The Heir: A Standalone Greek Billionaire Romance

by Laurence, Selena

  * * *

  The music is blasting and I know he’ll never hear me yelling, but I do anyway, because at least then I can say truthfully that I called out when I barged into his house. Some tiny part of me conjures up all the scenes in movies and TV shows where the girlfriend or the wife walks into the house to surprise her man, only to find him in bed with someone else. But for all that I know Niko used to spend a lot of time at the clubs having one-night stands, he doesn’t have a player’s personality. He doesn’t seek oblivion or validation in women. Still, I’m relieved when I walk through the living room and find him in the home gym, attacking a weight machine with dangerous intent.

  “What did that poor machine ever do to you?” I ask as I walk around to where he can see me. He’d never hear me with the 1990s rock blasting from his wireless speakers.

  He releases the shoulder press he’s been pumping back and forth and squints at me like maybe he can’t quite remember who I am. I hope that’s not the case. It’s only been two days. I’d like to think I’m a little more memorable than that.

  He reaches to the armband on his biceps and turns the iPod off. My ears ring in relief. Cloaked in silence after such volume, we stare at each other for a moment. He’s shirtless, sweat dripping down between his pecs and around the ridges of his abs. I try not to gawk, but it’s a sight that’s hard to ignore. A lot of glistening golden skin over perfectly proportioned, steely muscle. Yum.

  “Did you?” he asks.

  I realize he’s been talking to me. I look up to his face and he has one eyebrow raised, a smirk curling up one side of his lips.

  “I’m sorry.” I clear my throat. “What did you say?”

  He stands and stretches, and I feel positive that at this point he’s doing it only to torment me. I narrow my eyes at him and he chuckles.

  “I asked if you’d been trying to text?”

  “Only for two days. And don’t you dare say that one response of ‘I’m working at home’ is adequate.”

  I’m not sure why I expect an argument, but that’s not what I get.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  He moves forward and wraps his big hands around my hips. Giving me the puppy dog eyes he plants a tiny kiss on the corner of my mouth, as if he’s afraid to kiss me full on when I’m pissed at him.

  “I’ve been dealing with some shit and I didn’t want to subject you to my bad mood, but I should have told you that instead of going radio silent.”

  I was geared up for some sort of conflict, but now he’s taken the wind out of my sails. “Yes, you should have…Yeah. That.”

  He grins and I can’t help but laugh. I shove at him before he envelopes me in his arms, smearing sweat all over my work blouse.

  “You want to talk about it?” I ask, liking being held by him too much to complain about the sweat.

  “I’d rather show you my bedroom,” he says, burying his nose in my hair. “You smell fucking fantastic.”

  “Only because you smell so bad,” I snark back.

  “Maybe you should come help me shower?” For a guy who hasn’t texted in two days he’s pretty cocky.

  I sigh. “And after that are we going to talk about what’s been going on?”

  He considers it for a moment, seeming to weigh the options. Luckily, he’s twenty-four, so horny always wins. “Okay,” he answers simply.

  “Lead the way to the shower then,” I tell him before he lifts me up and throws me over his shoulder, smacking me on the ass as we head to the master bath.

  Niko

  Twenty minutes in the shower with Tess does for me what forty-eight plus hours of booze, weights and pounding music hasn’t. The sickening tension that’s been under my skin since I left Christos at my parents’ house two nights ago has finally subsided. But I know my newfound peace won’t last long, so I’m relishing this interlude, lying in my bed, a naked Tess pressed to my side as I stroke her soft skin.

  “I missed you,” she whispers.

  I kiss the top of her head where it rests on my chest. “I missed you too. I’m sorry I dropped out on you.”

  “It’s okay, but don’t do that again, okay?”

  I nod, closing my eyes and taking a breath for what I know is coming next. She’s a woman, there’s no way she’s not going to press this, and I can’t blame her. I’d insist on it too if I were in her shoes.

  “Are you ready to talk about it?” she asks.

  No. I’m not ready to talk about it, and I’m particularly not ready to lie about it, which is exactly what I’m going to be forced to do in the next few minutes. I’ve thought it over and over, every angle I can look at, and there’s no other option. No way to tell her my suspicions without getting her tangled in the whole mess, or risk consequences I can’t even wrap my mind around.

  “What do you want to know?” I answer her question with a question.

  “What happened when you went to see Christos the other night?”

  “We fought.” It’s the truth—not the details, I can’t quite tell her all those—I’m determined that wherever I can, I’ll tell her the truth.

  “Oh-kay.” She sighs. I’m not making this easy on her. “Can you elaborate?”

  “He’s either being a paranoid ass or he’s keeping something from me, and I’m done with his shit. I told him so.”

  “He came to see me today,” she says. My hand stops brushing along her ribcage and she pushes up, putting her chin on my chest so she can see my face.

  “What did he want?” I’m afraid to hear the answer. I don’t want to have to confront him again, but if he’s harassing Tess I won’t have a choice.

  “To tell me that he was sorry for giving us such a hard time. And to make me promise that I won’t hurt you.”

  I blink, my chest stinging painfully. “Why would he do that?” I ask, my voice gruff.

  “I don’t know, but I got the feeling there are things he wasn’t telling me too.”

  She pauses, running a hand along my chest hair. I love when she touches me like this. I wish more than anything that we could shut out the rest of the world and spend all day touching each other. I don’t think I’d ever tire of it.

  “You aren’t scared I’m going to do something to hurt you, are you?”

  If she only knew that’s the least of my worries. My greatest worry is what I might have to do that will hurt her. I hate this. All of it.

  I sit up, bringing her with me so I can look at her and kiss her sweet lips. “No, baby. I know you’d never do anything to hurt me. I’m not sure what’s going on with Christos, but it didn’t come from me.”

  “I’m afraid your cousin might be a little whack, honey,” she says, one eyebrow raised.

  I chuckle and kiss her hard again before hopping out of bed. “You might be right.” I grab a pair of sweats out of a drawer and put them on commando. “That’s why I kicked his crazy ass out to the pool house. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves. Let’s go eat something then work on christening some of the other rooms.”

  I spend the rest of the night trying to ignore the ache in my heart. I almost succeed.

  * * *

  My days take on a new pattern. In the mornings when Tess is at school I spend time digging around the various parts of Stephanos Shipping wherever I can. I have to be careful because if word gets back to my dad, he’ll handcuff me—figuratively anyway. Christos and I are speaking, but only the bare essentials, whatever is necessary to get business done. He’s moved to the operations division, and while my father asked about it, that’s all he did. “I’ve heard you asked Christos to move?” he said. “Are you certain?” I assured him that I was and he simply nodded and left my office.

  It was a sure sign that they truly are hiding something. My father would never have tolerated this from me otherwise. The three of us tiptoe around one another, no one willing to come out and say what’s happened. I’m sure they’re holding out hope that I haven’t discovered their secret, and, of course, I’m digging in order
to find out exactly what the secret is. But I know there is one. I can only hope that it’s not as serious as I’m afraid it is.

  I haven’t gone back to my parents’ house either. I’ve talked to my mother on the phone, but no church, no family dinners. My father has obviously told her something, because she’s been remarkably low key about it.

  This morning I’ve been in the records department scanning through months and months of previous shipping orders. I told the staff that I wanted to find a particular record but didn’t know the name of the client, so I had to look for it myself. They didn’t seem too stressed about it, so hopefully they won’t mention it to my dad.

  I’m sitting at a high-end computer in a spotless sterile room, the temperature kept at a nearly frigid eighteen Celsius. Massive servers are stored in here to keep all the company’s records as far back as the beginning of my dad’s tenure as CEO. Luckily, I worked in this section the summer after my senior year in high school, so I’m pretty familiar with the set up.

  I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, but I know that it’s got something to do with those crates of supposed medical supplies shipping from Los Angeles to Syria. I also suspect that it has something to do with the special accounts that Christos told Tess about. I wish like hell I hadn’t been so distracted at the time, that I’d remembered to check into those, but I didn’t, because, like a fool I thought that there couldn’t possibly be anything off-color going on in my family’s company. I trusted what I’d always been told about Stephanos Shipping, about who we were and what we stood for.

  I scan dozens of files searching for an unfamiliar company name, a Los Angeles point of origin, anything with ties to Syria, but looking back six months I haven’t found a single clue. Then, suddenly it’s right in front of me. I’ve been so focused on the Los Angeles origination I didn’t catch that Long Beach is listed. Shipments out of Long Beach, one a week for months. All going to Syria. Fuck.

  I set the print parameters to give me a complete list of all the shipments that match that code and am sickened to find that they’ve been going on for nearly eighteen months. Once a month at first, then twice, now weekly. I carefully delete any records of my search, shut down the machine, and fold my printouts, stuffing them into the pocket of my jacket before I walk out of the records section, thanking the staff on my way, an easy smile pasted on my face.

  I briskly make my way through the corridors of my company, the building where I grew up, the legacy that was promised to me from birth, and when I reach my office suite I tell Juliet that I’m not to be disturbed. This is why I’ve been doing my digging before Tess comes to work each day. I knew that if I did find something I couldn’t face her immediately.

  Going into my office, I close the door, locking it behind me. My hands are shaking as I take the printouts from my inside jacket pocket and open up the folded sheets to scan over the list of shipments. Pages and pages of them. From Long Beach to Syria. With no payments attached. And no indication that they actually stop here in Greece before heading out on a separate ship to complete the journey. It’s a way to cover up a shipment.

  The safe in my office is small, and honestly I’ve never had a reason to keep anything in it, but I’m quick to lock away these papers, and everything they might represent—the sullying of a respected Greek name, the destruction of an international success story. Once the tumblers click into place and the evidence is safe behind layers of impenetrable steel, I stride to the en suite bathroom, taking off my jacket as I go and dropping it on the floor. I step inside, kneel down on the marble tiles, and wrap my arms around the cold porcelain of the toilet as I vomit until every last bit of poison in my body has been expunged. And still I feel dirty.

  I may never feel clean again.

  Tess

  When I arrive at work Niko is out. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Annais said he’s been scheduling all sorts of meetings outside the building. When I asked him about it he said he was tired of being cooped up inside and wanted a change of venue. I think he’s still trying to avoid Christos.

  He and I are fine, better than fine in certain ways, but overall our little world is not right. I can feel it, he can feel it, and still we don’t talk about it. Last night I woke at two a.m. and I was alone in his bed. I went looking for him and found him sitting by the pool, staring at the water, a glass of ouzo in his hand. He looked so sad, so broken, all I could think to do was lie on the lounge chair with him, curling my body into his without a word, holding him.

  He wrapped himself around me and clutched me as if I were the life raft that would keep him from drowning. I felt him shake as he buried his face in my hair, and I didn’t say a word, both of us holding on—to what we don’t know—until the sun rose over the island and we started another day of pretending.

  * * *

  Tuesdays are officially my least favorite day. My classes are difficult, I have to take notes for the senior accountants’ planning meeting, and the I.T. staff have a consultant who comes in and uses my cubicle.

  I walk out of the planning meeting and find that Nero, the consultant, has indeed arrived and co-opted my “office”. I sigh, marching over and scooping my files and backpack off the corner of the desk so that I can find somewhere else to work.

  “Sorry, girl,” Nero says in his Indian-British accent. “I looked all over for another vacant desk, but the place is stuffed today.” He smiles sheepishly. It’s not his fault, but it’s still irritating.

  “It’s okay. I’ll go to the records office. It’s cold in there, but I kind of like the hum of the servers.”

  He gives me a thumbs up and goes back to whatever crazy scrolling code he’s working with. I haul my belongings down to the records office and stop off to check with the guy who runs the front desk.

  “Hi, Kevin. Is it okay if I work in the server room? I need a computer to use, some consultant took mine.”

  Kevin looks up distractedly. “What is it, like, finance week down here or something?” he asks, clicking on various screens as he talks.

  “What do you mean? Is someone else from finance here?”

  “The CFO himself was down here all morning yesterday,” he says, finally looking up at me. “You guys doing a special project?”

  I’m puzzled, but I shake my head. “No. Just a coincidence I think.”

  I make my way to the back room and close the door behind me, setting all my things on the big table that holds the computers set up for researching company records. Normally staff only have access to the files that they’re currently working on. Once a project is done or financial and shipping records are more than three months old, they’re moved off of the active servers and put into the records.

  As I log into the system and pull out my files to see which account I need to work on, I wonder what Niko was doing down here. He has minions, including me, to do research for him. A full-time secretary, a receptionist, an entire staff of people to find any information he could possibly desire. Why would he want to sit in this barren room with the company servers and do boring research?

  I look through the list of accounts Annais gave me last week. I’m on my third batch of accounts since I first began the job, and I’m getting very familiar with the codes, which is why I immediately notice that I’ve got another of the special accounts with this batch. The mysterious codes sit at the end of the columns, mocking me, piquing my curiosity and annoying me at the same time.

  I reach for the mouse to click on email and tell Christos that I have one of his special accounts. But as my cursor hovers over his address I’m overcome with the need to know exactly what these accounts actually are. Instead of the email I click on the icon for account records, quickly typing in the code for the special account.

  A list of shipments pops up for some company with only initials—SKT, Inc. I scroll through the list, records that go back about a year and a half, the shipments gradually becoming more frequent. All of them are the same route, the same weight, the same number of c
ontainers, and the same contents—medical supplies. It’s the route that catches my attention. The pick up is Long Beach, California, and the destination is the Syrian port of Lattakia. It makes sense to be sending medical supplies to Syria, which is torn to pieces by war, but the method, via water, makes no sense at all. Medical supplies are light enough to ship via air. Why would anyone ship something—especially medical supplies—over thousands of miles of ocean when they could fly it overland in half the time and probably at half the cost?

  I’m curious as to how much it does cost to make those shipments. Working at Stephanos I’ve gotten a pretty decent idea of what things cost to ship certain distances. All I do is look at shipping charges and payments all day after all. This sounds expensive given what I know. Really expensive. I click on one of the shipments, going to the costs incurred line. It’s blank, only another special code entered. I click on shipment after shipment and they’re all the same—no costs incurred.

  Warning bells are going off in my head now. I’ve completely forgotten about the work I was supposed to be doing today. I dig deeper and deeper into the accounts for SKT, Inc. I look up the company on the Internet and find nothing. I look for payments from them in our accruals records and come up empty-handed again. No costs incurred by them. No payments received from them. But shipments every week for months on end.

  I should stop this, get back to my own work, tell Christos that he needs to pull that account from my caseload just like he told me to do. I should, but I can’t. There are either procedures I don’t know about, or something very bad is going on here. And for whatever reason, I don’t trust Christos to tell me the truth. I could ask Niko, but what if I’m wrong and he’s mad at me for digging around in his company’s private records?

  I sigh. In spite of my inner accountant telling me this is all very wrong, I can’t cause more trouble for Niko right now. The last thing he needs is his student intern coming to him and making him search through company records, only to end up that this is some sort of special case. Maybe they’re donating transport to an aid organization. Who knows what the real story is, but I need to stop and let it go.