Alice couldn’t see how he reacted to this explanation.

‘I cannot open my paper without seeing your photo,’ Kosta continued. ‘You drink too much, party too much, sleep with any woman who moves. Your reputation as the playboy prince of Europe is almost too mild for your excessive lifestyle.’

Thanos lifted his head, his face like a mask of iron. ‘And what is my lifestyle to do with this? Do you think it affects my ability to run your company?’

‘I think there is no one better than you,’ Kosta contradicted. ‘You have a head for business that I have always admired. Even when you were still a boy, following after your grandfather, watching him as though he were an idol brought to life, you had more nous than he and I in our little fingers.’

Alice wondered if Thanos felt pride then, if the compliment did anything to soften his response.

‘I learned from the best,’ Thanos conceded, finally.

‘Yes. Nicholas was one of the best men I have ever known.’ Kosta leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table. ‘I always respected him. Liked him. What your father did—’

That same muscle twisted in Thanos’s cheek as he ground his teeth together. ‘Is not relevant. I made my peace with it a long time ago.’

‘Did you?’ Kosta’s look showed disbelief, but he didn’t pursue that line of questioning. He sipped his coffee.

‘Your grandfather and I were from a different generation. Things were different. Our parents, and us, we valued family. Old-fashioned morals. We liked things to be respectable. A handshake was as good as a contract.’ Kosta shook his head and Alice saw a spark of longing in his eyes. ‘The world is different now. Perhaps I am a relic, with no place in it.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But if you think I’m going to see my company fall into the hands of a man who regards womanising as a sport, then you know nothing about what this business means.’

Thanos held Kosta’s gaze across the table. Neither man faltered and Alice felt as if she was intruding on a deeply personal moment.

‘No one will work harder for P & A than I will,’ Thanos promised, at length.

‘That may be so,’ Kosta agreed. ‘But I will not sell it to you.’

Alice swept her eyes shut for a moment, more invested in the outcome of this meeting than she would have thought possible.

‘I don’t intend to take no for an answer.’

‘You don’t like to hear no from anyone. It’s part of why you’ve been so successful in repairing the damage your father did. But that does not change my answer. I will not sell P & A to a man like you, Thanos Stathakis. Not for twice what you’re offering; not for anything. Not until you’ve grown up.’

Alice flicked through the pile of bills, a half-eaten sandwich to her left. Her credit card had very little available cash on it—it wouldn’t come close to paying off her mother’s latest hospitalisation.

Her heart squeezed as she remembered the sight of her mother being rushed through the corridors, the blood clot threatening her life, panic surging through Alice as she knew how close they were to the end.

But Jane Smart had defied all odds and survived—she remained in a coma, but she remained.

Alice flipped over to another bill, nausea filling her. It was too much. How could she ever manage to cover this?

She was so engrossed in her finances that she didn’t hear the door to Thanos’s office click open, nor did she hear his approach until he was practically on top of her.

Self-consciously, she laid her hand over the bills, aware that it barely covered the bright red paper demanding immediate payment.

‘Did you need something, sir?’

He didn’t correct her use of the formal title now. He was brooding. Thinking. Even more determined since Kosta had walked out of the office. ‘What did you think of Kosta Carinedes?’

Alice was surprised by the question. She sat back in her chair a little, momentarily forgetting about her bills, and her lunch. ‘In what way?’

‘In any way. Did you perceive he was serious in his reasons for not wanting to sell to me?’

Alice captured her lower lip with her teeth, gnawing on it thoughtfully. ‘I can’t see why he would lie,’ she said finally.

‘No, nor can I. After all, the price I’ve offered is above the market rate of the company. He’s a fool to walk away from it.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t really want to sell?’

‘He knows he must.’ He shook his head, dragging a hand through his hair, throwing it into even greater disarray. ‘He’s just being stubborn.’

Alice nodded, turning back to her desk thoughtfully. After all, the older man had raised a valid point. Thanos had a reputation for seducing women left, right and centre. He was rarely without a date on his arm, and it didn’t seem to be the same woman for long. He partied non-stop, but what did that matter? Everything he touched in a commercial sense turned to gold. Surely that was more important when it came to handing a business over?

‘Maybe he’ll change his mind,’ she offered, lifting her gaze back to his face. He was staring out of the window, his expression unreadable.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then you’ll just have to change it for him,’ she said quietly, turning back to the bills, flicking to the next one with a frown on her face, unaware of the way his eyes swivelled to follow her.

Thanos regarded this mild-mannered assistant thoughtfully. She was plain-spoken and unaffected. Unlike most of the women he dealt with, she wasn’t going out of her way to flatter and please him. She was acting as though she barely noticed he was a man. It was unusual for him to come across a woman who didn’t respond in a certain way.

And it was fascinating.

She was pretty, he supposed, in an understated way—though she also went to very little effort with her appearance. Her suit was old and boxy, hiding any curves she might have beneath too much fabric. Her hair was silky and luscious, long, he suspected, though it was impossible to know as she wore it pinned in a sensible, low bun at the nape of her neck. In fact, everything about her was sensible. Plain. Businesslike.

His eyes dropped lower, to hands that were sorting through a pile of papers—red, with OVERDUE marked at the top. And despite his own monumental problems, curiosity lifted inside him.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

She looked at him with a slight frown on her face, almost as though she thought he might have left.

‘I’m catching up on some personal business. It’s my lunch break.’

He looked at his watch. ‘It’s the end of the day.’

‘I didn’t have time to have it any earlier.’ She said it as though she was worried he might be cross with her, as if she feared recriminations. That was unnecessary. Though she was only a temp, and he hadn’t been to the New York office for almost a year, Thanos knew that Alice worked harder than most of the permanent executive support team. Her security card was frequently the last one swiped out at the end of the evening, and oftentimes the first one to appear on the staff list.

She worked long hours and, though his workload was nothing if not exhausting, she’d somehow managed to keep his business and personal life running like a well-oiled machine.

If he needed his jet fuelled up, he emailed Alice. Gifts organised, Alice. Anything done with his apartments? Alice. She oversaw all aspects of his life and yet they were only today meeting for the first time.

And he knew nothing about her.

Why did that bother him? He couldn’t have said. Stathakis Corp employed thirty thousand people globally. One woman shouldn’t have interested him like this.

And yet, he found himself propping his hip on the edge of her desk, and looking at the bills with more interest. She shuffled them self-consciously.

So he knew one thing about her.

She was a poor money manager. She had to be, given what the temp rates were for an executive assistant at this level. Sure, there was agency commission to come out of her salary packet, but regardless of that, her rate was generous.

‘Did you need anything else, sir?’

She spoke without looking at him, but he detected a faint tremble in her fingertips as she filed the bills under some other papers, pointedly reaching for her sandwich.

He straightened, with a frown. ‘No.’ As he moved towards the door, his frown didn’t ease.

‘How long do you expect to be in New York?’

Her question caught him off-guard. Thanos never liked to be anywhere for long. He’d arrived in Manhattan a day earlier anticipating his business here would be wrapped up within twenty-four hours. Now he paused, with no idea when he’d be able to get out of town.

‘I have no idea.’

Silence for a moment and then, ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow?’

He turned back to face her, and there was no warmth in her expression. In fact, he couldn’t have said if she’d asked the question with curiosity or apprehension, but both sparked a ridiculous urge to laugh.

Instead, he nodded stiffly. ‘Yes. Goodnight, Alice.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT YOU NEED is to get married, Thanos.’

Leonidas’s words came to Thanos as if through a thousand galaxies—crackly and distant. He jerked out of bed, completely naked, and strode through his penthouse apartment.

His brother’s statement was exploding through his brain, like stardust and gold. He reached for the crystal decanter of Scotch and poured himself a generous measure, moving towards the grand piano and tapping a key lightly. Manhattan glistened beneath him, all shimmering lights and elaborate dreams.

This was the first time in years he’d been alone in this city. Usually, he called one of his past lovers—of which there were many here in the city—and enjoyed a night of unbridled, no-strings passion.

But the meeting with Kosta had left him inexplicably dissatisfied.

Thanos was a master at keeping his personal life separate from his private life. The fact he had a well-documented and active bachelor lifestyle was neither here nor there. He knew he was, unequivocally, the right person to take over P & A.

And beyond that, Petó deserved to come home.

‘I know it’s out of left field but have you actually passed out?’ Leonidas’s words were filled with humour.

Thanos sipped his Scotch slowly, his eyes moving from one high rise to another. When he eventually spoke, it was with a sardonic drawl. ‘I understand that you’re in the heady bliss of being a newly-wed but I think we can safely say marriage is the last thing on my mind.’ In fact, the very idea turned his blood cold. One week after his mother had dumped him on Dion Stathakis’s doorstep, throwing a traumatised little boy into the home as one might a cat into a flock of pigeons, Thanos had sworn to Leonidas that he’d never be stupid enough to fall in love or get married.

He’d been eight and miserable, his heart broken, his soul crushed—looking back, he could see now that he’d also been terrified. His mother, the woman who’d raised him, the only family he’d ever known, had told him she couldn’t ‘do this’ any more, and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

His father had made it abundantly clear he didn’t want Thanos, that he was raising him out of duty. When Dion’s own marriage had crumbled because of Thanos’s unexpected arrival, a large part of Thanos’s heart had been sealed closed—he knew it would never open again.

Was it any wonder Thanos viewed relationships and commitment as something best avoided?

‘I don’t mean a real marriage,’ Leonidas explained with mock simplicity.

Beyond the window, dusk was falling, the night sky turning an inky black, no stars to be seen in the brightness cast by the vibrant city. Thanos cradled his drink in the palm of his hand.

‘Kosta has given you the solution; you’re just not listening. He won’t accept any offer you make because you’re a walking tabloid headline. This isn’t just a top five hundred company he’s selling. It’s his family empire.’

‘It’s our family empire too.’

‘He bought Petó a long time ago. I doubt he continues to consider it as a distinct entity from P & A.’

‘And nor do I. I am not attempting to separate Petó from the fold. I am willing to take on his business as well.’

‘Yes, I get that. But he’s not willing to sell to us. Not given your…predilection for headline-grabbing behaviour.’

Thanos stiffened, the criticism sitting uneasily around his shoulders now. He’d never felt uncomfortable about his lifestyle before; he’d never had any reason to. But hearing first Kosta and then his brother cast aspersions on the way he lived was filling Thanos with a sense of impatience. ‘My social life is no impediment to my running Stathakis,’ he heard himself point out coldly.

‘True, but neither of us could do anything worse than our father did to trash our family name, right?’

Thanos winced, sympathy for his brother at the forefront of his mind. Years had passed since that awful day when Leonidas’s young family had been murdered as a vendetta against their father but even now that Leonidas was married with a beautiful little girl who was growing way too fast, Thanos still felt sorrow for what had been lost.

‘You and I are nothing like our father.’

‘I know.’ Leonidas and Thanos were quiet for a moment, their point of difference from Dion Stathakis one of sheer determination. Both men had sworn, many years earlier, even before his criminal prosecution, that they would never emulate his lifestyle. They had always admired their grandfather and followed much more closely in Nicholas’s footsteps.

‘So show Kosta he’s wrong about you,’ Leonidas continued, his voice insistent. ‘He thinks you’re just some debauched tycoon, with more money and sex appeal than sense—’

‘So? Even if that were accurate—’ and he didn’t want to contemplate how many threads of truth there were to that observation ‘—I’m the best man to turn that company around and make sure it continues to thrive in the twenty-first century. No one will care for the business as I will; you know that.’

‘Yes,’ Leonidas conceded softly.

‘So what? Because I happen to like sex and the tabloids happen to like me, he thinks I’m not qualified?’

‘He wants more than just a business deal,’ Leonidas said gently. ‘The company’s his legacy. It’s not just a business to him—it’s a way of life, and it’s his birthright. He wants to protect that.’

Thanos had no difficulties relating to Kosta’s desires on that score. His own life had been devoid of the kind of parents most people grew up with. His mother had abandoned him and his father had taken him in reluctantly, but there had been grandparents and what wouldn’t Thanos have done for them? What wouldn’t he have done in their honour?

Wasn’t it because of them that Leonidas and Thanos had worked tirelessly for the better part of a decade to restore Stathakis Corp to the behemoth it had been before their father’s fall from grace? To restore, in part, the Stathakis name?

And wasn’t it largely what drove him now? A desire to bring home Petó, an important and missing piece of the puzzle that was their empire? They’d diversified in their restructure, buying up tech companies, new economy investments to shore up the old. But still, he’d never forgotten the promise he’d made to himself on the day they’d signed the contracts. He had hated selling Petó, the transport company his grandfather had been so proud of, the company that had enabled all their later successes. It meant everything to Thanos, and clearly it meant everything to Kosta.

So Thanos just had to show Kosta that the legacy was safe in his hands.

If only Kosta could see that the best way to preserve what his grandparents had built was to sell the company to a man who would have the skills, acumen and motivation to take the whole enterprise to the next level.

‘You are a fool if you don’t simply tick this box for Kosta and move on. Get married and he will sell it to you in an instant.’

Thanos threw his Scotch back, his brother’s suggestion making an infuriating kind of sense, despite his determination never to marry.

‘Putting aside for the moment the fact that he’s going to see through this play in an instant, who would I even marry if I were to go through with it?’

Leonidas laughed. ‘There must be hundreds of women you’ve slept with. Choose the one you like the best.’

‘I don’t like any of them enough to marry. And I don’t generally go back for repeat performances.’

Leonidas’s sigh came down the phone line. ‘If you want the company, you’re going to have to make your peace with this. It’s the only way.’

‘It’s crazy.’

‘No, it’s actually very sensible.’

‘I cannot simply marry some random woman.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’d be doing it purely for commercial gain.’

‘So? Find someone who would be marrying you for their own commercial gain. Or have you forgotten what you’re worth?’

‘It’s completely unscrupulous.’

‘Why?’

‘To fake a marriage to fool an old man?’

Leonidas was quiet a moment. ‘Do you not think the end justifies the means?’

Thanos ground his teeth together. He could accept many things in life, but not losing Petó.

Besides, Leonidas was right—Kosta had all but drawn a map for Thanos as to how he could succeed in the purchase.

Settle down. Stop being so wild. At least appear to have become a family man.

So perhaps his brother had a point.

Marriage.

He might hate the idea of getting married, but a wedding like this—with each partner knowing it was purely mercenary? If he was clear on that point from the outset?

If there was an escape route always within reach?

So that no matter what happened he would know there was a definite termination point established, a date when the marriage would end and his life could go back to normal?

Perhaps that kind of marriage wouldn’t be so bad. A marriage, in name only. But to whom?

Alice disconnected the call with wobbly fingers and stared at her office wall. Tears that she rarely allowed herself to give into cloyed at her throat, so she had to press the heel of her palm to her eyes to stop from crying.

Bankruptcy.

The word hung in the air like a thousand little arrows, pointed at her soul. How could it have come to this? No matter how hard she worked, she could never get ahead, and now her credit-card company was demanding she close her accounts, settling her debts in full, or they’d commence bankruptcy proceedings.

She clamped her teeth down on her lip, trying to stave off an actual sob, trying to see some kind of light, somewhere, at the end of this tunnel. There had to be something she could sell, something she could do.

Except, there wasn’t. She’d hawked everything of value over the years, reluctantly parting with anything they could make money from, including the diamond earrings her mother had loved so much—a gift from Alice’s father, when they’d first met.

She hadn’t been able to go to college, she couldn’t get a job that paid more than this one, and no reputable bank would touch her with a barge pole in terms of a loan. She knew what her credit rating was.

She let out a guttural noise of impatience and stood, pacing across the office, nausea tightening her stomach. There had to be something.

A single tear slid from one of her eyes, rolling down her cheek, and at that exact moment Thanos Stathakis appeared in the door frame of his office, looking out at her, his expression as forbidding and handsome as it had been the day before.

He opened his mouth to speak, then saw her expression and closed it. His eyes roamed her face quite freely, and Alice stood completely still, so overwhelmed that she didn’t even think to wipe away her tear.

‘Did you need something?’ Her voice was a little wobbly, but there was pride in her question, because she wasn’t going to let things get any worse by acting unprofessionally.

His lips tugged downwards at the corner. ‘Yes. Come in.’ He waved a hand in the direction of his office and Alice sucked in a breath, moving quickly to her desk and sliding her credit-card statement under her keyboard before doing as he’d said and stepping into his massive workspace.

‘Please, have a seat.’ He gestured to the boardroom table.

She shook her head. Alice didn’t feel like sitting down.

‘You’re upset?’

She blinked, shaking her head, lifting her fingers to her cheeks now and wiping her tears. ‘No,’ she lied—badly. ‘I’m fine. What did you need?’

His eyes narrowed but he turned away from her, apparently accepting her statement, pouring a cool glass of water and carrying it across the room. When he passed it to her, their fingers brushed and a jolt of electricity travelled the length of Alice’s arm, burning brightly into her chest cavity.

‘You may feel better if you speak about what is troubling you,’ he invited.

Alice’s eyes flew wide, this kindness completely unexpected. ‘I… It’s my problem,’ she demurred.

Thanos nodded slowly, assimilating this information. ‘And you like to solve your problems yourself,’ he surmised.

Alice nodded. ‘As, I think, do you.’

His smile lacked humour; in fact, his smile had the look of someone who’d almost forgotten how. ‘Wherever possible, certainly.’ He crossed his arms over his broad chest, a gesture that drew her attention to his muscled abdomen in a way that sparked heat in her cheeks.

‘But you’re inviting me to pour my heart out to you?’ she prompted, to which he pulled a face, as if it was actually the last thing he’d been expecting. Alice laughed, despite her enormous worries.

‘I’m saying… I don’t like tears.’ The words were uneasy. ‘If talking would help…’

Her heart lurched a little inside her chest. Alice didn’t want to think about how long it had been since she’d had anyone she could speak to. It felt like an eternity.

‘It’s hard to explain,’ she said, sipping the water with hands that were still unsteady.

He was quiet. Watchful. Some might have said calculating, but Alice didn’t know Thanos well enough to see that glint in his eye, nor was she looking for it. She paced towards the boardroom table, placing her water down, her eyes focussed on the stunning view of Manhattan. Somehow, it was easier to speak without looking at him.

‘It’s my mom,’ she said, shaking her head, because that wasn’t, strictly speaking, the truth. ‘I mean, it is and it isn’t. She’s…not well. And looking after her is hard, and expensive, and it’s been years now, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get on top of it, and I have no idea what to do or how I can make this any easier.’ She ground her teeth together, but it didn’t help; a sob bubbled up and out of her chest. She looked at him apologetically. ‘I’m never like this at work, I swear.’