What was done was done. I’d turned the tides and restored the fortunes of my family. For that even my father couldn’t object.

Which was why I was a little surprised when he emphatically shook his head.

‘There isn’t. Your grandfather was of sound mind when he made the arrangement.’

‘Even though he was judged otherwise in other areas?’

Barely fettered bitterness filtered through my voice. The injustices dealt to my grandfather and mentor, the man who taught me everything I know, still burned like acid all these years after his untimely death.

‘Now is not the time to reopen old wounds, Axios,’ my father said, jaw clenched.

My quiet fury burned even as I accepted his words. ‘I agree. Now is the time to discuss ways to get me out of this nonsense.’

And it was nonsense to expect an arrangement like this to hold water.

‘A sweeping agreement where the other party gets to call the shots whenever they like? How come the lawyers haven’t ripped this to shreds?’ I demanded, striving to keep a tighter rein on my ire.

My father’s lips firmed. ‘I’ve spent the last month discussing it with our counsel. We can fight it in court, and probably win, but it’ll be a protracted affair. And is now really the time to draw adverse publicity to the company? Or drag your grandfather’s name through the mud again for that matter?’

My own lips flattened as again I grimly accepted he was right. With Xenakis Aeronautics poised for its biggest global expansion yet, the timing was far from ideal.

Which was exactly what Yiannis Petras had banked on.

‘You mentioned you’d offered him ten million euros and he refused? Let’s double the offer,’ I suggested.

Neo shook his head. ‘I already tried. Petras is hell-bent on Option A or Option B.’

The breath left my lungs in a rush. ‘Over my dead body will I go for Option A and hand over twenty-five percent of Xenakis Aeronautics,’ I replied coldly. ‘Not for the paltry quarter of a million his father bailed Grandpapa out with, while almost crippling him with steep interest repayments!’

The company I’d spent gruelling years saving was now worth several billion euros.

My brother shrugged. ‘Then it’s Option B. A full and final one hundred million euros, plus marriage to his daughter for minimum term of one year.’

A cold shudder tiptoed down my spine.

Marriage.

To a bride I didn’t want and with a connection to a family that had brought mine nothing but misery, pain and near destitution.

During the formative years of my life I witnessed how a fall from grace could turn family members against each other. Clawing my own family out of that quagmire while other factions sneered and expected me to fail had opened my eyes to the true nature of relationships.

Outwardly, the Xenakis were deemed a strong unit now, but the backbiting had never gone away. The barely veiled expectation that everything I’d achieved would be brought down like a pile of loose bricks and that history would repeat itself was a silent challenge I rose to each morning.