Page 2 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

‘Don’t worry; this conversation will be all about you, specifically your attitude and behaviour. Now sit up. And that’s an order.’

‘Yes, boss.’ Instead of swinging her long legs around like a normal person would, she kicked them high into the air and then, with perfect grace, scissor split them as she twisted her hips. A moment later she was sat demurely with her hands on her lap and a beatific expression on her beautiful face.

One thing Draco had discovered about Athena in the long, long, long month she’d worked for him was that she hated silence, and so he took great pleasure in making her sit in it.

She managed five seconds. ‘Well? What specifically do you want to bollock me about?’

‘Let’s start with your time-keeping. I hear you were an hour late today.’

She held her hands up. ‘I was having a manicure.’

‘I’ve told you this before, Athena—manicures, like all personal grooming, are to be done in your personal time, not work time.’

‘But my nails were electric blue, which didn’t go with my outfit,’ she said earnestly, ‘Also, I’m really busy in my personal time. Swamped.’

‘I know, you’ve told me before.’ Many times. ‘Moving on, I hear you refused to photocopy the Druman report.’

Her hands rose again. ‘I’d only just had my nails manicured.’

‘And refusing to make Christos a coffee?’

She waved her manicured fingers.

‘You are an administrator. Making coffee for the directors and other senior members of the finance team is part of your job description.’

‘Do you have any idea how much this manicure cost me?’

‘Do you have any idea how many of your colleagues want to shoot you?’

Her mouth formed a perfect O, the rest of her beautiful features forming the perfect expression of shock. ‘People can be so cruel.’

‘Speaking of cruel, I also hear you asked Evangeline if she’d dressed in the dark.’

‘That wasn’t cruelty, that was curiosity—honestly, Draco, have youseenwhat she’s wearing today?’

‘No, but you are in no position to judge, sitting there dressed as the Sugar Plum Fairy. I thought I’d made it clear—no more fancy dress or inappropriate attire in the office.’

Her long, thickly mascaraed lashes fluttered. ‘What’s inappropriate about this outfit?’

This woman was going to be the death of him.

Two more months. That was how much longer he had to keep her employed.

But this was the deal he’d made. Alexis Tsaliki had been immovable about the condition his siblings be employed and the penalties that would be invoked if any were sacked before the three months were complete. Any other deal and Draco would have walked, but this was Tsaliki Shipping, the company he’d coveted for decades. In eight sweet weeks, Georgios Tsaliki, the unconscionable Tsaliki patriarch who’d already experienced the ignominy of having his own company wrested from his control by his eldest child—how Draco had enjoyed observing that from afar—and then sold without his input would experience the ultimate humiliation of knowing everything he’d worked for his whole life was gone. The Tsaliki name, for decades considered one of the greats in shipping, would no longer exist.

How Draco would enjoy watching Georgios and his equally unconscionable wife’s faces when the new name was revealed. As far as revenge went, this was minor in terms of the damage Draco could have done, but fate had already played its hand and taken its revenge for him. Georgios and his wife now lived at the mercy of Alexis, the only Tsaliki sibling to have made anything of himself. Taking away the Tsaliki name was simply Draco putting the icing on the cake of revenge Georgios’s own actions had caused.

It wasn’t just Georgios and Rebecca now living at Alexis’s mercy. All Alexis’s siblings were too. Alexis controlled everything, and it was with this power that he’d set the terms of the deal with Draco and forced his siblings to comply.

Draco had fully expected to despise all of Georgios’s children. The last thing he’d expected was to feel sorry for them. Alexis, he grudgingly admired. Alexis had his shit together and had long let go of his father’s coat-tails to make his own way in the world, but the others were collectively famed for being a bunch of useless, work-shy wasters. Credit where it was due though, they were trying. Whether that was because they took their oldest brother at his word that failure to complete three months of work would see them cut off financially for good didn’t matter. They were trying. All except the family princess, Athena.

Alexis had warned him Athena would be the trickiest sibling to integrate into the workforce, and Draco had duly prepared himself…or so he’d thought.

He’d had no idea what he was letting himself in for.

Resting her elbows on the tulle tutu, she placed her knuckles under her chin and sweetly murmured, ‘I know you don’t want to admit defeat, but why don’t you just give in and sack me?’

If only.