The Heir: A Standalone Greek Billionaire Romance

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The Heir: A Standalone Greek Billionaire Romance Page 8

by Laurence, Selena


  “Thank you for the information, Magda,” I say, squeezing her hand in mine. I haven’t gotten a chance to chat with the workers in the warehouse, but I can tell that Magda will think it’s odd if I try. Time to go. My visit’s left me with more questions than it’s answered I’m afraid.

  “Next time you call and I’ll bring you the spanakopita!” Magda calls out as I leave the office. If only spanakopita could help me become who Tess wants me to be.

  * * *

  “What’s on the agenda this weekend?” Christos asks me as we play Xbox in our living room after work.

  “I’ve got plans on Saturday and then Sunday I really ought to go to church. My mom is going to start sending my sisters over here to embarrass me into it soon.”

  His eyes dart between me and the game. “What plans do you have on Saturday? Did you hook up with someone I don’t know about?”

  I shrug and blast my way through a wall on screen. “No. I’m actually going out on the water with Tess and some of her friends from school.”

  He sits up straighter, hitting pause on the game console. “No shit? So you are going to hit that after all?”

  I restart the game and roll my eyes. “No, asshole, I’m not going to ‘hit that’. We’re friends and she invited me to go along as a gesture—of friendship.”

  Christos snorts. “Why the hell would you want to be friends with her? I mean, she’s hot to look at, but she’s wound pretty tight.”

  God. When did my cousin get to be such a jerk? I swallow, trying to absorb and diffuse some of the anger that rolls over me.

  “And so, what? If she’s not going to fuck me then why would I bother with her?” I grit out, holding the trigger as I mow down half a village with machine gun fire.

  He sighs, the impatience in his demeanor obvious from three feet away.

  “I get that you like her or whatever, but really, if you’re not going to sleep with her why would you want to hang out? I mean, she’s the daughter of middle-class cops in Illinois for fuck’s sake, she can’t be that interesting.”

  I’ll admit it, I’ve never had a friend who’s a girl. I’ve hooked up, dated here and there, and mostly partied, nothing too serious ever crossing my radar, and I’ve never met a girl who interested me much beyond sex. But I’d like to think that I wouldn’t choose any friend, girl or otherwise, based on what their family does for a living. The idea that Christos thinks I would or should is insulting.

  “First of all, like I said, we’re friends, there’s no reason why where she comes from should matter.” My voice is louder than it should be and I’ve got one of my fists clenched around the gaming controller so tightly it aches. “Secondly, she’s smart and she’s got more integrity in her little finger than half the people I know. Since when did having a profession where you help people and uphold the law become something to be ashamed of? She’s proud of her family and I think she has every right to be.”

  “Oh, please,” he scoffs. “Cops are fine, but they don’t matter to people like us. They’re there to serve the masses. In our world law enforcement’s a nuisance but that’s about all.”

  As the words tumble out of Christos’s mouth, something inside of me spikes, something sharp and quick and sickening. I’m not angry anymore, I’m beyond that—I’m confused, and disgusted, and even sad. Sad that after twenty-four years side by side, I suddenly feel like I don’t know Christos at all.

  I stare at him, trying to figure out where this man came from, and where the one I grew up with has gone.

  “So you’re saying we’re above the law? That being wealthy makes us so special that we shouldn’t have to live by the same laws as everyone else?”

  He pins me with a laser glare for a brief moment. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  He starts to laugh like he’s going to blow me off. I grab the front of his shirt and yank him once before letting go with a shove.

  “No, really, Christos. Who the fuck are you right now? We have money, and yeah that makes us different than the majority of people, but it doesn’t mean we’ve got a free ticket to live however we want.” I stand and pace a couple of times in front of him, clawing a hand through my hair. “That isn’t how we were raised. My dad would kick your ass if he heard you talk like that. It goes against everything Stephanos Shipping stands for. Breaking a few rules is one thing, but we don’t break the law, not in my company.”

  His expression is hard as he turns to me, nose to nose. I’ve never seen his eyes so cold, his lips press together in one thin line. He answers me in a low gravelly voice, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think that I see loathing in his eyes when he speaks to me.

  “Your company. That’s right, I almost forgot, what with all the things I do for your company that you haven’t got a clue about. But see, that’s my job. I’m the guy that does what has to be done so the prince doesn’t get his pretty hands dirty. I take it all on, I do every bit of it, for you. And you have no idea how it gets done, or that it gets done, or by whom.”

  He steps around me, shaking his head. “That’s okay, man. You go on your little trip with the cop’s daughter, and cling to your illusions of how much like everyone else we are. When she’s done with you, I’ll still be here—your deftheri—because that’s for life.”

  He swings on his heel and stalks out of the room, leaving me alone, confused, and worried that somehow my life isn’t what it looks like.

  Tess

  The days fly by with the combination of school and work. I’m running from first thing in the morning until late at night, and I only see Niko in passing, but I assure him that I’m expecting him to be at the boat party, and he seems to be excited about it.

  By Thursday afternoon I’m beginning to wilt, the nonstop pace wearing me down along with the stress of dealing with a different country, culture and language. While in most of the places I spend time my lack of Greek isn’t a big problem, there are still plenty of situations each day where I’m stymied, unable to do some of the most basic things, such as shop for groceries or find the right bus route.

  I’ve been in the midst of one of those situations for the last twenty minutes as I attempt to communicate via phone with another Stephanos employee who works out of the Athens office. While she speaks English, it’s kitchen English—where’s the bathroom, how much does this cost, the dress is blue—and her heavy accent makes it more difficult to understand her.

  I’ve called her in the first place because there are discrepancies in the account I’m working on. The records show one column for what the company shipped, one column for what that shipment cost, and then another column for what the company has paid to Stephanos. There is a code that goes with the shipments and is attached to the payments as well. From what I can tell, the company whose account I’m working on has been paying nothing for their shipments. But there’s a special code for all of their business, and I’m sure that will explain it, if I can just get someone to tell me what the code stands for.

  “I understand that there’s a set of letters and numbers for every type of shipment,” I say loudly and slowly as if I’m talking to a very elderly person. “I need to know what this set is for. What type of shipment uses this set of letters and numbers? Can you help me with that?”

  The woman in Athens responds with a tone of exasperation. “I tell you miss, no code. No shipment. I’m sorry. It does not exist here.”

  I finally give up and end the call. “Argh!” I groan in frustration as I throw my head back in my desk chair and screw my eyes shut.

  “Problems?”

  I open my eyes to find Christos laughing at me.

  I smile. He’s a charming guy, good looking, and carefree. And best of all, we aren’t attracted to each other in the slightest, so it’s easy to be around him, unlike his magnetic cousin.

  “I’m experiencing a bit of a language barrier with the Athens office, and I can’t figure something out on the a
ccount I’m assigned to.”

  “Ah. The Athens office. Let me guess, Laurinda? In receiving?”

  “Oh my gosh, yes! How did you know?”

  He chuckles before sitting at the small armchair facing my desk. “She’s famous for her English skills that disappear every time any employee who hasn’t been with the company for at least twenty-five years calls. She was hired by my Uncle Ari in the dark ages when there were three people in the Athens office, and they all spoke Greek. Once the company grew to such gargantuan international proportions and everyone started speaking English to conduct business, she suddenly became monolingual.”

  “Well, she’s a cranky old woman in any language.”

  Christos laughs again. “But maybe I can help you with whatever you’re trying to figure out. I don’t know everything, but I’ve been around the division for a couple of years now, so I’ve picked up a few things.”

  “Would you?” I ask, feeling the first bit of hope I’ve had all afternoon. “It’s this first account on the list. I’m supposed to be doing the quarterly report on it. Everything seems to make sense until I get to the actual money received. There is none, and there’s this weird code in the last column that I can’t find anywhere in the code book.”

  I turn the printout of the spreadsheet toward Christos so he can look at it, but he never even glances down, just pulls it from my hand, his mouth set in a grim line that’s so unlike him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, folding the paper in half quickly. “This is one of our special accounts. You should have never been given this one, that was our mistake.”

  “Oh.” I’m suddenly confused. I’ve been working on this account for two weeks, and neither Niko nor Annais said anything.

  “No worries,” Christos says, “just send me whatever work you’ve done on it and I’ll have one of our senior accountants finish up the report. Let me tell Annais to get you a different account. Are you working on any others?” he asks, standing and tapping the folded paper against his leg. He’s trying to seem casual, but I can tell he’s agitated.

  “This is the one I started on, but I have three others on my list.”

  “Great.” He gives me a tight smile. “Send me those as well and I’ll make sure they’re not any of our special accounts too. If they’re good to go I’ll send them back to you. If not, I’ll have Annais replace them.”

  “Oh, okay. Thank you, Christos. If you hadn’t stopped by I might have been struggling with this for days. It seemed like no one knew what the heck those codes were.” I smile at him and he nods his head.

  “Happy to help,” he answers. “And if you ever find anything like that again, come to me right away. There are all kinds of special circumstances that Annais won’t know about that I do. And Niko’s too busy to be bothered with those things, so I’m your go-to guy, yeah?”

  “Definitely. Thanks again.”

  After Christos leaves, I open my email and forward the list of the other accounts to him along with the file from the account I’ve been working on, then I go to the copy room and assemble some reports that Annais said we’ll need for our weekly staff meeting.

  When I get back to my desk I realize that I’ve given Christos all of my work. I’m sitting at the office without any projects and Annais is gone all afternoon. I decide to check out the other accounts I was assigned but hadn’t started on yet. I know what those special codes look like now, so I should be able to tell if they’re the wrong accounts without waiting for Christos to tell me.

  I log into the system and try to pull up the first one on the list. But when I do, the password I’ve been given for it says invalid. I try again with the same result. As I make my way through the list, I’m denied over and over, and when I go to try the account I was working on only thirty minutes ago, I’m locked out of it too. I’ve had my access to every account I’ve ever touched cancelled.

  All in the half hour since Christos visited my office.

  * * *

  Eventually Annais returns and I get a new set of accounts to work on. She seems as confused by the special codes as I was, but she says that she’ll make sure to speak with Christos and find out which accounts she can safely assign to me and which she can’t.

  I’m finishing up for the day when I see a pretty brunette march by my desk, sniffling her way to Niko’s office door where she throws it open and stomps on in, leaving it wide open behind her. I wonder if she’s another of his scorned conquests, and though I know it’s rude, I can’t help but listen in.

  “Cara,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

  Cara sobs and I hear Niko stand and go to her. “Aw, figgy, what’s going on?

  Was someone at school mean?”

  I realize that this isn’t one of Niko’s conquests, but must be a sister or another cousin.

  “No, Alex dumped me!” she cries.

  I hear Niko comforting her while she sniffles.

  “Figgy,” he says, his voice gentle and warm. “You’re getting snot all over my shirt. Now, come sit down and tell me what happened.”

  Little Cara pours out a story of woe that includes the asshole Alex deciding he’d rather take her friend Josie to the school dance. He’s dumped her two days before the event, leaving her no time to get another date.

  “First of all, I’ll be talking to that little asshole’s older brother, Dion. Trust me, Alex won’t be doing something like that to another girl in this lifetime. Secondly, you have two choices—you can take Christos or me to the dance, or you can have a post-dance party on the yacht so you get to dress up and see all of your friends even without going. I’ll chaperone and I’ll ask Annais to also. That way Mom and Dad will be good with it.”

  “You’d do that for me?” she squeals in excitement.

  “Of course I would. But you and your friends have to behave. No one trying to smoke or have sex on the boat, right?”

  “I promise,” she answers gravely. “I’ll only invite the kids I trust. And my friends and I can decorate?”

  “Yep. Do it up big time. I’ll ask Constanza to cook some food for you too, just tell us how many kids you’re going to invite.”

  I hear Cara squeal again and thank Niko, then she’s skipping away down the hall past my desk, an entirely different person than when she came in. I look back at Niko’s office and he’s standing there watching her leave, a smile on his face.

  “Younger sister?” I ask.

  He strides over to my desk. “Yeah. You heard?” He doesn’t seem offended by my eavesdropping so I cop to it.

  “Yeah, sort of couldn’t help it. Boy problems, huh?”

  He nods. “Little shit. I want to kill him, but I know I probably did equally stupid things at his age.”

  I laugh. “Only at his age, huh?”

  His gaze is heated when he looks back at me. “Maybe once or twice since then.”

  My breath hitches and I have to look away. I can’t get caught up in fantasies about him. He’s off-limits. Very, very off-limits.

  “Well, you’re a great big brother. You distracted her perfectly, and saved her social reputation in the bargain.”

  “Thanks,” he answers. “Teenage girls are still kind of mysterious, but I know my sisters, and planning a party always makes them happy so I figured that was a safe idea.”

  “You did good.” I smile at him and he beams back, obviously happy with the praise. “You remind me of my older brother, Nate. He’s one of the good ones too. Some younger sisters get lucky.”

  He leans over, resting one palm on my desk. “Some friends do too,” he murmurs before he turns and walks back to his office.

  Niko

  I have to admit, she knew what she was doing. When Tess told me to come to a boat party with her friends from school, and bring nothing but a swimsuit, a towel and some cheap beer, it certainly didn’t sound like a difficult assignment. Hell, a twelve year old should be able to manage all of that—with the substitution of soda for beer. It seemed easy—before I realized that t
he yacht was always stocked with towels, so I didn’t actually know where we kept any, aside from the ones in my bathroom which the maid places there on a daily basis.

  I spend the better part of an hour hunting through our villa, opening cabinets and closets, looking for something that resembles a beach towel like the ones we keep on board the yacht. I could grab a towel from the bathroom, but somehow I know I shouldn’t. Maybe something my mother said to me as a kid sunk in. Finally, I’m forced to call Constanza at home, and she instructs me where to find them. In the pool house of course. Makes perfect sense now.

  Once I’ve tossed on a t-shirt over my swim trunks, I get in the car and drive to the small neighborhood store not too far from my office. And that’s where I’m standing, staring at the beer in the refrigerator section, astounded that I can get an entire six-pack of something for what one drink at a nightclub costs. Constanza buys all of our food for the house too, so I don’t exactly visit the grocery store often.

  I opt for Mythos and decide to get a case, not a six-pack. I’ll probably get in trouble with Tess for it, but it would be really rude to show up without something to contribute to the group. Plus, Tess obviously doesn’t know much about the drinking habits of a healthy twenty-four-year-old Greek guy. I could drink a six-pack of Mythos by myself in an afternoon on the water, and I wouldn’t even be drunk.

  I hop in my car and open the sunroof. It’s a beautiful day on Georgios, and I’m more excited to go on this silly boat trip with a bunch of college kids than I’ve been in months, maybe longer. All the hours at nightclubs, the trips to Monaco to the casinos, the expensive bourbon and five hundred-dollar bottles of wine, the models and daughters of my dad’s business colleagues, none of it was half as exciting to me as going on this little afternoon boat ride in waters that I know like the back of my hand, with cheap beer and a picnic lunch.

 

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