Page 66 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

It was turning into a rather long and epic list.

“Everyone knows what is happening here,” Apostolis told her, letting his laughter trail off and his eyes blaze right at her, like his fire could melt all her ice. “It’s a tale as old as time. A young, avaricious girl seeks an older man to give her a life of comfort and ease. There is only one payment for that, as I think you know. Beauty will always be traded in whatever market that can afford it. No doubt you’ve spent the last seven years convincing my poor, deluded father that he somehow owed you more than what he’d already given. His name. This life you do not deserve.” He made a meal out of a sigh. “Though I do not know why you bothered. No one will ever forget who you really are. No one ever does. A greedy, social climbing trollop who fancies herself a trophy when she is nothing but a sordid little gold digger.”

“Do you know what I’ve noticed?” his bride and nemesis asked, in a deceptively light tone. Apostolis was dimly aware that she was leaning closer to him and that he was leaning closer to her, too. He didn’t know when she’d moved, or when he had, only that they were now nearly as close as they had been at that makeshift altar. He could see every furious icicle in her gaze. “Truly wealthy and powerful men take great pleasure in the things that wealth and influence bring them. One of those things being the attention of beautiful women of any social strata.”

One of her perfectly shaped brows rose in challenge. “Truly confident men of real authority are never worried about gold digging. Why would they be? Theylikelavishing the women in their lives with the fruits of their labors. And the joy it brings them. For she is the prettiest diamond he could find and oh, does he love polishing her while she gets the chance to truly shine. And do you know who is worried about the apparent scourge of gold diggers traipsing about the planet, looking for unsuspecting marks?”

She nodded sagely, as if he had answered her. “That’s right. Tiny little men. With precious little power or authority, who know, deep down, that they’ll never measure up.”

That she considered him a member of the latter category was obvious.

And for a moment, it was as if Apostolis...whited out.

It was as if everything simply...flatlined.

Except not, because he was fully and totally aware of Jolie.

Jolie, that impossible woman, who he had expected would grow brittle to match the void within as the years passed, but she hadn’t. He’d expected that gaunt, bird of prey look that so many women in her position adopted as they fought the ravages of time that would eventually get them replaced, but not Jolie.

If anything, she was more beautiful than she’d been on that first wedding day, seven years ago. When she’d stood in a white dress right here in the Andromeda, but that day the sun had been shining and the sea had been so blue it hurt.

And there Jolie had been with her hair the color of the sun, and her eyes a match for the Mediterranean all around her, and only Apostolis seemed to see the truth of who she was.

The sheer avarice in her smile. The calculation in her gaze. The way that she had treated his father as if she was his nurse, not his wife.

I don’t expect you to be friends with her,his father had told him with a laugh.In fact I would prefer you keep your distance, dog that you are. But I do expect you to be polite.

Apostolis had been certain thatshecould not manage to stay polite. Women like that never could. He had expected her to do what women in her position always did, having secured the older man—as his father had suggested. No doubt they both assumed that the flirtations would start with any younger man who happened by. The coded invitations. The clear and obvious signs that she would be more than willing for some extracurricular with him behind his father’s back.

He had spent his father’s wedding reception coldly laying out how it would go in his head. How he would expose her and be rid of her.

But those invitations had never come.

To his astonishment, this conceited, manipulative woman had treated him as ifhewas beneathher. A charity case she engaged in purely for his father’s benefit.

A trial, at best.

For seven years. Without even the slightest deviation.

In fact, it had seemed as if her opinion of him—low to begin with—had only gone lower as time went on.

Even today she was under the impression thatshewas the one doinghima favor.

It was an outrage of epic proportions.

Sheer indignation thundered in his veins—and not only because of her temerity.

When he thought about the way he had worked, all of his life, to maintain a relationship with his father, he wanted to...break something. And he knew that while Jolie was an ignominy at best, she was not to blame for the fact that the old man had always loved his work and his women far more than his family.

That he had preferred to bask in the reflected glory of the guests who came and stayed in this hotel, because it gave him some kind of mystique. There were the articles about him, the tycoon who was on a first-name basis with the most powerful and beloved people alive.

The Andromeda is the glittering scene,such articles would claim,and in the charming epicenter of all that glamour and elegance stands one man. Spyros Adrianakis, the curator of it all.

Curating that scene had always been more interesting to Spyros than his son. Or his long-suffering wife. Or the baby girl that had not saved his parents’ marriage but had instead taken his mother’s life and relegated Dioni to her older brother’s care. Because he could not trust his sister with the nannies who Spyros had treated like a pool of lovers. All of them auditioning for time in his bed, not the care and maintenance of poor Dioni.

All of this, Apostolis had done his best to forgive. Forgiveness that he was well aware he had never quite achieved.

So he had gotten his father’s attention any way he could.

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