Chapter One
Part One
Part One
Eleanna
Welsh placed the receiver down with shaky hands and stared. Her mouth was dry and her body numb. Is this for real or am I dreaming?
The phone call from attorney Eliot Lambert had shaken her to
the core. She tried to replay the conversation in her mind. However, she
couldn’t remember much. The only phrase that had burned itself indelibly in her mind was that…her
father was dead.
Drawing a deep breath, she stared at her familiar London office,
with its white walls, worn burgundy carpet, and rows of glass cubicles. Nobody at
the law firm paid any attention to her. All of a sudden she felt isolated and
lonely.
What’s happening to me?
“Are
you okay?” Her chubby blonde coworker, Samantha, startled her back to reality.
“What?”
“I
said, are you okay? You seem like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Well…maybe
I have.” Eleanna sprang to her feet. She grabbed her purse and stormed past
Samantha’s cubicle and down the corridor, leaving everyone who happened to
notice her stunned.
As if in a dream, she heard Jonathan Sanders—the youngest
partner at Bishop, Marks & Sanders, where Eleanna worked as an executive
secretary—calling after her, but she kept going. By the time
she reached the elevator, the doors had opened and Mary—another coworker—stepped off. Eleanna launched inside, pressing
the button to the lobby. As the doors closed, she saw Jonathan rushing after
her, but she remained frozen, too dazed to move or speak.
Stepping
outside the glass-and-steel office tower, Eleanna
raised her face to the cloudy, late-summer sky and closed her eyes, drawing
deep breaths to clear the turbulence in her mind. She stared at her reflection
in the glass wall of the building’s entrance. The tall, slim woman staring back at her, with golden-brown
hair and hazel eyes, seemed like a stranger.
All of a sudden, Eleanna wasn’t twenty-four
years old anymore but a seven-year-old girl with long braids. She closed her
eyes, remembering the endless nights perched on the windowsill of the little
two-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother on the outskirts of London,
crying, praying, and waiting in vain for her father to come back.
It
had been seventeen years since that rainy night when he’d walked out and never returned,
yet deep down inside Eleanna always hoped that one day they’d meet again. She
thought about it, dreamed about it, wished it would happen with all her heart.
And now, it was too late.
The penetrating noise of an ambulance siren pierced her
thoughts. She glanced at the heavy downtown London traffic and anxiously
checked her watch. Eleven o’clock—I have
plenty of time. She let out a deep breath. Her appointment with Eliot
Lambert wasn’t until twelve thirty. Hoping that the fresh air would clear her
mind, she decided to walk to his office, which was only a few blocks away.
Swallowing hard, she experienced a hollow feeling in her
stomach. She glanced around; a lot of people were walking by, but at that
moment Eleanna felt invisible.
Grab a hold of
yourself. You knew this might happen…you’ve
been preparing for it. However, anger, grief, and a thirst for revenge against
ruthless Contessa Angelina Sideris threatened to engulf her. Driven by hatred
and greed, the Contessa had forced her parents to leave Corfu, the beautiful Greek
island of their birth. Not to mention that Eleanna suspected that the Contessa
was also responsible for her father’s disappearance from London, which ended up
tearing their family apart.
And what were the
other things the attorney said? Eleanna drew
some deep breaths and let them out slowly. He mentioned that it was urgent and
vital for her to sign some paperwork regarding her inheritance of a luxury resort
on Skopelos—an island in the Aegean Sea, three hundred miles away from Corfu that
is in the Ionian Sea. What inheritance on
Skopelos? Where did this inheritance come from?
And why is it urgent and vital to sign something right now? Too many
questions burned in her mind.
Taking a deep breath, Eleanna started for Lambert’s office.
It was time to get some answers.
***
Eleanna observed the impeccably dressed, middle-aged attorney cautiously.
He was polite all right, but something about him bothered her. Maybe it was the
way he persistently avoided giving her any straight answers. All he’d told her
so far was that her father had passed away, leaving her a 50 percent share of
the Royal Blue Luxury Resort, a five-star hotel at Panormos Bay. The other 50
percent belonged to a man named Stephanos Ioannou, owner and managing director of Midas International Corporation—a multibillion-euro conglomerate. Apparently,
Mr. Ioannou was interested in buying her out. And
not only that, but the paperwork had to be signed within three weeks. If not, a
multimillion-euro joint venture with Sunrise Hotels—an international hotel chain—would
fall through, with a detrimental effect on the resort’s liquidity.
“Are you sure about this, Miss
Welsh?” Mr. Lambert asked, staring at Eleanna over his thick glasses. “I think
Mr. Ioannou’s offer is the best you can hope for.” He leaned forward and laced his hands on his polished oak desk.
“Mr. Lambert,” Eleanna replied calmly, despite her rising anger,
“I already explained to you that at this point, I’m not interested in selling.
I would like to see the resort first and then make a decision.”
“But it would be too late by then.”
“Not if I make it to the island
before the deadline of this deal.”
“As you wish,” the attorney said,
letting out a deep sigh.
“You still haven’t told me how my
father died.”
“All I know is that your father
drowned,” Mr. Lambert replied.
“Drowned? You mean in the sea?”
“I don’t have that information,
Miss Welsh.” He shifted impatiently.
The only thing this lizard is worried about is getting
my signature on those damn papers. Well, that’s not going to
happen.
***
“She doesn’t want to sell,”
Lambert informed Stephanos Ioannou a few hours later.
“What?” Stephanos barked. The
thirty-two-year-old tycoon slammed his fist on his enormous cherry wood desk. He
was used to getting what he wanted, and
all this hassling with legal stuff infuriated him. He’d been waiting for
Lambert’s call the whole afternoon. “What do you mean she doesn’t want to sell?
Did you tell her my offer?”
“No,” the attorney said,
hesitating. “She didn’t even ask.”
Stephanos drew a deep breath and
sprang to his feet. “What the hell are you talking about?” He strode over to
his huge windows, which overlooked the scenic Panormos Βay. “You told her I was ready to buy
her out, and she didn’t even ask how much I’m willing to pay?”
“That’s exactly right.”
The attorney’s flat voice was starting
to get on Stephanos’s nerves. What an
idiot! He probably didn’t handle it right.
“She wants to come to Skopelos,”
Lambert said.
“Come to Skopelos? But why?”
Stephanos gritted his teeth. This was supposed to be a quick deal, and now
this. Why on earth would this girl want to come to Skopelos? “Make sure she changes her mind.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I
can give it another try, but I’m sure it’ll be useless. She’s determined to
come; she even asked me if I could recommend someone to make all the traveling
arrangements.”
“We’ll make the arrangements,
then.”
“Mr. Ioannou, making traveling
arrangements are not part of my job.”
“I said, we’ll do it!” Stephanos
slammed down the phone. It was bad enough that he’d had to deal with his
partner, Marios, all these years. They never got along, and when the deal with
Sunrise Hotels came up, Marios stubbornly refused to accept it. Stephanos had
come to suspect that Marios had a hidden agenda. After Marios’s death,
Stephanos had resumed negotiations for the deal when, out of the blue, a will
appeared, naming Eleanna Welsh as Marios’s
only heir. Stephanos couldn’t wait to buy out this long-lost daughter and finalize
the deal, which would provide a substantial amount of working capital for the
resort and Midas International Corporation. That was why he was so generous
with his offer. How could she refuse? Well, this stubborn girl was in for a
real treat…
***
Read Chapter One Part Two here
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