Nikos shrugged. “What he knows for sure is how much I want to be in the CEO’s chair.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I would do anything to be there finally. Except hurt my sister. Although really, Savas’s suggestions are beginning to make more and more sense. In my desire to not hurt her, I brought you into this, and probably drove her even deeper into Tyler’s arms.”
She felt a shiver settle deep in her bones. “So he is pitting the two things you want above everything else against each other? Hoping that you are heartless enough to hurt your sister?”
“Yes.”
Anxiety rampant in her veins, she came to a stop in front of him. “Are his... Do his assumptions have basis, Nikos?”
He traced his knuckles over her lower lip, and Lexi trembled for more than one reason. “You’re trembling, yineka mou.” She tucked her forehead into his shoulder, willing herself to let it go. She was courting nothing but trouble by asking, by digging herself in. Whenever this issue with Tyler and Venetia was resolved, she would walk away. She had to.
His long fingers gripped her nape, the pad of his thumb moving up and down. “What is it that you want to know but are so afraid to hear, Lexi?”
She looked up. “I think...no, I know that you will never hurt Venetia willingly. It’s a different thing altogether that, with your twisted anger toward Tyler, you are doing just that.... But for your grandfather to blackmail you like this, to pit you against your own sister, to...see if you will take the suggestion and run with it...it means you—”
“It means that I have done things to remove any obstacles from my way before, yes.”
She exhaled on a long breath, bracing herself. Whatever Nikos did, beneath the uncaring facade, she knew he had paid a price. “Like what?”
“My aunt’s son, Spyros, he is a few years older than me and he was my grandfather’s favorite when I first met him. He was everything I was not. Well-educated, smart and best of all, obedient. More than that, Savas had been grooming him, ever since my father walked out, to take over the reins of Demakis International.
“But it was not his right. It was mine. I had already slogged for a decade with little notice or returns for it. I realized following Savas’s rigid instructions wasn’t going to get me anything but the bare minimums. It was time to make him take notice of me.”
“What did you do?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this, Lexi?”
Say no, walk away. “Yes.”
“I went digging and discovered Spyros, beneath his perfect exterior, had a little secret. He had a wife hidden away that no one knew about, and he was struggling to get out of his engagement to one of Savas’s oldest friend’s granddaughters. I arranged for his wife to come to his engagement party. And despite Spyros’s pleas asking for forgiveness, Savas kicked him off the board.”
The quiet, matter-of-fact tone in his words only amplified the chill they caused. “You knew what your grandfather would do.”
His gaze narrowed into an unflinching hardness, Nikos stared at her. “Everyone knew what he would do, including Spyros. He had made his choice. I just hurried along the consequences.”
“I don’t get it. It’s not like you don’t have money of your own.” She pushed off from the wall, and walked the perimeter of the pool. “That yacht, the private jet, this new real-estate deal you have with Nathan Ramirez...you have nothing to want.
“Why is becoming the CEO so important to you, Nikos?”
He gave her a long look that said he wasn’t dignifying her question with an answer. “It just is.”
“Why can’t you be happy with what you have? Why let your grandfather push you into anything?”
“Savas didn’t push me into anything. I started on this path with one goal in sight. The moment I walked in through those electronic gates, clutching my sister to me, the poor little bastard that everyone pitied, I made a promise to myself. That I would do everything I can to become the master of it all. Do you realize what odds I have surmounted to get to this stage? I started with nothing, Lexi. And I won’t settle for everything that he walked away from, until I’m everything he was not.”
“Until you’re everything he...” Her heart sinking to her shoes, Lexi finally realized who he meant. The bitterness in his words, it was only a superficial cover on a deeper cut. “Your father? Nikos, what he did was awful, but you have to forgive him. He may have started this, but it’s your grandfather that brought you to his point. With every little thing you tell me about your grandfather, have you never wondered why your father might have turned his back on all this?”