Chapter 70


    All their lives were changing.


    He went to grab his briefcase, which he’d left by Alessandra’s corner office. Instead of picking it up and


    leaving, he found himself sitting at her desk, flipping through the portfolios of her work.


    As much as he admired all her work, it was their wedding album he spent the most time looking


    through. These were the unofficial ones taken by Alessandra, a timeline from the start of their wedding


    week, when their first guests had arrived, right up to the moment they’d got on the dance floor for the


    Kmatianos. His lips quirked to see a picture of a particrly beautiful but notoriously moody actress


    smiling for the camera with something ck in her teeth.


    His heart jolted when he turned the page over to find a montage of photos of the same face. All


    different angles, all different moods: some smiling, others distant, a couple frowning... One in particr


    held his attention. The face was staring directly into the camera, a wide, rxed grin on the face, a soft


    yet suggestive look in the eyes, as if the person wanted nothing more than to take the photographer to


    a private room and make love to them.


    Not have sex.


    Make love.


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    The subject of the photographs was him.


    * * *


    Christian pulled up outside Vi Mondelli. Turning off the engine, he stared at it in the same way he had


    stared at it as a poor eighteen-year-old boy on the cusp of bing a man. He’d seenvish


    splendour before, had walked past the mansions in the most affluent parts of Athens vowing that, one


    day, he too would live in a home like these. Vi Mondelli was the first of that particr type he’d


    actually been invited into. Not only invited to cross the threshold but to stay there for a week—and


    many more weekster on throughout his life, but of course at the time he wasn’t to know that. The


    Mondellis had weed him, Stefan and Zayed into their home and treated him as if he were their


    equal, as if he were more than a dirt-poor gutter rat raised by a single woman with callused hands.


    Now, fourteen yearster, with homes every bit as opulent as the vi and wealth beyond his dreams,


    he still felt that same tug in his heart. But this tug was for Alessandra.


    When he’d first visited he’d been full of envy for the people who lived there, brought up with such easy


    wealth. Or so it had seemed to his eyes.


    Alessandra had lived in this house almost her whole life, brought here when her father had lost his own


    house and abdicated responsibility for his children onto his own father. Alessandra had been a baby.


    She’d grown up feeling responsible for her mother’s death, shunned by her father and raised by an


    often austere man who’d thought his child-rearing days long finished with. Her only source of love had


    been her older brother whom, despite all her grumbles at his interfering, she worshipped. For much of


    Alessandra’s life in this home, that same brother had been absent, away in the US studying, graduating


    to be a workaholic.


    More often than not, her onlypany in this vast house were the staff, people sharing a roof with her


    because they were paid to.


    All the envy he’d felt fourteen years ago had gone, reced with the sad knowledge that even the


    richest of people could lead the poorest of lives.


    Look at him. He, Christian Markos, was now regarded as one of the richest men in the world. He had


    all the wealth and all the trappings such wealth brought, but in his heart he was still poor.


    It was only now, at the age of thirty-two, that he’d discovered the path to true richness.


    He hadn’t even ced a foot on the bottom step when Ro answered the door.


    Christian looked up at him. ‘I’m here to see Alessandra.’ He hadn’t seen her in a fortnight. They’d


    exchanged a couple of text messages. She’d agreed to meet him in Mn for her next obstetrician


    appointment, but until then she wanted some space.


    He’d needed space too, to get his head together. To get his heart together.


    Ro looked him up and down. ‘And what if she doesn’t want to see you?’


    ‘Has she said that?’ A puff of relief escaped from him. His hunch had been right. For all Alessandra’s


    promations that she’d rather live in a convent than stay with her brother, this was the first ce


    Christian had looked when she’d failed to return to her apartment after her Tokyo trip.