Page 57 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
CHAPTER ONE
L YDIA A NTONIADIS PEERED intently through the binoculars she’d borrowed from a deckhand, watching the supply boat heading in the direction of Kos.
She’d caught a fleeting glance at a figure slipping below deck, which in itself was not in the least strange, but what was strange was that the figure bore a strong resemblance to Lucie Burton.
But it couldn’t be Lucie because Lucie was marrying Lydia’s brother the next day on Sephone and so definitely wouldn’t be sailing away from the island.
It must have been a trick of the mind. After all, the distance between the yacht Lydia stood on the sundeck of and the supply boat was immense.
Definitely a mind trick, she assured herself again before training the binoculars on Sephone itself.
The island’s gorgeous multiple-domed villa was gleaming under the rising sun, and she slowly scanned the faces in its front grounds.
The only ones she recognised were the household staff, which wasn’t really surprising considering it was barely nine a.m. They all looked stressed, which wasn’t surprising either considering hundreds of people were about to descend on the island for the wedding. Most would be there before nightfall.
Draining her glass of water, she looked out again over the Aegean. More vessels had appeared since she’d become distracted by the figure on the supply boat.
‘You’re up early, baba .’
Lydia flinched but didn’t drop the binoculars. ‘I didn’t hear you sneak up on me.’
‘I was hardly sneaking,’ her mother said drily, standing beside her at the balustrade. ‘What’s got you so enraptured?’
‘Nothing. Just looking to see if I recognise any of the yachts heading this way.’
‘And?’
‘Too far away to tell. Looks like we’ll be the third party to arrive.
’ There were two superyachts already anchored, and they sailed past them, the crew scurrying around preparing to dock at the small harbour that could accommodate only two vessels.
Lydia’s brother refused to dredge the shoreline of his precious island to accommodate more.
‘Are any of them here yet?’
Them. Meaning the Tsalikis.
Lydia’s fingers tightened but her voice remained steady. ‘No.’
‘Good. I couldn’t face seeing any of them before my breakfast has been digested. Have you eaten?’
‘I’ll get something later.’ Her stomach was so tightly knotted she’d struggled to get water into it.
‘You need to eat.’
‘Don’t fuss. I’m fine.’
‘None of us are fine, baba , but we all need to eat. It’s going to be a long couple of days and we need to keep our strength up.’
Lydia nodded automatically. Since their lives had imploded her mother had gone into self-preservation mode with a steely smile and a steelier determination that whatever happened to the family business and fortune, the family itself would survive.
Part of this survival came in the form of food.
Her mother had always been a feeder but in recent months, Lydia had been unable to walk through the front door without having food thrust in her face.
What they had travelled to Sephone for, though, was going to push her mother’s steely smile to the limit: a marriage between Lydia’s brother Thanasis and Lucie Burton, the stepdaughter of their enemy Georgios Tsaliki.
For the next three days, with the world’s press acting as witnesses, they were going to break bread, smile, dance and laugh with their heinous sworn enemy and his equally heinous family.
This wedding was the Antoniadises’ last chance to save their business and save themselves from destitution.
Soon, their yacht was moored beside Thanasis’s and it was time to disembark and play their parts in the performance of the century.
With her father striding along the jetty as if he’d spent his whole lifetime waiting impatiently for this wedding and her mother striding purposefully with her steely smile fixed firmly in place, Lydia followed behind them, attempting her own steely smile and trying her hardest not to think that the one thing that could actually break her mother lay nestled in her stomach.
Alexis Tsaliki read the message Thanasis Antoniadis had sent him for a third time, spat a curse, and pressed the intercom. ‘Get the jet ski out for me. Now.’
Jumping out of bed, he threw shorts, a T-shirt and a pair of running shoes on, then raced out of his yacht’s master cabin and banged on his father’s door. His stomach curdled when his stepmother opened it but there was no time for unpleasantries. ‘Where is he?’
‘Showering. What’s wrong?’
He pushed past her without answering and banged on the bathroom door. ‘Dad, get out of there. We need to talk.’
‘What’s wrong?’ his stepmother asked again.
Not bothering to hide the loathing he usually masked for the sake of family harmony, he said tightly, ‘Your daughter.’ Then he banged even louder on the bathroom door.
‘Lucie? What’s happened?’
‘Dad!’ he shouted. ‘We need to talk right now.’
The bathroom door opened and Alexis was engulfed in a cloud of steam and the unedifying sight of his father dripping wet from the shower he’d been enjoying. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Lucie knows everything. She’s gone. The wedding’s off.’
His father seemed to deflate before his eyes.
‘What do you mean she’s gone ?’ Rebecca demanded in a high voice. ‘How can she be gone ?’
One of his siblings—and Alexis had many siblings—having heard the commotion, barged into the cabin, quickly followed by another and another and another until it seemed like every Tsaliki in existence was in the cabin shouting over each other, all throwing panicked questions at him.
‘That’s all I know!’ he roared over the noise. ‘Everyone get dressed. We’ll be anchoring soon and you can take the tender over, but I’m taking the jet ski there now so I can find out exactly what’s going on and see if I can find Lucie and talk some sense into her.’
Not giving them the chance to argue, he elbowed his way out of the cabin.
The jet ski was ready for him. Throwing himself on it, he turned the engine on and, not caring that he wore no life jacket, set off at top speed to Sephone.
Lydia saw the figure speeding to the island on the jet ski before anyone else.
No trickery caused by distance could discount what the thumping of her heart was telling her, and she gripped her forearms and swallowed back a swell of nausea that was different from the nausea already rolling in her stomach.
‘It will be okay, baba ,’ her father said, noticing the change in her demeanour and wrapping a trembling arm around her. Kissing the top of her head, he whispered, ‘I promise, everything will be okay.’
She leaned into him, fighting the threatening tears and fighting the growing urge to open her lungs and vocal cords and just scream; scream until her throat was raw and she had no breath left to give.
‘Thanasis will fix it,’ her father added, as if Lydia’s brother were a god amongst mortals and could bend the world to his whim.
‘How?’ she whispered dully. ‘Lucie will never marry him now. It’s over. Everything’s over.’
She looked at her mother slumped on the fine white sand, the steely smile wiped off her face, her expression that of utter despair.
Looked at her brother sitting on the same rock he’d been propped on when he’d explained the situation to them, her mighty big brother who always had the answer to everything sitting there as if all his stuffing had been knocked out of him.
And then she glanced again at the figure on the jet ski closing in on the beach.
Another swell of nausea rose from the pit of her stomach followed by a swell of anguished fury and, without thinking of what she was doing, she wrenched herself out of her father’s comforting hold and rounded on her brother.
‘What the hell were you thinking, lying to Lucie like that?’
His dull eyes barely focussed on hers. His confession had left him spent.
Nearly two weeks ago, Lucie had been in a car crash that had seen her hospitalised for days with a major head injury.
Thanasis had brought her to his private island to recover.
It had made sense. Sephone was a tranquil Greek paradise and their wedding was being held there.
Unbeknownst to Lydia, her parents and the rest of the world, Lucie’s accident had been caused after she’d called the wedding off and fled Thanasis’s Athens apartment.
Unbeknownst to them all too, Lucie’s head injury had caused an amnesia.
She’d forgotten everything about the wedding, including the huge row that had seen her flee from Thanasis.
Between them, Thanasis, Lucie’s mother, stepfather and the oldest of her stepbrothers, Alexis, had conspired to make Lucie believe that, far from hating each other, she and Thanasis had fallen in love for real and not just as a game being played out for the sake of their respective family businesses’ survival.
‘Lydia, don’t,’ her mother said tiredly. ‘Your brother is suffering enough.’
Usually her mother’s warning would be enough to make Lydia shut up, but in that moment too many emotions were crowding in her head and chest, and her heart was thrashing too wildly at the jet ski figure closing in on them for her to listen or think clearly.
‘ He’s suffering?’ she screamed. ‘Well, I’m glad!
It serves him right! Lucie did nothing to deserve being treated like that.
’ Her back to the sea, she threw her hands on her hips to stop them lashing out at her zombified brother.
‘She gave up her home and career to save our business and you did that to her?’