Bound To Her Greek Billionaire

“Oh, Nassos—” Lys cried out in relief and anguish.

You have a massive inheritance from your father that will be given to you on your twenty-seventh birthday. He dictated that specific time in his will to make sure you’d be mature enough when you came into your money.

Lys was incredulous. She’d thought it had all been incorporated into the Rodino empire. Nassos would have deserved every euro of it.

Again, I have no idea how old you are now that I’m dead. I suspect you’re a very wealthy woman, hopefully married with children, maybe even grandchildren. And happy!

As you will have found out from Danae, she inherited everything with one exception...the hotel is your inheritance from me to own and run as you will.

Lys reeled physically and clung to the arms of the chair.

No. It wasn’t possible. The hotel should have been given to Danae, who understood the hotel business very well. It was Nassos who’d hired her away from another hotelier to come and work for him twenty-four years ago. How sad that even after his death, Nassos couldn’t allow her to continue in a career she’d enjoyed.

Lys’s eyes closed tightly for a moment.

Danae hadn’t contacted Lys yet. There hadn’t been time. How could Nassos have done this to the woman he’d loved? Wiping her eyes, she went on reading.

But you’re not the sole owner, Lys.

What? The shocks just kept coming.

Before you take possession, you must give the sealed envelope to Takis Manolis. You’ve heard me and Danae talk about him often enough. When he came to Crete periodically, we’d discuss business on my yacht where we could be private. I never did believe in mixing my business matters with my personal life. The two don’t go together.

You’ll know where to find him when the time comes. The two of you will share ownership for six months. After that time period, you’ll both be free to make any decisions you want.

By the time you read this, he’s probably married with children and grandchildren too. I’ve thought of him as the son I never had.

It was my thrill and privilege to be your guardian, friend and adoptive father for the child of my best friend Kristos.

Love always,

Nassos.

* * *

You can’t go home again.

Whoever coined the phrase was wrong. Yes, you could go home again.

In the last eleven years, Takis Manolis had made four trips a year to Crete and nothing had changed... Not the pain, not the landscape, not his family.

Naturally they were all a little older each time he flew here from New York and later from Italy, but everything had stayed the same if you looked at the inner vessel.

The village of Tylissos where he’d been born was still situated on the northeastern mountainside of Psiloritis near the sea. Time hadn’t altered it a whit.

Nor had it altered the views of Takis’s father or his elder brother, Lukios, who helped their father run the old ten-room hotel.

His family followed the philotimo creed for all Cretans to maintain their unflappable dignity even if their existence bordered on poverty when the hotel didn’t fill. They respected the rich and didn’t try to become something greater than they were. Takis was baffled that they didn’t mind being poor and accepted it as their lot in life.

Until recent years there’d been very little inherited wealth in Greece. Most of the Greek millionaires were self-made, but envy wasn’t part of his brother’s or his father’s makeup.

Takis’s older sister, Kori, married to a cook at one of the village restaurants where she worked, didn’t have to tell him that she and her husband, Deimos, struggled to make a decent living.

They had a little girl, Cassia, now three years old, who’d been in and out of the hospital after her birth because of chronic asthma and needed a lot of medical care. He was thankful that at least Kori kept the cash he’d given her for a belated birthday present, knowing she’d use it for bills.

Though the family accepted the gifts he brought whenever he came, pride prevented his father from taking any monetary help. Lukios was the same. Being a married man with a wife and two children, who were now four and five, he would never look to Takis for assistance to make life a little easier for his family and in-laws.

This centuries-old pride thwarted Takis’s heartfelt need and desire to shower his family with all the things of which they’d been deprived and caused him deep grief.

Early in life he’d known he was different from the rest of them, never going along with their family’s status quo. Though he’d never openly fought with his father or brother, he’d struggled to conform.

His mother knew how he felt, but all she could do was urge Takis to keep the peace. When he’d told her of his dreams to go to college to better himself, she’d said it was impossible. They didn’t have the money. None of the Manolis family had ever gone for a higher education.

Takis just couldn’t understand why neither his father nor brother didn’t want to expand and grow the small hotel that had been handed down from an earlier generation. He could see nothing wrong with trying to build it into something bigger and better. To be ambitious didn’t make you dishonorable, but his father and brother weren’t risk takers and refused to change their ways.

There were times when he wondered if he really was his parents’ birth child. Except that his physical features and build proclaimed him a Manolis through and through.

By his midteens, Takis had feared that if he stayed on Crete, he would turn into his brother, who was a clone of the Manolis men before him, each having so little to show for all their hard work. More and more his ideas clashed with his father’s over how to bring in more clients and build another couple of floors on the hotel.

Takis had worked out all his ideas in detail. One day he’d approached his father in all seriousness, wanting to talk to him man-to-man. But when he made his proposals, his father said something that stopped him cold.

Your ideas do you credit, my son, but they don’t reflect my vision for our family business. One day you’ll be a man and you’ll understand.

Understand what?

Pierced by his father’s comment, Takis took it to mean his ideas weren’t good enough and never would be, even when he became a man.

At that moment something snapped inside Takis. He determined to go to college despite what his mother had said.

So he bought a secondhand bike and after helping his father during the week on a regular basis, he rode the few kilometers to his second job at the famous Rodino hotel and resort in Heraklion on weekends to earn extra money. The manager was soon impressed with Takis’s drive. In time he introduced him to the owner of the hotel, Nassos Rodino, who had several talks with Takis about his financial situation.

One day the unimaginable had happened. Kyrie Rodino called him to his office and helped him apply for a work visa and permit to travel to New York. His best friend, Kristos Theron, the owner of a successful hotel in New York City, would let Takis work for him. He could make a lot more money there and go to the kind of college that would help him get ahead in the business world. He’d improve his English too.

Takis couldn’t believe anyone would do something so fantastic for him and returned home to tell his parents about the opportunity.

His mother kept quiet. As for his father, he listened and nodded. If this is what you want to do, then you must do it.

But how do you feel about it, Baba? Takis had still wanted his father’s approval.

His father shrugged his shoulders. Does it matter? You’re eighteen years old now and are in charge of your own destiny. At eighteen a man can leave his father and make his own way.

That isn’t the answer I was hoping for. His father hadn’t given him his blessing and probably resented Nassos Rodino for making any of this possible.

If you’re a man, then you don’t need an answer.

Takis had felt rebuked. His mother remained silent as he left the room with a hurt too deep to express. After the talk with his father, he’d had the feeling his parent had already felt abandoned before he’d even approached him.

Combined with the pain of having recently lost his girlfriend, who’d been killed in a bus accident, he finally made the decision to leave home. She’d been the one he could confide in about his dreams.