The Greek's Billion-Dollar Baby

‘You cannot live the rest of your life like this,’ Thanos insisted quietly, his tone serious now, their banter forgotten. There weren’t many people on earth who could speak plainly to the great Leonidas Stathakis, but Thanos was one of them, and always had been. Side by side they’d dealt with their father’s failings, his criminality, his convictions, the ruin he’d brought on their fortune and the Stathakis name.

Side by side, they’d rebuilt it all, better than before, returning their family’s once-great wealth—many times over. They were half-brothers, only three months apart in age, and they’d been raised more as twins since Thanos was abandoned on their doorstep by his mother at the age of eight. Their insight into one another was unique.

Leonidas understood Thanos as nobody else did, and vice versa. Leonidas knew what it had done to Thanos, his mother abandoning him, choosing to desert him rather than find a way to manage his dominant character traits.

‘What would you do?’ Leonidas drawled, but there was tension in the question. Tension and despair.

Thanos expelled a sigh; the car stopped. Thousands of screaming fans were outside on the red carpet, here to catch a glimpse of the A-list Hollywood stars who’d featured in the film of the premiere they were attending.

‘I can’t say. I get it—you miss Amy. What happened to her and Brax—do you think I don’t feel that? You think I don’t want to reach into that prison cell and strangle our father with my bare hands for what he exposed you to? But, Leonidas, you cannot serve her by living half a life. Do you think Amy would have wanted this for you?’

Leonidas swept his dark eyes shut, the panic in his gut churning, the sense of self-disgust almost impossible to manage. ‘Don’t.’ He shook his head. ‘Do not speak to me of Amy’s wishes.’

But Thanos wasn’t to be deterred. ‘She loved you. She would want you to live the rest of your life as you did before. Be happy. Be fulfilled.’

‘You think I deserve that?’

‘It was our father’s crimes that killed her, not yours.’

‘But if she hadn’t met me…’ Leonidas insisted, not finishing the statement—not needing to. Thanos knew; he understood.

‘It’s been four years,’ Thanos repeated softly. ‘You have mourned and grieved and honoured them both. It’s time to move forward.’

But Leonidas shook his head, his time on Chrysá Vráchia teaching him one thing and one thing only: it would never be time. He had failed Amy during their marriage, in many ways; he wouldn’t fail her now.

‘Tuna salad, please,’ Hannah said over the counter, scanning the lunch selections with a strange sense of distaste, despite the artful arrangements. In the four months since arriving in London and taking up a maternity-leave contract as legal secretary to a renowned litigator, Hannah had grabbed lunch from this same store almost every day.

Her boss liked the chicken sandwiches and she the tuna. She waited in the queue then grabbed their lunches and made her way back to the office as quickly as she could.

There was a wait for the lift and she stifled a yawn, sipping her coffee. Her stomach flipped. She frowned. The milk tasted funny.

‘Great,’ she said with a sigh, dropping it into a waste bin. Just what she needed—spoiled milk.

But when she got to her desk and unpeeled her sandwich, she had the strangest sense that she might vomit. She took one bite of the sandwich and then stood up, rushing to the facilities. She just made it.

It was as she hovered over the porcelain bowl, trying to work out whether she was sick or suffering from food poisoning, that dates began to hover in her mind. Months of dates, in fact, without her regular cycle.

Her skin was damp with perspiration as she straightened, staring at the tiled wall with a look of absolute shock.

No way.

No way could she be pregnant. Her hand curved over her stomach—it was still flat. Except her jeans had felt tight on the weekend, and she’d put it down to the sedentary job.

But what if it wasn’t just a little weight gain? What if she was growing thick around the midsection because she was carrying Leonidas Stathakis’s baby?

She gasped audibly, pushing out of the cubicle, and ran the taps, staring at herself in the mirror as the ice water ran over her fingertips.

Surely it wasn’t true? It was just a heap of coincidences. She had a tummy bug and her weight gain was attributable to the fact she was chained to a desk for twelve-hour days. That could also account for her recent exhaustion.

That was all.

Nonetheless, when she left the office much later that day, still feeling unwell, Hannah ducked into a pharmacy around the corner from the Earl’s Court flat she’d rented a room in.

She’d do a pregnancy test. There was no harm in that—it was a simple precaution.

In the privacy of her the bathroom, she unsealed the box, read the instructions, and did precisely what they said. She set an alarm on her phone, to tell her when two minutes was up.

She didn’t need it, though.

It took fewer than twenty seconds for a second line to appear.

A strong, vibrant pink, showing that she was, indeed, pregnant.

With Leonidas Stathakis’s baby.

‘Oh, jeez.’ She sat down on the toilet lid, and stared at the back of the door. Her hand curved over her stomach and she closed her eyes. His face appeared in her mind, unbidden, unwanted, and unflinchingly and just as he had been for months in her dreams, she saw him naked, his strong body and handsome face so close to her that she could breathe him in, except he was just a phantom, a ghost.

But not for long.

It shouldn’t have happened. Despite the fact she’d torn his note into a thousand pieces and left it scattered over the marble bench-top of the luxurious penthouse kitchen, his words were indelibly imprinted into her mind.

Well, regardless of his regret, and the fact he hadn’t respected her enough to say that to her face, she’d have to see him again.

There was nothing for it—she had to face this reality, to tell him the truth.

And she would—when she was ready.

Hannah checked the name against the piece of paper she clutched in her hand, looking around the marina with a frown on her face.

There was some event on, Capri Sailing Week or some such, and the whole marina was bursting with life. Enormous boats—or ‘superyachts’, as she’d been told they were called—lined up like swans, so graceful and imposing in the evening sun.

She knew from the search she’d done on the Internet that Stathakis Corp owned a boat that took part in the event. She also knew that Leonidas and his brother came to the event annually on their own ‘superyacht’. Photos had shown her a suntanned Leonidas relaxing on the deck, casting his eye over the race.

She’d closed out of the images as quickly as she could.

She didn’t need to see him again. Not like that.

This was going to be quick, like ripping off a plaster. She’d tell him she was pregnant—not that she’d really need words. At more than five months along, she was quite visibly carrying a baby.

She’d been so tempted just to call him. To deliver the news over the phone and leave it at that, just as he’d written her a note instead of having the courage to face her the next morning.

But it was cowardly and she wasn’t that. They were having a baby together—she couldn’t ignore the ramifications of their night together and nor could he. At least she knew that, no matter what happened next, he’d regretted that night.

He’d regretted it, he wished that it hadn’t happened, and he’d treated her with complete disdain and disrespect, skulking out in the middle of the night, leaving a note! It wasn’t as if she’d have begged him for more—they’d both agreed to it being one night only. It was the salt in the wound of him vanishing, not even bothering to say goodbye.

That was the man she was having a child with.

She grabbed hold of that thought; she needed to remember that.