CHAPTER 1

“So, what do you want me to do about it, Adrastos?”

“You do absolutely nothing, Craig,” replied in a very calm manner Adrastos Evander Leventis, while sitting behind his desk, absorbed in the business report spread open in front of him.

          Craig Hardy continued to hover like a man in a quandary, frowning behind his spectacles because doing nothing wasn’t an option his employer could afford to take.

“Adrastos, you know she is somewhere out there… And that she could make trouble,” he dared to offer, all too aware that the younger man didn’t take kindly to interference into decisions he made about his private life.

          When it came to a cut-throat mentality, Adrastos was a chip off the old block.  When Kosmas Leventis, his father, had become ill and died suddenly three years ago, no one had expected his notorious playboy son to calmly stride in here and start making his presence felt. Most people had believed he was a precursor to the quick demise of Leventis power.

          They now knew better. What Adrastos had done with the huge network of diverse companies which made up the Leventis business empire, had put his father’s colossal success in the shade.

          Now the thirty-two-year-old’s every elegant footstep was praised and respected by everyone who knew him or heard about him. If the financial industry could give out such awards, Adrastos would have sprouted wings.

          He was also remarkably good-looking, insufferably laidback, and so impossible to read that there were still some fools out there who dared to underestimate him, only to learn the hard way what a huge mistake they had made.

          His estranged wife wasn’t one of those people, since she was back and she was asking for a divorce.  

“At the moment she is citing irreconcilable differences. Think about it, Adrastos,” Craig advised. “Electa is basically letting you off the hook here.”

          Giving up on the report, Adrastos sat back in his chair to look up at the older man standing in front of him. Eyes as black as the neatly groomed hair on his head revealed nothing as he studied the lawyer’s concerned face.

“You are about to remind me that my wife signed no prenup,” Adrastos predicted. “Take it from me, Craig, Electa is not greedy. I trust her not to attempt to skin me alive, okay?”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘skinning you alive’,” his lawyer responded dryly. “That she doesn’t want your money? Okay, I will agree with you that Electa doesn’t want your money, or she would’ve been demanding a large cut of it long before now. I would, however, be willing to lay odds that she doesn’t feel the same way about skinning you of your honor and pride. She really wants this divorce, Adrastos,” Craig stated firmly.

          Adrastos looked at him but remained silent for the moment.

“Listen,” Craig added, “if the only way she can get it is by playing dirty, then you have to consider if you are going to like her citing adultery on your part to get what she wants. If she does decide to go down that route there is just no way we will be able to keep it out of the public arena, and you know as well as I do, the old can of worms she will be opening if that happens.”

          The powerful Greek tycoon set his teeth together in frustration behind the molded shape of his lips because he knew that his lawyer was right.

          ‘The Greek Casanova and the Three Top-Models’

          That and the other awful headlines were bound to start up again. Last time, the slick, character-slaying stories had run for weeks, trawling out his careless playboy past and quoting phrases about leopards and spots.

          He released a sigh, hating that Craig was right. Taking that sigh as an indication that he could go on, Craig Hardy took in a deep breath and went for broke.

“Electa has hard evidence that you slept with Maribel Ruiz. The stupid woman gave her the evidence herself because Maribel wanted to break up your marriage.”

“Well… She succeeded,” Adrastos confirmed flatly.

“You were damn lucky back then that Electa decided to keep silent about the affair in an effort to save her own face.”

          There was a lot more to Electa’s motivations than mere saving face, Adrastos mused, using the luxuriant swoop of his eyelashes to shade his eyes so that the lawyer couldn’t read his thoughts.

          Electa was hurting… Electa was nursing the worst kind of broken heart a woman could nurse. Electa blamed him and hated him for causing it. Electa had also caused a minor sensation when she’d walked away from her modeling career and hadn’t been seen again for months.

          He’d had teams of trackers out looking for her all over Europe and in the United States also, without one of them managing to flush her out. He’d hounded her kid brother, hoping that Flynn would surrender and tell him where Electa was. The then eighteen-year-old had told him nothing and enjoyed watching him suffer.

          When Electa had eventually turned up again, she’d strolled blithely into ‘Icon Model Management’ and asked her old boss, Eden, for an ordinary office job. Now she fronted the desk at the famous modeling agency, and not once in the whole lousy year of their separation had Electa acknowledged that he was even alive.

          And now she was coming at him with a divorce petition as if she expected him to happily jump on it. Adrastos shaded his eyes by another millimeter, the dark iris glittering calculatingly behind the guard of his eyelashes as he considered the unfinished business he had with his very hurt, very British, runaway wife.

          The kind of business which involved Electa crawling on her knees and begging him to take her back. His pride and his badly bruised ego demanded it. And unfortunately for Electa, Adrastos had the perfect tool with which to make it happen… He was thinking of a matter Craig knew nothing about, which he’d been keeping a close, watchful eye on.

“The divorce is out of the question, Craig,” he announced, making the lawyer start in surprise as he sat forward and returned his attention to the business report.

“So, you’re just going to ignore it?” Craig asked in disbelief.

“No… I will deal with it,” he promised in a mysterious tone, “but I will deal with it in my own time and way.”

          Not liking the sound of that, Craig shifted his stance.

“I think it would be safer to keep this impersonal and go the legal route.”

“Don’t worry, Craig… Things are about to change… for the better. Keep your hopes up, my friend!” Adrastos said. “And remember… Hope is always the last one to die,” he added with a little grin.

          Adrastos said it for no other reason than it felt good to know he had that much faith in Electa coming round to his way of thinking. Though he had no similar faith in Electa’s thieving rat of a kid brother, he tagged on.

          After Craig had finally given up on trying to change his mind and left him alone, Adrastos sat for a few minutes, considering what his next move should be, before he pulled a drawer open in his desk and removed a manila file.

          A few minutes after that, he rang for his car to be brought round to the front of the building, rose up to his full and intimidating six feet three inches of hard-muscled height, and strode with his usual casual grace for the door.

“Cambridge,” he instructed his driver, then relaxed back and closed his eyes to contemplate netting a small fish to use as bait to reel in the bigger fish.

          He started to smile… With the strategy he had in mind, success was guaranteed.

*****

          The atmosphere in Electa’s small kitchen hit strangulation levels.

“Oh, my God! You’ve done what? Are you completely out of your mind?!” she choked out in dismay.

          Sitting hunched over on a kitchen chair, her brother was looking down.

“Come on, El! You heard me well,” Flynn mumbled.

          Oh, she’d heard him, alright, but that didn’t mean Electa wanted to believe what he’d said! She pushed her tumbling mane of fiery hair back from her eyebrow and drew in a breath, pushing back the urge to kill him on the spot.

          When she’d arrived home from work this evening to find Flynn already waiting for her, she’d been too pleased to see him question why he’d made the journey up from Cambridge midweek, with no prior warning that he was planning to pay her a visit.

          Now, she wanted to kick herself for not sensing trouble straight away.

“So, let me just try and get this straight… Just for grasping it better…” Electa said, fighting to keep her voice level. “Instead of attending classes, instead of studying hard like any normal student would do, instead of following a path we chose together, you’ve been spending all the money and all your time gambling on the internet?”

“Sis, playing the stock market isn’t gambling,” Flynn objected.

“Really? Is this so? Hmm… So, Mr. Smart pants, what do you call it, then?” Electa challenged trying hard not to slap him silly.  

“It’s called ‘speculating’.”

“Is it now? Are you for real?” she asked in a frustrated tone and covered her face.

“Yes,” he had the nerve to reply.

“That’s just gambling by another name, Flynn!” Electa instantly fired back. “For God’s sake! Stop trying to pretty it up.”

“I wasn’t!” Flynn denied. “Everyone else at uni is doing it! You can make a fortune right now if you know how to play it right.”

“I don’t give a damn what everyone else is doing at… ‘uni’… I only care about you and what you’ve been doing,” Electa fed back. “And if you’ve been making your fortune ‘speculating’ on the markets, why are you sitting at my kitchen table, telling me that you’re in debt? Please, unravel this mystery…”

          Like a cornered young stag, her nineteen-year-old brother reared upright. Six feet of long, lanky male, with spiky brown hair and vivid green eyes, shot through with burning defense.

          He threw himself across the room to go and stand glaring out of the window, his hands pushed into the pockets of his zipped-up grey fleece. The tension in him buzzed. Wrapping her arms around her waist, Electa gave him a minute to get a hold of himself before she continued pressing, quietly this time.

“Alright, Flynn… Let’s calm down and talk without raising our voices. I think it’s time you told me just how bad it is.”

“I don’t think I can… You’re not going to like it, El…”

          Electa would just bet that she wasn’t.