this: I married your father because he could give me what I needed. That’s what is important. Success. Security. Power. Don’t ever concern yourself with emotions. They make you weak. Especially love.’
Alexio would never forget the excoriating feeling of exposure and shame in that moment...
He felt a hand on his shoulder then and looked to his older half-brother, Rafaele, who stood beside him and smiled tightly. They’d always shared the same conflicted relationship with their mother. Rafaele’s Italian father had gone to pieces after their mother had walked out on him when he had lost his entire fortune—an unpalatable reminder of their mother’s ruthless nature so soon after that disturbing childhood memory of his own.
For years Alexio and his brother had communicated with habitual boyish rough-housing and rivalry, but since Rafaele had left home to make his way when Alexio had been about fourteen their relationship had become less fractious. Even if Alexio had never quite been able to let go of his envy that Rafaele hadn’t had to endure the almost suffocating attention he’d received from his father. The heavy weight of expectation. The disappointment when Alexio had been determined to prove himself and not accept his inheritance.
They turned to walk away from the grave, engrossed in their own thoughts. They were of a similar build and height, both a few inches over six feet, drop-dead gorgeous, dark-haired. Alexio’s hair was darker, cut close to his skull. Their mother had bequeathed to them both her distinctive green eyes, but Alexio’s were lighter—more golden.
When they came to a stop near the cars Alexio decided to rib his brother gently, seeking to assuage the suddenly bleak feeling inside him. He observed his brother’s stubbled jaw. ‘You couldn’t even clean up for the funeral?’
‘I got out of bed too late,’ Rafaele drawled with a glint in his eye.
Alexio smiled wryly. ‘Unbelievable. You’ve only been in Athens for two days—no wonder you wanted to stay at a hotel and not at my apartment...’
Rafaele was about to respond when Alexio saw his face close up and his eyes narrow on something or someone behind him. He turned to look too and saw a tall, stern-faced stranger staring at them from a few feet away. Something struck him in the gut: recognition. Crazy. But the man’s eyes were a distinctive green...and that gut feeling intensified.
The stranger flicked a glance at the grave behind them and then his lip curled. ‘Are there any more of us?’
Alexio bristled at his belligerent tone and frowned, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’
The man just looked at Rafaele. ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
Alexio saw Rafaele go pale. Hoarsely he asked, ‘Who are you?’
The man smiled, but it was cold, ‘I’m your older brother—half-brother. My name is Cesar da Silva. I came today to pay my respects to the woman who gave me life...not that she deserved it.’
He was still talking but a roaring was sounding in Alexio’s ears. Older half-brother? Cesar da Silva. He’d heard of the man. Who hadn’t? He was the owner of a vast global conglomerate encompassing real estate, finance—myriad businesses. Famously private and reclusive.
Something rose up inside Alexio and he issued an abrupt, ‘What the hell?’
The man looked at him coldly and Alexio could now see the fraternal similarities that had led to that prickle of awareness. Even though da Silva was dark blond in colouring, they could be non-identical triplets.
Da Silva was saying coldly, ‘Three brothers by three fathers...and yet she didn’t abandon either of you to the wolves.’
He stepped forward and Alexio immediately stepped up too, feeling rage building inside him in the face of this shocking revelation. His half-brother topped him only by an inch at most. They stood chest to chest.
Cesar gritted out, ‘I didn’t come here to fight you, brother. I have no issue with either of you.’
A fierce well of protectiveness that Alexio had felt once before for his mother, before she’d rejected it, rose up within him. ‘Only with our dead mother—if what you say is true.’
Cesar smiled, but it was bleak, and it threw Alexio off slightly, making the rage diminish.
‘Oh, it’s true—more’s the pity.’
He stepped around him then and Alexio and Rafaele turned to watch him walk to the open grave, where he stood for a few long moments before taking something from his pocket and throwing it into the black space, where it landed with a dull thud.
Eventually he turned and came back. After a long, silent but charged moment, during which he looked at both brothers, he turned and walked swiftly to a waiting car. He got into the back. It drove off smoothly.
Rafaele turned towards Alexio and looked at him. Gobsmacked. Shock reverberated through his body. Adrenalin made him feel keyed up.
‘What the...?’
Rafaele just shook his head. ‘I don’t know...’
Alexio looked back at the empty space where the car had been and something cold settled into his belly. He felt exposed, remembering that time when he’d thought his mother would allow him to protect her. She hadn’t. Ever elusive, she was now managing to reach out from beyond the grave and demonstrate with dramatic timing just how a woman couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth and reveal her secrets. She would always hold something back. Something that might have the power to shatter your world.
CHAPTER ONE
Five months later...
‘CARA...DO YOU have to leave so soon?’
The voice oozed sultry sex appeal. Alexio stalled for a second in the act of buttoning up his shirt—not because he was tempted to stay but because, if anything, he felt even more eager to leave.
He schooled his features and turned to face the woman in the bed. She was all honeyed limbs and artfully tumbled glossy brown hair. Huge dark eyes, a pouting mouth and the absence of a sheet were doing little to help Alexio forget why he’d chosen to take her to his hotel suite in Milan after his brother Rafaele’s wedding reception last night.
She was stunning. Perfect.
Even so, he felt no resurgence of desire. And Alexio didn’t like to acknowledge the fact that the sex had been wholly underwhelming. On the surface it had been fine; but on some deeper level it had left him cold. He switched on the charm he was famed for, though, and smiled.
‘Sorry, bellissima, I have to fly to Paris this morning for work.’
The woman, whose name he all of a sudden wasn’t entirely sure of—Carmela?—leant back and stretched seductively, displaying her perfectly cosmetically enhanced naked breasts to their best advantage, and pouted even more. ‘You have to leave right now?’
Alexio kept his smile in place and when he’d finished dressing bent down and pressed a light kiss to her mouth, escaping before she could twine her arms around his neck. Claustrophobia was rising within him.
‘We had fun, cara...I’ll call you.’
Now the seductive pout was gone, and the woman’s real nature shone through as her eyes turned hard. She knew when she was being blown off and clearly did not like it when the man in question was as sought-after as Alexio Christakos.
She stood up from the bed naked and flounced off to the bathroom, issuing a stream of Italian petulance. Alexio winced slightly but let out a sigh of relief as soon as she’d disappeared behind a slamming door.
He shook his head as he made his way out of the suite and towards the lobby of the plush hotel in the private lift reserved for VIP guests. Women. He loved them, but he loved them at a distance. In his bed when it suited him and then out of it for as long as he cared to indulge them—which invariably wasn’t for long.
After years