I told Cass the basics of what was happening, but I didn’t want to give her any specific information so that she wouldn’t be trapped in this the way I am. I now have a legal obligation to tell the authorities what I know—things that will set the wheels in motion. Things that will destroy Niko and his family.
Truthfully, I imagine it’s all going to come out very soon no matter what I do, but I can speed up the process if I tell. And I have this damn letter. Smeared with what I’m sure is Christos’s blood.
“Tess, you’re scaring me,” Cass says. She runs a hand over my hair, like you would a small child. And I feel small. Too small for this weight. Too young for this responsibility. Too sad for this task.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell her, my voice hardly more than a whisper. “I just need a few more minutes alone. To collect my thoughts. Decide exactly what I’m going to say. Okay?” I give her a weak smile and she continues to give me the furrowed brow Cass-is-concerned look.
“Okay. I’m going to go get some dinner started, Anton’s bringing you some of that wine you like so much and we’re all going to eat and watch Lord of the Rings. So get this call out of the way so you can relax with us tonight. Promise me.”
I nod my head. “I promise. Just a few more minutes.”
She stands, her expression telling me that if I don’t do this in the next few minutes things are going to get ugly. She’s a lot bigger than me, so I probably shouldn’t test her resolve.
“See you in the kitchen in a bit,” she says before leaving the room, shutting the door softly behind her.
When I was a teenager I once asked my mother how she’d known that my dad was “the one” for her.
She was standing in our kitchen at the house I grew up in, the house my parents still live in. I was propped up on a barstool at the counter where she served Nate and I hundreds of meals over the course of our childhoods. I used to eat at that counter, do my homework at that counter, and that day I listened to secrets of my mother’s heart at that counter.
She paused to think, but then went back to wiping down the countertops, her hands always moving, scrubbing, sorting, organizing—the same way she did with all of our lives. She was the hub of our family wheel, and she managed and directed us like a general with her troops.
“First of all,” she said, winking at me, “you have to believe that there is a ‘one’. Some people don’t. But I always did. Even when I had bad date after bad date, and got my heart stomped on by all kinds of men, I always believed that there was that one guy out there who was meant for me.
“But how did I know that your dad was that guy I’d been waiting for? I could say it was because things were simpler with him than with other guys, but they weren’t necessarily. His complications were things I didn’t mind as much as other people’s complications, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have any. We all do.”
She handed me a glass of water even though I hadn’t asked for one—yet. Mothers are weird that way.
“I could also say that it was because he put me first no matter what. But honestly, love, no one can put someone else first always—in the big picture yes, but not all day every day. Life is hard, people have obligations and responsibilities. There were plenty of times that your dad had to put a meeting or a project ahead of my birthday or your swim meet. Our jobs pay for the house and the food, and sometimes that has to come before any grand gestures to our partners.”
By now I was focused on her like a laser, waiting for the magic pearl that was going to give me the secrets to one of the universe’s great mysteries.
“I think the way you know that you’ve found your one is when you realize that you are the best version of yourself when you’re with him.” She nodded as if agreeing with her own interpretation.
“When you first meet a new boy, it’s so easy to adjust yourself to suit him. It’s natural. We all try to be our best, shiniest selves for that person we’re infatuated with. But, once that wears off, who are you? Are you a person pretending to like camping because he does? Are you petty and jealous because he makes you insecure? Are you worried about your weight because his last girlfriend was two sizes smaller than you?
“Or, are you more confident because he helps you believe you can do anything you set out to do? Do you feel beautiful because you know he thinks you are? Can you see your weaknesses only because he helps you learn to overcome them? Your dad did all those things for me,” she said. “He does all those things for me everyday. He helps make me be the best person I can be. That’s how I knew he was the one. I’m better with him than I was without him.”
My eyes fill as I remember her words that day, and I think back to the moments I had with Niko. The way he understood my commitment to right and wrong, but still challenged me to look at things in a different way. The way he made me feel like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The way he placed total confidence in me at work, and total faith in me outside of work.
Niko made me a better person. Someone who can consider the good and the bad of things, and make judgments that are based on the particulars of a circumstance, rather than blindly following rules. Rules need to be followed, but they need to be understood too. We need to assess our rules just as we would anything else in our lives. Otherwise we can end up with rules that are bad or worthless, or even dangerous, and we can follow them straight to our own demise. Rules are, after all, made by humans, and we are flawed, fallible creatures.
Kind of like Ari Stephanos is flawed and fallible. His love for his son and his company are apparent. He’s a kind man who made a horrible mistake. Why, I might never know, but I’ve learned enough from my time with Niko to realize that there is a story there that matters just as much as the laws that he broke.
Niko taught me a lot over the last few weeks, and when my heart reminds my brain of that I have to admit—I’m a better person with Niko than I was without him.
I think Niko Stephanos might have been my one.
The realization cleaves my poor bruised heart clean in two, and I shudder at the brutal reality of what’s happened today. I’ve lost him. My one. And now I will never get him back.
But, even if I can’t have him, I can save him. And I know now that I have to. For the man who cared enough to make me a better person, I will give him a better chance—a better chance at life, a better chance at surviving this. Because sometimes you have to bend some rules for the ones you love.
Niko
The sounds of broken glass being swept across terra cotta tiles reach me in my bedroom where I sit in the darkness looking out over the pool, while workmen clean away the evidence of the attack on Christos.
I wrap my fingers around the tumbler of scotch in my right hand before I raise it to my lips and tilt my head back, letting the warm liquid flow down my throat, relishing the burn that follows in its wake.
There are guards everywhere now. Here on Georgios where my family once thought we’d always be safe. They stand outside every door to my house, they stand outside Christos’s hospital room, they guard my sisters in their homes, and they will follow every one of my nieces and nephews to school and back tomorrow…and the next day…and the next.
I breathe deeply, trying to quell the hot, oozing anger that sits inside my chest. It threatens to bubble up and lay waste to everything in its path. My father—Ari to me now—has told me the whole story. How the company began to fail, how he was too proud to speak of it with anyone and instead took loans from terrorists. How they offered him only one way to pay back the money—run guns to the Middle East.
My heart died a little more when he told me that he let Christos in on it, because he didn’t want me tainted. His perfect boy. His golden heir. He tried to keep me pure by sullying my best friend, his own nephew, my deftheri. And like the good soldier he is, Christos took it on. Communicating with the terrorists, figuring out a way to circumvent our accounting systems with special codes and secret records. But then a shipment went awry. The Somalian pirates to
ok one of our ships and two dozen crates of MK-17s. And the terrorists went after Christos as a warning. Then it happened again. And they came after Christos harder.
And Christos knew what was coming. It’s why he was so inexplicably paranoid about Tess. The sister of an FBI agent, the daughter of a district attorney. Christos knew that she was too close, and once she found out, she’d turn Stephanos Shipping in. But even if Tess wasn’t going straight to the officials this evening, I think Ari would be caught in the not so distant future. The inquiries by the IRS, the piracy off the Somalian coast—the warnings were there, and my guess is the charges won’t be far behind.
That’s why I didn’t tell Ari that Tess knew. I can’t stand the idea that my family could blame her for whatever happens. I left him sitting in the hospital, waiting to see if the nephew he sentenced to this will survive. I told him that I’m in charge of the family now, and he didn’t say a word.
I’ve thought through every possible angle over the last few hours, and I know that I can’t save the company. They’ll freeze assets, bust down doors, strip computer files. It will be chaos, and it will go on for a very long time. Lawyers and trials and international negotiations. I have no idea how it will all play out, but I know that it will be brutal and complex, and lengthy.
I have two choices now—sit and wait, or save who I can. While it breaks my heart to imagine my father in a prison cell for the remainder of his days, I cannot worry about him. He made his bed, and now he’ll have to sleep in it. Ari Stephanos was a great man, but he will be remembered as a tragic one, and I know that I’ll have to deal with my feelings about him at some point, but I can’t afford the distraction now.
This evening I transferred every dime I could from my father’s accounts to a trust at a Swiss bank set up in my oldest sister’s name. She isn’t employed by Stephanos, isn’t married to a Stephanos employee, and won’t be part of this investigation. She will be in charge of supporting my mother and other sisters when Ari’s assets are taken and he’s left penniless. My grandparents have always lived on their own investments and they own their house outright, I don’t think even the world’s most cunning lawyers will go after an eighty-year-old man and his equally ancient wife. I only wish I could save them from the heartbreak they will suffer when they find out what their son has done to the family legacy.
With my mother and sisters protected, I can focus on saving Christos. They don’t know if he’ll survive his injuries, but I have to believe he will. I have to believe that the guy I’ve loved all my life isn’t lost to me forever. And I have to insure that when he does wake up he’s not faced with a life in prison.
Legally, Christos is well past the age when he could be excused for his actions. But I know that he shouldn’t be punished for them either. He did what should have been my job, took the risk for me, sacrificed himself so that I would be innocent, and for that I owe him. I may never understand why he was willing to cooperate with my father’s mistakes, but loyalty gone awry is still loyalty. And I share over twenty years of brotherhood with this man who would actually take a bullet for me. I can’t let him be pulled under with Ari. I have to fight to save him.
I take one last slug of the scotch and set the glass down on the end table next to me. As I stand, I see that the sun is rising and the edges of the sky have turned pink and gold. It reminds me of Tess, her gold hair and pink cheeks, and I have to lean against a nearby dresser for a moment in order to breathe through the wave of pain that crashes into me. It’s physically exhausting, thinking of a life without her in it, but even if she had stayed I have nothing left to offer her. I’m no longer Niko Stephanos. I’m not sure who I’ll be after today, and I’d never subject her to that. She deserves someone’s best. My best is probably long gone.
* * *
I’m surprised that the police station is as quiet as it is. Even though it’s early, I’d expected to see cars, maybe some journalists, Greek Intelligence. But when I walk in there is only one desk clerk here, and the hum of the soda machine in the lobby.
“Hi,” I say to get the clerk’s attention. He stands and walks over, his face breaking into a smile when he recognizes me.
“Good morning Mr. Stephanos. I hope it’s not something bad that’s brought you by?”
I’d think that the guy is fucking with me, but he seems genuinely clueless about why I’m here.
“I’d like to see the Commander please,” I say, not willing to give anything away.
“Certainly,” he answers.
Five long minutes later I’m seated in front of the desk of the island’s police commander.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Stephanos?”
I look at him—the relaxed posture, the genuine smile. This is either one of the world’s great actors or a man who hasn’t heard that my family has been helping the terrorists run weapons to Syria.
And if he doesn’t know, that means Tess didn’t tell him. And maybe that means Tess didn’t tell anyone. Maybe she never will. My heart thuds hard in my chest—twice. Then it flutters the tiniest bit as well. Like a butterfly that’s been knocked senseless, only to move its wings again for a brief second of hope. But I can’t hope. I have no right to hope. Whether Tess turns Ari in or not, I’m not worthy of her anymore. Someone with Tess’s integrity could never be happy with a man who is willing to break the kinds of rules I am. Tess lives her beliefs. I’ve lost the luxury of that now.
“Commander,” I begin, tucking that stupid fluttering heart away for good, “I have information about a very serious crime that’s been committed on the island, a crime of international significance, and I’m responsible for all of it.”
Tess
“She can give you plenty of information about the accounting system, she’s a goddamn accountant, but not if you won’t provide the immunity,” my father yells, banging his fist on the table in front of him. We’ve been locked in a hotel conference room in Athens for two days, and while I’m sure he’s tired, I know that this is part of the act. He and the team he flew here—a hotshot international law specialist from New York, and a criminal defense attorney from Athens—have been hammering out a deal with the Greek Intelligence agents as well as the CIA and FBI. Nate flew in separate from my dad, but he’s been here the whole time as well.
“You understand that we’ve already offered immunity to the nephew, if we give it to the son as well that leaves us with Ari Stephanos as the sole family member responsible for this mess,” the leader of the Greek contingent complains.
“As it should be,” my father responds. “Those young men have absolutely no criminal background and the son in particular never participated in any of the transactions as far as we can tell.”
“Then why did he confess?”
My father sighs, shaking his head. “Because he’s protecting the rest of his family. Does that really surprise you?”
“Even if that is true, he was the fucking CFO,” the other man answers, “it all happened on his watch, you know we could make a case with that.”
“Incompetence isn’t guilt,” my dad’s New York buddy snarks. It hurts me to hear Niko disparaged like that. He wasn’t incompetent, he was coddled, led to believe that his family would never lead him astray. Conditioned for twenty-four years to trust them absolutely. But I keep my thoughts to myself, even though it’s hard not to rise to his defense.
My brother looks at me sympathetically. I know he can tell what’s going through my mind.
“Look,” my dad says, “Ari’s the big fish. What we’re going to hand you is enough evidence to insure that you have an airtight case. You’ll put him away for life, you’ll get a very nice addition to the government’s coffers when you confiscate all of his assets, and the international intelligence community will get some valuable intel on the group he was in debt to. So the two kids get off—and then what? The family will be without resources, the company will be defunct. They’re going to suffer plenty.”
The Greek guys all look at one another, and
finally the leader nods his head. “All right. Since the CIA and FBI have agreed to the same in their prosecutions, we’ll sign.”
A sigh of relief presses out of every person in the room. My dad stands and puts his hand out across the table to the Greeks, who all shake it. Then the other attorneys do the same—everyone shakes with everyone and seems to be pleased with the deal. The papers are edited, reprinted, and signed, and for the first time in days I feel as though I can breathe. Niko is safe, and that’s all that matters to me.
* * *
“Still can’t get ahold of him?” Nate asks as he enters our hotel suite and heads to the mini-fridge, pulling out a beer and popping the top.
I shake my head. I know it’s ridiculous to keep trying, but in another few hours it’ll all be moot, so I keep hoping. Once I set foot on that airplane I have to let him go though. I know this.
“He’s got a lot on his plate right now, Mess,” Nate says kindly, sitting down next to me on the sofa. “Maybe in a few months after some of this shit has settled down you can try again.”
I wipe away the tear that’s snuck out of my eye. “No, it’s over. All this—” I wave my arm around the hotel room as if it represents the disaster of Ari’s criminal endeavors, “—is too much to overcome. I don’t blame him, I said I’d turn him in, and even though I tried to save him at the same time, how can you get over something like that?”
“Aw Mess.” Nate wraps an arm around me and I lay my head on his shoulder, sniffing. “You’re only twenty-one years old and you were faced with an impossible situation. You did a good thing. You called Dad and me, you worked with the law, and you ended up saving a guy who was innocent. I know your heart hurts, but your head should be proud. Dad and I are both really proud of you.”
The Heir: A Standalone Greek Billionaire Romance Page 20