CHAPTER ONE
THISMUSTBE what it would feel like walking to the gallows, Ilona Callas’s imagination whispered as she passed through the security gauntlet in the lobby of the Vasilou Tower.
Her skin was clammy and her stomach was filled with lead. Her heart raced and her breathing was so shallow and rapid, she grew light-headed. Her nostrils burned with the scent of danger. Flee!
Perhaps it was the glass elevator. The guard showed her into it and pushed the button, but left her to rise alone. She averted her gaze from the way the plants and people abruptly shrank beneath her and grasped the rail for balance.
She didn’t care for heights, not since her older half brother Midas had dragged her to the edge of a cliff and terrorized her with threats of throwing her off. A joke, her stepmother had insisted. Boys will be boys.
Deep down, Ilona suspected the reason she was here was because Midas was at it again. He was so funny with his destructive pranks, he ought to have his own comedy special on the streaming networks.
The Parthenon came into view then even that behemoth shrank as she continued to rise. Buildings this tall were a rarity in Athens. Most kept to twelve floors or less, ensuring the Parthenon was always in view. The fact the owner of this tower had been allowed to double that height told her he did not confine himself to the rules that governed others.
Much like Midas.
The knives in her stomach turned.
The door pinged and opened. Ilona entered a top floor reception area of stunning design. The marble tiles were arranged so the veins created a river effect, guiding her through a gallery of modern art to a desk stationed before a glass wall etched with a map of the globe.
A woman sat behind the desk, but a scrupulously groomed young man stood by to greet Ilona.
“Kyría Callas. Kaliméra. I’m Androu. Kýrie Vasilou will be with you shortly. May I ask you to wait here?” Androu led her to a door adjacent to the reception area, one that opened into a small, stuffy glass-fronted room. It held a round table and four chairs that were a chic, modern design made from polished wood. He didn’t offer coffee or water before he left her.
The lack of respect was obvious. This room was a prison where she had no privacy. The lighting was artificial, the music not piped in. The only sound was the loud tick of the clock. Ilona didn’t bother trying her phone. The service would be poor; she was sure. This room was deliberately uncomfortable so meetings here would be kept short.
It was not the place to leave a peer.
If Leander Vasilou thought she would depart in a huff of indignation, however, he was deeply mistaken. Ilona had been insulted, attacked and disregarded her whole life. Rather than taking offense, she was grateful for the time to sit quietly and escape the coming confrontation with more pleasant thoughts.
She admired that marble floor and wondered how she might obtain the name of the mason so she could plagiarize the effect in her flat. Or, as she often fantasized, perhaps she would sell her flat and move to the island of her mother’s birth. She loved her work, but today was a perfect example of why it was also draining. It would be far less stressful to work in a café the way her mother had. On Paxos, she would have a view of actual water. She could feed the stray cats and try her hand at pottery. That had always fascinated her. So tactile and magical to create shapes from silt. She would have to look up whether there were appropriate clay deposits—
“Kyría Callas?” Androu was back. “Kýrie Vasilou will see you now.”
A glance at the clock revealed she had been waiting thirty-three minutes.
Since the young man held the door with an air of expectation, she rose.
“Thank you,” she said, but the blanket of dread returned to her shoulders, heavy and cold.
She followed him down a blessedly air-conditioned corridor, through a far more comfortable waiting area, one that provided a small banquet of refreshments and a view of the city.
He waved her into a massive office.
Here, the marble veins in the floor created a mountain effect. On one side, there were a sofa and chairs with a television mounted above a wine cooler set in a cabinet of glasses and bottles of spirits. The other side held a meeting table with six ergonomic chairs, a projector and a blank whiteboard.
In front of her, at the pinnacle of the mountain, natural light poured through a wall of glass, backlighting the occupant of the office, Leander Vasilou.
He sat at a desk made from a curved slab of polished mahogany set atop drawers arranged in a slant. The whole thing looked offset, but dynamic and ultramodern. He wore an earpiece and was speaking in French, booking a tennis match with someone.
The doors closed behind her, but his conversation only lapsed into whether a certain piste at a Swiss ski resort had been attempted, then the merits of protein shakes over whole foods after working out.
He didn’t look at her once.
Ilona hadn’t been invited to sit so she didn’t. She waited with the patience she had gathered around her through a lifetime of being least and last and deeply unwanted. It usually served her well, cushioning her against most of life’s spears and arrows.
Not today.
She knew he was aware of her, knew he was deliberately trying to get under her skin. To her chagrin, it was working. She wanted to put it down to the attack this stranger was waging on her. Many would label it “just business,” but it was deeply personal to her. It was her business he was attacking.