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“My husband.” Her mouth trembled into a hesitant smile. She caressed his cheek. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

Husband? His pulse lurched with such force, he thought his veins were being pulled from his body. He pressed his head into the pillow. He’d never seen her before in his life.

“Who—” His throat was dry. Constricted. And this thing in his throat was uncomfortable. He could only shape the word with his lips.

“Could you get the nurse?” She turned her head to speak to someone. “I’m sure your wife will want to know her son is awake.”

Lambros. Contempt poured through Spiro, filling his chest with an urge to growl. To leap from the bed and wrap his hands around the man’s throat.

There was a disgruntled noise. The woman’s gaze followed as heavy footsteps moved away. Then she smiled at Spiro, earnest. Anxious again.

“I’m Alia,” she whispered. “Khristos is in New York. He’ll be so relieved.”

New York? His brother’s lecture tour wasn’t starting for another week. What day was it? He hadn’t missed the Annual General Meeting, had he?

Through his veil of confusion, Spiro took in what looked to be a private hospital room and a fading afternoon sky beyond the open curtains. Tubes and wires were attached to his body. This stranger—Alia—continued to hover over him, watching him closely.

“Khristos had to make some very quick decisions. I—” She cut herself off as footsteps bustled back. She stepped away, leaving his forearm cold, his palm empty.

The nurse told him which hospital he was in as she checked his temperature and pulse. She assured him the doctor was on his way and allowed him one sip of water to dampen his arid mouth. She told him he’d been in a coma for eight days.

Eight?

“What happened?” His voice came out rough as sandpaper.

“An accident at the shipyard, agapi mou.” Alia moved around the bed and stepped in front of Lambros so she could set her soft hand on Spiro’s arm again. “You were struck by a crane and knocked into the water. You hit your head and almost drowned. You don’t remember?”

She wasn’t tall. Spiro easily locked gazes with Lambros over her shoulder. He didn’t like that she had put herself between them. Did she not know how dangerous he was?

Or was she with Lambros in some way?

As that suspicion arose, all his defenses locked into place.

“No.” He lied out of instinct, but it was only a partial lie. He remembered a shout and something cracking against the back of his shoulder. There’d been an endless fall and an impact against the surface of the water that had felt like hitting concrete. The air had been knocked from his lungs and he hadn’t known which way was up. He remembered thinking, This is it, and wondering if his father would come for him.

He had no memory of leaving the water or being treated, but it didn’t surprise him that his stepfather was here, hovering like a vulture looking to pick out his liver.

Lambros wore one of the tailored suits that Spiro’s mother paid for with her dividends from MSPM. He was in his early fifties and kept himself trim and well dressed out of vanity, but there was a calculating coldness in him. A derisive amusement as he flicked a look at Alia, silently accusing Spiro of hiding behind a woman.

“And your wife?” Lambros asked with a glint in his eye. “What do you remember about her?”

“Wife?” Spiro flashed his attention to Alia, struck anew by how slight she was. He sought into the furthest reaches of his memory, but came up with nothing. “I’m not married.”

Lambros snorted. “I knew it.”

* * *

I never should have agreed to this.

Alia’s pulse sloshed like storm waves within her, swamping her breath and filling her throat with a suffocating thickness.

Why did that horrible man have to be here when Spiro finally opened his eyes? Despite a very short acquaintance, she had come to loathe Lambros. He reminded her of the school bullies who had terrorized her when she’d been a child.

Khristos had arranged Spiro’s driver to escort her here to the hospital, and staff were right outside the door. She knew she was physically safe, but Lambros had taken to showing up at odd moments, as though trying to catch her failing to show her devotion to her husband. He liked to make snide remarks about her being a liar and a gold digger.

You’re not married to him. Admit it.

Khristos had warned her Lambros would do everything he could to refute this marriage. Even as Spiro was being recovered from the water and driven to hospital, Lambros had begun maneuvering to become CEO of MSPM, mirroring the way he’d snatched control of the shipyard after Spiro and Khristos had lost their father twenty years ago.