Page 1 of Below Deck Billionaire
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Few people in this world would dare give Theodorus Callisthenes – heir to Oceanós, a multi-billion-dollar Greek cruise ship company – a right royal bollocking. After all, his name meant ‘gift from God.’
Unfortunately, his brother hadn’t got the memo.
‘What. The. Fuck.’ Aristotle stormed into his office, eyes black as thunder, brandishing what seemed to be a newspaper.
Theo wasn’t alarmed. In fact, quite the opposite. It was good to see some spark and fire in Ari after all those bleak years triggered by his first wife’s death. Since meeting Kelsey, and marrying her three months ago, his younger brother had come back to them. The Callisthenes family had a lot to thank the ex-cocktail waitress for and Theo would weather whatever foul mood Ari threw at him to have his brother happy again. Living again.
A woman he loved and a baby on the way.
‘I’ve just been on the phone to Dimitri Kouris who is backing out of the deal we’ve spent three months negotiating and the last three weeks putting the finer touches on, because of this.’
Ari slapped exhibit A on the desk, which turned out to be a trashy but popular tabloid rag. With Theo – above and below the centre fold – on the front page. It was a little grainy but for sure it was him, taken through partially open French doors, large as life, bare-ass naked, his modesty blurred out, indulging in a three-way embrace with two women, appropriate bits of them blurred but also very obviously naked.
Well… fuck.
Theo glanced at the picture dispassionately. Once upon a time the memory would have made him smile, but all he remembered now was how his heart hadn’t really been in the experience. Had he performed adequately? Yes. Had they gone away happy the morning after? Yes. Had it helped him to stop thinking about her? About Tiffany?
No. It had not.
‘The online pictures are even worse.’
Theo could only imagine. ‘What can I say?’ Theo shrugged. ‘Women like me.’
His brother was clearly not in the mood for flippancy. ‘Three months,’ Ari roared, ‘down the drain because you can’t keep your cock zipped.’
The rather inappropriate urge to laugh took hold at the role reversal that was now playing out. Not that long ago it had been him yelling at his brother to get a life. Insisting he leave his den of grief and sending him undercover onto theHellenic Spiritwith strict orders to not only investigate what was going wrong with the cruise ship but to also have some goddamn fun for a change.
But laughter right now would be a bigger transgression than flippancy.
‘What I do in my private time is none of Dimitri’s or anyone else’s business.’
‘But it’s not private, is it?’ Ari hissed, ramming his index finger into that blurred-out segment of Theo’s anatomy. ‘It’s all over the tabloids!’
‘That’s hardly my fault.’
Why was he responsible because some pap with a zoom lens as big as the Acropolis had illegally invaded his privacy, catching him and two very lovely and very anonymous women in flagrante inside a hotel room in what was an entirely consensual tryst?
‘Oh, don’t be so fucking naive,’ Ari snapped. ‘You’re a rich, Greek playboy that the tabloids love to exploit for clicks. Shut your goddamn doors.’
Calmly folding the paper, Theo dumped it in the bin under his desk before rising from his chair and crossing to the expansive glass panelling that afforded him a bird’s-eye view across the Athens skyline. The clutter of buildings both new and ancient sat cheek by jowl, dominated by the rise of the Acropolis and the crumbled majesty of the Parthenon sitting atop the rocky outcrop. In the distance he could see the frenetic shipping activity at Piraeus and the sparkling water of the Aegean beyond.
From his luxuriously appointed penthouse office suite, he felt like a god, surveying the Callisthenes empire. Like Zeus staring down from Mount Olympus. And it never failed to swell his chest with pride in his family and love for his country.
But lately… now? He just felt restless. And unfocused. Like there was more to life than a shipping empire and this million-dollar view.
Sliding in beside him, Ari folded his arms and also stared out the window. He didn’t say anything for long moments, as transfixed as Theo as they stood side by side in brotherly solidarity. They spent a lot of time doing this, just standing here admiring the view together recognising in silence how blessed they’d been in life.
The Callisthenes family had come a long way from the moment theirpappouhad taken hispappou’s struggling tender business – which he’d traded for several small fishing boats at the age of twenty – to an international juggernaut.
‘You know as well as I do,’ Ari said eventually, his tone more conciliatory, addressing the window, not Theo, ‘how eye-wateringly conservative Dimitri is. And as long-term friends of Marco Konstantinides, he already wasn’t your biggest fan.’
Konstantinides. The name jabbed the spot inside that no amount of sexual shenanigans or three-way trysts could erase. He was thirty-five years old and still felt the guilt and shame of what had happened when he was eighteen. Angelika Konstantinides had well and truly moved on, finding happiness with a family of her own, but many, it seemed, had not.
‘What’s the old man playing at?’ Theo didn’t address his brother, either. ‘We don’t need him. He needs us. He would cut off his nose to spite his face?’
‘Probably. Yes. He’s as proud as he is conservative.’
