Page 19 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

He nodded, would have passed on the message his mother had asked of him if the rock in his throat hadn’t expanded.

‘I…’ Now it was as if the same rock had lodged in her throat. ‘I still think the world of her too.’

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be sure to tell her that.’

‘Thank you.’ Her lips pulled together before forming a tremulous smile. ‘She must be so proud of you.’

‘Probably the proudest mother in Greece.’

‘I knew it.’ Her smile softened into something so beautiful his heart clenched. ‘She used to tell me about you. Lamb was your favourite food.’

‘You rememberthat?’ Of everything she’d said to shock him, this rose straight to the top. Draco’s early memories were like snapshots taken with an out-of-focus camera. He couldn’t remember any conversations below the age of seven, maybe even eight, let alone the favourite food of someone he’d never met, and it came to him that not only did Athena have a prodigious memory but that she really had loved his mother.

‘I don’t know why, but that always stuck with me. And…’ she hesitated a moment ‘…that your father died before you were born.’

Dumbstruck, it took a beat for him to respond. ‘Yes. There was an accident at sea—he was a fisherman.’ But he could see from the expression in her eyes that she already knew this. That she remembered his mother telling her.

‘Is that why you have her surname?’

‘Yes. She made that choice when I was born because she knew the two of us would be a unit until I became an adult.’

Her head made a slow inclination, the green eyes that saw much more than she wanted people to believe flickering with her thoughts. ‘Why did you buy my father’s company, Draco? It’s so far apart from your other businesses that it might as well be from the moon, and from what I’ve read it’s the only business in your portfolio you haven’t built from the ground up. Did you buy it to destroy my father?’

He could lie or refuse to answer but there was something in the atmosphere of honesty cloaking them that forced his tongue to speak the truth. ‘I wanted to. Destroying your father was my prime motivator in those early years. I used to dream of having enough money to force a buyout of Tsaliki Shipping. I was going to dismantle it so everything your father had built would be gone and his legacy no longer existed.’

‘Do you still intend to do that?’

‘Those were dreams fuelled by fury and bitterness. I’m not going to put tens of thousands of people’s jobs at risk for revenge. I’m still going to erase his legacy, but in a way that will only injure him.’ He smiled at the thought. ‘And injure his wife.’

‘How?’

He narrowed his eyes meditatively. ‘Can I trust you?’

‘No.’

Her reply was so immediate and sparky and decisive that amusement burst free. ‘Then you will have to wait like everyone else.’

The creasing of Draco’s eyes lifted Athena’s spirits straight back up and loosened the tightness that had been coiling her insides again, the creasing a signal that she could move on from a conversation that was heavier—much heavier—than she ever allowed. As wonderful as she was starting to admit to finding Draco, this was unfamiliar territory and she was struggling enough pretending her whole body wasn’t alive with awareness of him and that if she moved her foot two inches it wouldn’t brush against his, without wishing a plague on her father and Rebecca for the way they’d treated Cora and without trying to decipher how it felt to be exchanging confidences with someone because she never, ever exchanged confidences.

It was disconcerting how badly she wanted to know even more about Draco, how there had to be a dozen questions about his life queueing on her tongue, and she bit them all back to produce a wide smile and airily said, ‘I can wait until the launch party, no problem.’

The expression on his face was the giveaway and she laughed, a laughter that came from her belly and not her throat like her laughs normally did.

‘What else could it be?’ she giggled when she had better control of herself. ‘I thought you were excluding me from the planning meetings out of spite but it’s because you don’t want me to know what you’re up to, isn’t it—don’t tell me!’ she hastened to add when he opened his mouth. ‘I’m terrible at keeping secrets. And don’t confirm or deny about the party, even though I know it has to be that, seeing as anyone who’s anyone is invited, including my father and Rebecca…’ A thought occurred to her. ‘When you say injure…’

He gave a rueful half-smile. ‘Injure their pride. Nothing more.’

‘You promise?’

Sincerity rang from his eyes. ‘I promise.’

Satisfied, she grinned and picked up her cutlery.

‘You don’t care?’ There was none of the contempt he usually showed when he asked if she cared about something, only curiosity.

Appetite regained, she piled the dissolve-on-the-tongue cod onto her fork. ‘After the way they treated your mother, they deserve whatever it is you’re planning to throw at them.’

His piercing stare held hers, the intensity of it sending electricity through her skin. And then he smiled. ‘You are constantly full of surprises.’