A Deal with Demakis(59)

                Having read it close to fifty times in two minutes, Lexi had torn it up into small pieces, her heart in her throat. It was obvious Venetia didn’t want to return and Tyler didn’t want to hurt her.

                Lexi felt a flare of anger at the both of them for doing this, for deceiving Nikos and for dragging her in between. This thing between her and Nikos, it was a temporary madness, she knew that. Still, she wanted to do nothing that would hurt him.

                And she had a sinking feeling that that’s what was going to happen in the end.

                Pushing her hair back from her forehead, she caught the sigh escaping her lips. There was nothing to do but wait. “What is your grandfather refusing you?” she said, her dislike of Savas Demakis a bad taste in her mouth.

                “He and his cronies are refusing to vote me in as the CEO. The fact that I didn’t protect Venetia is a weapon Savas is wielding to its full extent.”

                “I don’t understand. Venetia and your company are entirely different things. How does he propose you stop your twenty-four-year-old sister from living her life, short of locking her up and throwing away the key?”

                His pointed gaze told her she nailed the truth on its ugly head. “He must know you would never do that to Venetia.”

                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.