One Night to Risk It All

And beneath that...

The children of those women.

Many of them had been given away by their mothers. Sold, Alex now realized, for drugs. He had spent many years feeling astonished, grateful, that his mother hadn’t done so. That she’d put some sort of value on him. That he’d stayed safe.

A miracle, it had seemed.

But then he’d found out the truth. And the truth hadn’t been rainbows and a mother’s love. No. The truth had been poison.

He was the monster he’d always despised. A tool that kept his mother near her favorite addiction. Not heroin, but Nikola Kouklakis himself.

The older man had, of course, kept her there since she was the mother of his son. Since Alex was his son. But Alex had discovered the truth and when his mother was no longer useful it had all come crashing down.

And Alex had run. Run away and never looked back.

And when he’d finally stopped, when he’d won enough card games that he had some money—money and this island—met enough people that he’d forged business connections and learned about the stock market, when he’d finally reached the pinnacle of success, that was when he’d looked back for the first time.

He’d looked back at all of the pain, all of the injustice, and then he’d looked at the one man who had risen above it. Clean, pristine and well-respected. Rich as god with a beautiful woman hanging on his arm.

And he’d known that next on his agenda was making sure that Ajax Kouros knew helplessness. That he knew fear. That he knew what it was to lose the things he loved.

And while he hadn’t destroyed the other man’s business yet, not for lack of trying, he did have Ajax’s fiancée.

And though he wasn’t actively using Rachel as revenge at the moment, that thought almost made him cheerful.

“Where are we?” Rachel asked as the plane touched down, white sand and turquoise sea rushing into view.

“An island near Turkey. I call it...” And he realized that earlier he’d told her his mother’s name. It made him feel exposed, to tell her what he called the island when she would know why. He cursed his moment of sentimentality. Cursed the fact that he still cared so much for a woman who’d never loved him back. Who had ended her life rather than spend her days with him. “I call it Meli’s Hideaway,” he said. “And before you ask, no, my mother never saw it. She...died just before I left the Kouklakis compound. But if she hadn’t...this is where I would have taken her. So she could have a rest, finally. Though she’s resting now, I suppose.” If she had given him a chance. If she had trusted in him at all. If the idea of being with him hadn’t been a torture she couldn’t bear.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muted. “My mother passed away, too. It’s hard. Really hard.”

“Life is hard,’ he said, lifting one shoulder in a casual gesture.

“What? That’s it?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Life is hard and then you die. Is that better?”

She shook her head. “Not really. You’re not exactly enjoying the journey, are you?”

He stood up as the plane came to a stop. “Enjoying the journey is for another sort of person, from another sort of life. Someone like you, agape.”