Page 97 of Seduced By Contract

The day has finally comewhen my cousins and I will meet withGordonBank'sboard of directors. From today onwards, the world will know that theLykaios Kostanidis Trust, the company we created especially for this purpose, owns fifty-one percent of the century-old family company of those Gordon sons of bitches.

Christos arrived with Odin at my office an hour and a half earlier than necessary. He also asked my brothers to be present, as we needed to talk about something serious. I wonder if it has to do with our mother's past. Will I finally find out what my cousin has discovered? I know Odin uses unorthodox means when he wants to dig into someone's past, but what else could there be to her story that we don't know already?

I check the time, trying to guess whether there will be enough to take Madison to dinner. She's hungry and having cravings. Even though she was nervous when she discovered that our heirwas on the way, she's already starting to adapt to the fact that she'll be a mother.

I know it was a shock for her. For me too, although I can't lie: I'm too happy. In my wife's case, however, she has plans to start university in a few months, and even though I believe that it's completely possible to reconcile motherhood and career, obviously some adjustments will have to be made.

My cousins' wives, Elina and Zoe, have come with Christos on this visit, and they’ve taken Madison on a shopping trip for our baby, whose first ultrasound will be conducted tomorrow. Madison tried to go out with her mother and the twins to buy clothes, but it was impossible because Soraya and Silas now walk everywhere, and Eleanor can't handle it.

"Hades just arrived," Dionysus says, showing the message from our brother on his phone.

"Soon, the suspense will come to an end. If we were poor, it could be that Odin had discovered a rich aunt who’d left us an inheritance, but that's not the case." Ares tries to joke because it's obvious that the matter is serious.

Hades enters minutes later and sits down in one of the armchairs. "Okay. I'm here, but I don't have much time."

"What do you know about your maternal family?" Christos asks.

"We lost contact. Our grandparents passed away shortly after our mother," I explain.

"I looked into the Gordons' past," Odin says, bluntly.

"Why?"

"Because you were about to destroy your own life due to a promise and I wanted to get that story straight beforehand, as some things didn't add up."

"What didn’t fit? Our mother and that bastard Adrian had been deceiving Dad their entire lives. End of story."

"It's not that simple. Did you guys know that Adrian Gordon had a boyfriend?"

"What?" we all ask almost at the same time.

"In fact, they were practically married, although they were very discreet. Celine is the result of a surrogate mother. Adrian never had a relationship with her mother, and if I had to make a guess, I would say that it was old Emerson Gordon who forced the situation in an attempt to get an heir, since I have no doubt that he would have known about his son's sexual preference and probably rejected him for it. But I'm getting ahead of myself." Odin pauses. "I looked into your mother's family, a cousin, actually, who moved back to Greece. She spoke to me via video call and allowed me to record everything. She told me a story that I don't think any of you know. Not even your father."

He takes out a laptop, and after a moment, a frozen image of a lady appears on the screen. "This is Lyra Angeloupolos, not only a cousin, but once your mother's best friend. She no longer lives here in the United States."

She has the same last name as our mother. After my father killed himself, my grandfather asked his four grandchildren that we stop introducing ourselves as Angeloupolos. We hated her, so we just forgot that we had a surname other than Kostanidis.

"Start the video, Odin," Christos says. "The sooner they know, the better."

In the first five minutes of the recording, the woman talks about her and my mother's childhood and adolescence, lost in memories. She even mentions that she was in love with my father but he only had eyes for our mother.

She talks about the rumor that there was a love triangle between the three best friends—Mom, Dad and Adrian—but that it was all just that, a rumor, because she suspected that Adrian “didn’t like girls,” as she put it.

Hades is the first to interrupt. "How is this possible?"

"Listen," my older cousin advises.

“When we were sixteen, Astra was raped.”

"What the hell?" I shout.

"Do you want to continue?" Odin asks.

"What I want is for you to tell me what the hell is going on, Odin!"

He pauses the recording.

I pace from one side of the room to the other, completely enraged, without even a clue as to where this is going.

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