Her question caught him off-guard. Thanos never liked to be anywhere for long. He’d arrived in Manhattan a day earlier anticipating his business here would be wrapped up within twenty-four hours. Now he paused, with no idea when he’d be able to get out of town.
‘I have no idea.’
Silence for a moment and then, ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow?’
He turned back to face her, and there was no warmth in her expression. In fact, he couldn’t have said if she’d asked the question with curiosity or apprehension, but both sparked a ridiculous urge to laugh.
Instead, he nodded stiffly. ‘Yes. Goodnight, Alice.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT YOU NEED is to get married, Thanos.’
Leonidas’s words came to Thanos as if through a thousand galaxies—crackly and distant. He jerked out of bed, completely naked, and strode through his penthouse apartment.
His brother’s statement was exploding through his brain, like stardust and gold. He reached for the crystal decanter of Scotch and poured himself a generous measure, moving towards the grand piano and tapping a key lightly. Manhattan
glistened beneath him, all shimmering lights and elaborate dreams.
This was the first time in years he’d been alone in this city. Usually, he called one of his past lovers—of which there were many here in the city—and enjoyed a night of unbridled, no-strings passion.
But the meeting with Kosta had left him inexplicably dissatisfied.
Thanos was a master at keeping his personal life separate from his private life. The fact he had a well-documented and active bachelor lifestyle was neither here nor there. He knew he was, unequivocally, the right person to take over P & A.
And beyond that, Petó deserved to come home.
‘I know it’s out of left field but have you actually passed out?’ Leonidas’s words were filled with humour.
Thanos sipped his Scotch slowly, his eyes moving from one high rise to another. When he eventually spoke, it was with a sardonic drawl. ‘I understand that you’re in the heady bliss of being a newly-wed but I think we can safely say marriage is the last thing on my mind.’ In fact, the very idea turned his blood cold. One week after his mother had dumped him on Dion Stathakis’s doorstep, throwing a traumatised little boy into the home as one might a cat into a flock of pigeons, Thanos had sworn to Leonidas that he’d never be stupid enough to fall in love or get married.
He’d been eight and miserable, his heart broken, his soul crushed—looking back, he could see now that he’d also been terrified. His mother, the woman who’d raised him, the only family he’d ever known, had told him she couldn’t ‘do this’ any more, and dropped him like a sack of potatoes.
His father had made it abundantly clear he didn’t want Thanos, that he was raising him out of duty. When Dion’s own marriage had crumbled because of Thanos’s unexpected arrival, a large part of Thanos’s heart had been sealed closed—he knew it would never open again.
Was it any wonder Thanos viewed relationships and commitment as something best avoided?
‘I don’t mean a real marriage,’ Leonidas explained with mock simplicity.
Beyond the window, dusk was falling, the night sky turning an inky black, no stars to be seen in the brightness cast by the vibrant city. Thanos cradled his drink in the palm of his hand.
‘Kosta has given you the solution; you’re just not listening. He won’t accept any offer you make because you’re a walking tabloid headline. This isn’t just a top five hundred company he’s selling. It’s his family empire.’
‘It’s our family empire too.’
‘He bought Petó a long time ago. I doubt he continues to consider it as a distinct entity from P & A.’
‘And nor do I. I am not attempting to separate Petó from the fold. I am willing to take on his business as well.’
‘Yes, I get that. But he’s not willing to sell to us. Not given your...predilection for headline-grabbing behaviour.’
Thanos stiffened, the criticism sitting uneasily around his shoulders now. He’d never felt uncomfortable about his lifestyle before; he’d never had any reason to. But hearing first Kosta and then his brother cast aspersions on the way he lived was filling Thanos with a sense of impatience. ‘My social life is no impediment to my running Stathakis,’ he heard himself point out coldly.
‘True, but neither of us could do anything worse than our father did to trash our family name, right?’
Thanos winced, sympathy for his brother at the forefront of his mind. Years had passed since that awful day when Leonidas’s young family had been murdered as a vendetta against their father but even now that Leonidas was married with a beautiful little girl who was growing way too fast, Thanos still felt sorrow for what had been lost.
‘You and I are nothing like our father.’