Page 73 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER NINE

A LEXIS RODE THE elevator up to his apartment with a mixture of emotions playing in his guts.

His legal team’s efforts to get the gossip about Lucie removed had been as pointless as he’d suspected.

When he’d finally left the office, #RunLucieRun had been trending all over social media.

When he’d finally left the office he’d had to fight his way through a media scrum.

His hope that Lydia would spring out to greet him with a smile on her face came to nothing too.

He found her in the main living room curled up on a sofa doing something on her phone.

She lifted her face at the sound of his footsteps and raised a smile but didn’t raise her body. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

He pulled a face and threw his suit jacket and tie on the nearest chair.

‘A contract we were days away from signing off on and which I’d planned to trumpet in the press as a sign that Tsaliki Shipping is still going from strength to strength, has been withdrawn.

I’ve heard on the grapevine that another of our contracts which is up for renewal at the end of the year is in danger—the owners are in secret talks with one of our competitors. ’

‘That’s worrying.’

He nodded. Lydia had grown up steeped in the business and knew how it worked.

After pouring himself a brandy, he slumped on a seat close to her and looked at her more closely. She looked tired and withdrawn, as if she too were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. ‘You’ve been in touch with your family?’

She bit into her bottom lip and nodded.

‘So you know?’

‘About the shareholder meeting?’

He took a slow sip of his drink and inclined his head.

Antoniadis Shipping’s major investors were demanding a meeting with Thanasis.

Antoniadis Shipping were expecting a new fleet of container ships within the next week.

Allegedly, billions still needed to be paid.

If those investors pulled their money Antoniadis Shipping would be sunk for good.

She opened her mouth to answer but then her phone buzzed in her hand. She looked at the screen and closed her eyes.

‘Not going to answer it?’

‘I can’t speak to him.’

‘Your brother?’ he guessed.

Her jaw tightened as she took a long breath.

‘It was hard enough talking to my mother. Thanasis is in pieces. I saw a paparazzi picture of him earlier.’ She laughed morosely.

‘He looks a wreck. I used to think he was the best person in the world and the strongest, and now I’m completely torn.

A part of me thinks he deserves all this for the unconscionable way he treated Lucie and then I hate myself for thinking that because the fallout is destroying so many lives.

I think it must be destroying him the most because he fell in love with her and now he’s lost her and is losing everything else.

I’ve already betrayed my family by sleeping with you and now I’m married to you and carrying your child and so he’s lost me too and it feels like I’m leaving him all alone.

I don’t know how I can speak to him or even what I can say that won’t make everything worse for him and for myself because every word I do say will be tainted by lies.

’ Her stare suddenly landed on his, her eyes flashing.

‘And God knows there have been enough lies, by everyone .’

Alexis absorbed all this, absorbing too Lydia’s unspoken but implicit condemnation of himself for his role in all this.

Their fathers’ war had started decades ago, before any of their children had been born, but it had been left to the children to be the grown-ups in the room and attempt to repair the wreckage.

Their attempts had only blown a fresh bomb on what had already been a vast detonation.

‘In hindsight, I would do some things differently,’ he acknowledged.

He would do everything differently. ‘In our defence, once Rebecca had planted the seed of the lie, it seemed the most logical thing to play along with it precisely to prevent the destruction everyone is now living through.’ Lucie’s own mother had started the lie that Lucie and Thanasis had fallen in love.

‘Not you though. You’re insulated.’ Her smile was grim. ‘You’re the only one of us all who is going to get through this whole mess unscathed.’

‘You forget that though I’m the one with the least to lose, I’m the one who fought the hardest to stop this all from happening.

’ He drained his brandy and fixed her with a hard stare.

While he appreciated Lydia was upset at everything that was happening to her family, he did not appreciate her attempts to make him the scapegoat for it.

‘Do not forget, marriage between our families was my idea and it was a damn good one—your brother was the one who screwed it up, no one else. He drove Lucie away the first time by behaving like an arsehole to her and then drove her away a second time by discovering his conscience.’

‘At least he has one,’ she bit out pointedly.

He studied her through narrowed eyes wondering when the Lydia who’d been determined to fight any good feeling towards him had made a return. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Apart from my whole life being destroyed? Nothing.’

‘Your nothing feels very personal. Have I done something to upset you?’

She eyeballed him back with a loathing he hadn’t seen since they’d become lovers and then all the air seemed to puff out of her as she sagged in her seat and hung her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I’m feeling very guilty and emotional today and I’m taking it out on you.’

‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’

She rubbed her face and nodded.

Crossing to her, he sank onto his knees and smoothed her hair off her wan face. ‘You look tired,’ he said softly. ‘How about I run you a bath? Have a long soak before dinner.’

Something agonised flashed over her beautiful face before she dragged up a small smile. ‘How can you be nice to me when I’ve just been all bitchy and mean to you?’

‘I’ve had worse thrown at me.’ Instead of this bringing a proper smile to her face, the smile she had formed fell and her eyes closed. ‘Lydia, you’re pregnant, your family is being destroyed and your whole world is changing. It is understandable that you’re on edge.’

She opened her eyes.

He traced a thumb over her cheekbone. ‘I cannot perform miracles but, whatever happens, I promise I will not let your family fall into poverty.’

A line creased her forehead. ‘Why would you promise that?’

‘Because whether they like it or not, their daughter is my wife and they are my child’s grandparents, and that makes them my family too.’

Lydia stayed in the bath so long her fingers and toes turned into prunes.

Two nights of passionate sex had released so many endorphins or whatever the chemical was that she’d basically stopped thinking with her brain and, having tried valiantly not to think too much in Alexis’s absence that day, her thoughts about him now refused to stay tucked away and had returned with a vengeance. And her fears.

This was her life now. What she’d agreed to.

She couldn’t start acting like Queen Bitch just because Alexis had recently taken a lover and fallen hard enough to consider marrying her.

Whoever the elusive lady was, he hadn’t gone through with it, not only because he’d married Lydia, which he couldn’t have done if married to someone else, but because he’d had flings with at least three other women in the last month, and those were just the ones she’d read about.

He’d probably been cock-struck, a term she remembered from her university days when one of the biggest campus players had fallen hard for one of her friends.

In the short time they were together, Maya—yes, another Maya—could have asked him to shave all his hair off and he would have slavishly obeyed.

Two weeks later he’d come out of his stupor and dumped her.

Lydia wished she could tell herself that she was suffering from the female equivalent.

Going to bed with Alexis had been madness but it had been a madness she’d fully embraced and refused to regret.

He’d fully lived up to his reputation and more, and she’d walked away on her own terms. Now she got to live that exquisite joy every night and she had no right to feel jealousy at some poor woman whose heart he’d inevitably broken or feel something a lot like rage-fuelled sickness to imagine the next woman whose heart he’d break.

She needed to be concentrating on keeping her own future heartbreak to a minimum.

She was no longer confident that when Alexis did take a lover she would be automatically cast aside, was feeling increasingly certain that she really would have to emulate Rebecca Tsaliki’s insouciance and turn a blind eye and pretend every minute that his infidelity didn’t hurt.

The next day passed for Lydia much like her first full day.

She’d seamlessly imported all her files and apps and contacts from her old computers to the new ones but, again, couldn’t find the head space to concentrate on her work, couldn’t even find the motivation to pitch for the new contracts that had popped up on the networking site in the last few days.

She couldn’t shift the sickness in her stomach.

If she didn’t know it was all being caused by stress she’d think morning sickness had decided to throw itself at her just as the pregnancy progressed beyond the first trimester.

Restless, bored with being cooped up and not wanting to wallow in self-pity when she had nothing to be self-pitying about considering that, whatever happened, her child’s future was secure just as she’d so wanted, she wandered out of the office Alexis had had created for her.

Soon, she found herself studying the pop art hanging on his walls.

Such fresh, fun pieces ranging from comically sexy to comically absurd and all brought a much-needed smile to her face.