“I’m sorry. We get lost in our own little world,” Soren apologized, turning his attention to the aunt who was staring at them with a mix of disgust and irritation. Soren stuck out his hand and smiled warmly. “I’m Soren Jorgenson. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Maria Nikolaou. I am Isidore and Athena’s aunt on their mother’s side of the family. How did you and Isidore meet?”
Soren cuddled in close, wrapping both of his arms around Isidore’s. “At a nightclub in Athens. He was just the sexiest thing I had ever seen, so naturally I had to snatch him right up. We’ve been completely inseparable for the past month. Best month of my life!”
“You’re exaggerating,” Isidore demurred.
“No, I’m not! You’ve taken such good care of me. I just don’t know what I’d do with myself if I lost you.” Soren was ridiculously good at playing over the top. All his mannerisms and vocal tones had become larger than life so that whenever he was standing beside Isidore and talking, eyes were constantly drawn to them.
“And what did you do before you met our Isidore?” Maria inquired.
“Oh, I think I’ve done a little bit of everything. Modeling, acting, and tour guiding. People say that I’ve got a friendly, easygoing personality,” Soren rattled off with a practiced ease. Isidore had listened to him give variations of this speech so many times over the past several days and he was still so convincing.Hewanted to believe him.
“Ah…” was all that Maria said. Isidore couldn’t decide whether he wanted to laugh or cry. Of course, if it had been Kairo beside him giving a semi-honest answer, he would have been pissed at her response.
And then it hit.
“Isidore, can I speak to you alone for a moment?” She leaned toward Soren and flashed a tight smile. “A family matter.”
“Of course!” Soren brushed a kiss to Isidore’s cheek. “Izzie, baby, I’m going to wander outside and grab some of those nummy finger foods.”
“Thank you, Soren,” Isidore murmured, trying not to laugh.
“I swear to God and all that you hold dear, if you ever say ‘nummy’ again where I can hear it, I’m going to rip your tongue out with my bare hands,” Gabriel threatened over the earpiece.
Alexei immediately snapped at his uncle, but it sounded like an explosion of Russian. He didn’t catch a single word of it.
“Shut it!” Kairo ordered harshly as Isidore moved out of view of the camera, following his aunt down one of the halls. There were a handful of blind spots in the house, but Kairo generally had them covered by someone. Isidore had a feeling his aunt was headed to one of the front parlors. Both were smaller, intimate rooms that all retained a more feminine touch thanks to his mother’s decorating efforts.
“Who has eyes on Isidore?” Kairo barked.
“Got him,” West said smoothly. “East hall.”
Isidore wanted to reassure him that he was safe. This was his Aunt Maria. His mother’s sister. She’d held him when he was a baby. She couldn’t possibly wish to hurt him.
But he also knew that Kairo had been unable to mark any of his aunts and uncles off his list, and there had to be a reason for that. He trusted Kairo to protect his back as they navigated this minefield.
She stopped at the first closed door, tried it, and then scowled at him when she found it locked.
“Let’s go to the music room. I’m in the middle of redecorating several rooms.” Isidore smiled and held out his arms, trying to herd her down the hall to one of the rooms they’d decided ahead of time to leave open.
Her scowl grew worse as she swept past him. “What are you thinking, Isidore?” she snarled in Greek.
“Excuse me,” Isidore gasped as he followed her in, trying to sound surprised as he closed the door behind them. He could guess at the speech he was going to hear only because he’d been subjected to it at least three other times.
“How could you be so reckless? Wasting the family money. First on this house. Your mother decorated this house herself and now you’re wasting money on needless changes. Just wiping away her memory. And how much of the family money have you wasted on that man?”
Isidore clenched his teeth, fighting back his temper. He wanted to shout at her over her false indignation. She was lamenting his erasure of the sister she supposedly disowned when she inherited all the farms from their grandmother and then a second time when the same sister didn’t put her in her will but rather gave everything to her children.
And of course, he could not forget that it wasalways the family money.Never his money or his inheritance that he was wasting, but the family money as if they were all just counting down the days until they finally got access to what they considered theirs.
And the idea of erasing the memory of either of his parents was laughable. His mother redecorated constantly. The tone and feel of the Santorini house wasn’t her signature style. She didn’t have one. She loved experimenting. If Isidore told her that he planned to preserve what she’d done for the rest of his life, she would be horrified. The decorations on Santorini were just a representation of her last whim.
Besides, nothing at the family home in Athens had been changed. Did they all expect him to leave everything untouched for the rest of his life as a shrine to his dead parents? The same people they regularly bad-mouthed at every opportunity?
Finally, Soren—anyone he dated, for that matter—was none of her fucking business.
But he’d been trained to be diplomatic. To not burn bridges. To value family ties no matter how strained they became.