“I’m the one with the power of the morality clause to my benefit. Her family loses everything if she doesn’t stay in line. Might as well make it clear.”
“As I said, you won’t have any problem with any of this. She is nothing like the rumors.”
“Then it won’t be any problem to reiterate it.”
“Wouldn’t it make your life easier for the next year to have a fiancée who likes you versus one who hates you?”
“This is business. I don’t care how she feels about me as long as I have the money and my agreement with her family stands.”
“Famous last words.”
2
Nyx
“Olympia Nyx Mykos,you must get married. Do you hear me?” my cousin-in-law Penny Lykaios mocked in an exaggerated Greek accent as she cocked a hand on her hip and tossed her high ponytail of long black hair to the side.
“No. I’d rather become a nun and move into a convent.” I folded my arms, trying not to laugh and sling dirt everywhere from the potting soil on my gloves.
I was covered in all kinds of plant life, tinged with sweat from the balmy ninety-degree heat in the botanical gardens of the Ida Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
“It is your duty to fulfill the contract. Our family is depending on that money.” Penny pursed her lips and picked up a hybrid tulip to transfer into its new home, making a pretty good impression of the disappointed scowl my Aunt Teresa gave me every time she looked in my direction.
“I didn’t make the contract. I don’t have to do anything.”
Penny harrumphed and tossed her hair, slinging a giant wad of dirt above us and making it so hard for me to keep a snort inside. “You are shaming the family. First, you move to Las Vegas to live with those Lykaios heathens who gamble and drink all day, and now this. That Penny Lykaios is a bad influence—a good Greek girl wouldn’t spend her days making liquor. What was your father thinking?”
Neither of us could keep a straight face anymore, and we both fell on our butts, laughing hysterically.
The tourists observing us from the observation side of the gardens probably thought we were complete morons. Thankfully, it was right before the back rooms closed for viewing, and only a few people were milling about at this time of the early evening.
After a few more moments of uncontrollable laughter, we gathered some semblance of professionalism and righted ourselves.
“Damn, you do a fabulous impression of Aunt Teresa. She’s so worried I’m going to run away that she forgets I’m the one stuck in this contract.”
“It’s the money she wants. She doesn’t actually care what happens to you.”
Yes, the money.
Not just a small chunk of change. An amount totaling well over a billion dollars. It sounded insane when I thought about it, but a century of interest compounding in a Swiss trust could do wonders.
If only my great-aunt Julia hadn’t fallen in love with her bodyguard and run away from her arranged marriage, I wouldn’t be in this situation.
Then again, I couldn’t really begrudge her for picking love over money. Plus, I’d seen pictures of my great-uncle Victor Danos, and he was smokin’ hot.
Like movie-star, mafia-romance-novel sizzling.
“Money is all anyone ever wants. If I’d been born a boy, the trust would have sat for another generation or two,” I muttered to myself as I jabbed my trowel into the flowerbed to shovel some soil aside.
“Count your blessings. At least your family ignored your aunts and uncles’ backward views on women and didn’t have any objections to you becoming a horticulturist or moving to Vegas.”
If she only knew the hoops I’d jumped through to even pursue a degree at NYU. The only reason I’d gotten my master’s and PhD was that it was an all-in-one undergraduate-to-graduate program I’d worked my ass off to qualify for. Not to mention the hours it took to convince Papa that moving to Vegas and taking over the botanical gardens at the Ida, a casino owned by Mama’s cousin, my deceased Aunt Rhea’s sons and daughter, was an opportunity of a lifetime.
“Let’s say there were a lot of compromises, but my brothers had my back.”
I smiled thinking of Tyler, Nico, Damon, and Evan. They understood that I wasn’t meant for the role I was born into. Under their tutelage, I’d learned skills no proper Greek girl should know, from how to win fistfights and shoot guns, to wielding a knife in such a precise manner, it would leave the least amount of blood splatter.
Yeah, when I thought about it, my upbringing wasn’t normal by any family’s standards, syndicate or not.