Page 240 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘She was upset. After your father told her about the arrangement, she…’

‘Wanted the company, yes, that much I deduced for myself.’

‘You see it as your birthright,’ Jane murmured.

‘Itismy birthright. I was raised to do this.’

‘But she is also a Papandreo.’

His nostrils flared.

Jane’s loyalties were so incredibly torn. She had to make him see Lottie’s side, even when she knew that would cost her everything with Zeus. Her throat hurt from the weight of unshed tears, but she continued.

‘You don’t know what it was like for her, Zeus.’

He made a gruff sound of disgust, but Jane continued regardless, her voice shaking a little. She felt tears splash down her cheeks, warm and fat, but she didn’t bother to check them.

‘All her life, Lottie has felt like someone people were ashamed of. Her mother—’

He swore again. ‘Donotspeak to me of that whore.’

‘Zeus…’ Jane was appalled. ‘Mariah Shaw isnota whore, and I’ll have you know she was head over heels in love with your father. She’s loved him all this time, has never been with another man since. How can you possibly judge someone you’ve never met?’

A muscle jerked in his jaw as he continued to lance her with his dark stare.

‘She didn’t want to make things harder for him—’

‘How generous of her.’

‘Or your mother,’ Jane added softly.

‘And I’m sure the ten million pounds my father paid her, not to mention ongoing child support, had nothing to do with that.’

Jane flinched on behalf of Lottie and her mother. ‘You don’t think Lottie was entitled to be raised in a lifestyle akin to yours? Would you have preferred it if your father had left Mariah to struggle, as a poor single mother?’

Zeus’s face paled beneath his tan. At least on that front she was sure she’d gotten through to him.

‘Five minutes,’ he said, voice cold, so even if she had felt like she’d made some headway, she realised very quickly that it wasn’t enough.

Jane closed her eyes, her heart hurting more than it had ever hurt in her life. ‘What else do you want to know?’

‘The plan. All of it.’

‘There was no plan,’ she said, but he made a scoffing noise to dispute that. ‘Not a very good one, anyway.’

He stared at her, waiting for her to continue.

‘Lottie wanted me to distract you,’ she said, biting into her lip.

‘To make me want you,’ he murmured. ‘So that I wouldn’t propose to anyone else?’

Jane squeezed her eyes shut and nodded once, a tiny shift of her head.

‘And in the meantime, she’d be looking for someone to get married to, so that she could take the business away from me?’

It all sounded so incredibly awful said like that. But what could she do? There was no sense denying it.

‘Is that correct, Jane?’