Prologue
“TASSO?” LEONIDAS BRUSHED past his brother in the hallway of their family home, but it was as if Anastasios was on another planet. “Are you okay?”
Anastasios looked at Leonidas through narrowed eyes. “Where are you going?”
Leonidas gripped the handle of his duffel bag, his gut tightening. His plan to slip away without anyone noticing evaporated. “Somewhere else.” Guilt shifted inside him. “I know I should be here, with Mitéra, with all of you—,”
Anastasios’ lips were grim. “Thanasi has said he’ll stay for the time being.”
Their eyes met and something passed between them, these bookends of brothers, oldest and youngest, and so very alike. Two weeks after their father’s death, they were all still reeling.
“It shouldn’t be up to Thanasi,” Leonidas muttered.
Anastasios sighed heavily, lifting a hand to Leonidas’ shoulder. “You were very close to him,” he said gently.
“We all were, in different ways.”
“Not like with you.”
Leonidas angled his face away, a muscle jerking low in the base of his jaw. Anastasios was wrong. He hadn’t been particularly close to his father; it was Valentina they saw when they looked at Leo, Valentina they thought of. The complexity of that knowledge twisted inside of him now and he sucked in a deep breath. It didn’t matter that he’d come to represent a talisman of a little girl who’d died many years earlier. He’d adored his father, had always craved his opinion, had desperately wanted his father to recognize him as his own person, just once.
“I have to get away,” he said simply, bleakly. “To clear my head.”
“Go,” Anastasios nodded his understanding, but he paused, hesitating, obviously returning to the thoughts that had held him in thrall moments earlier.
It prompted Leonidas to ask, “Is everything okay? Besides the obvious.”
The joke felt flat. Anastasios grimaced, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m not sure yet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Tasso? What aren’t you telling me?”
Anastasios tilted his face away. “It’s too much to explain right now.”
Leonidas loosened his grip on the bag. “I have time.”
Anastasios shook his head. “But I don’t.” He took a step back. “We’ll discuss it, soon. Nothing can be served by having the conversation now.”
Leonidas knew better than to argue. Anastasios was every bit as stubborn as Leonidas, and his mind was clearly made up. “I have some things to sort out. Once the situation is managed, I’ll fill you in. And the others.”
Conversation closed.
Leonidas nodded slowly. “You’ll let me know if you need help?”
“I don’t.” His eyes glinted with determination. “It’s under control.”
“Okay. Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“You know me, right?”
Leonidas smiled for the first time in a week. “Take care of yourself.”
“And you, brother.”
Leonidas strode through the hallway of their family home, and out the front doors, trying not to think of his father, and the absence in his life, trying not to remember all the ways they’d spent time together. His father had been harsh, filled with expectations, refusing to accept anything less than their best. He was as tough as nails and expected them to be so as well. He’d worked them to the bone, as children with jobs around the house, and as young men, in the family company, where Konstantinos had been determined they would truly work their way up. At fifteen, they started doing administrative work in the various companies and departments, typing letters, sitting in on meetings, no job was too menial or small for their attention. They emptied trash, ferried lunches, always listening and learning. At dinner, he would quiz them on what they’d seen that day, on what they thought about it, on what they felt the company should do next. He required them to read the financial newspapers, to keep abreast of global politics and the impacts on trade.
He was exacting and quick to express his disapproval if you failed to meet his standards.
Some might have presumed that being born to the Xenakis family meant you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, that a birthright was waiting for you, resplendent with opportunity, a gift guaranteed by way of biology, but that was not the case. Konstantinos had always been clear on that score: his children would earn their place within the business, not be granted a seat at the table because they were his kin.
The grueling parenting style had resulted in four sons who managed the trillion-dollar empire equally, who were capable of not just stepping into Konstantinos’ shoes, but of polishing them to a whole new shine.
The business would survive—Kon had made sure of that. But their family would never be the same without their father. Each brother would have to grapple with that in their own way, and for Leonidas, that meant escaping, just for a while.
He needed, more than anything, to get away, and to be utterly, and completely alone with his grief.