Captive in Greece

CHAPTER ONE

Vera had been on her feet since seven. By the time the lunch rush hit Mango’s Diner, she’d stopped counting hours altogether. She knew this place like she knew her own hands—which floorboard creaked by the service station, which regular took his coffee black, which couple at the window booth was clearly on a first date. What she didn’t know, heading back from table six with an order, was that her entire life was about to get flipped on its head.

It was 12:43.

Three hours and seventeen minutes left on her shift.

Her phone buzzed against her hip.

Adrian.

He never called during work. She’d told him more than once—unless something’s actually on fire, just text like everyone else and wait. She declined the call and turned back to her tables.

Two minutes later, it buzzed again.

Adrian.

Across the diner, Kate caught her eye and raised her brows. Vera shook her head and slipped toward the washroom, already fishing the phone out, answering before the door even swung shut.

“Adrian, I told you not to—”

“Ve—Vera.”

She stopped mid-step.

It was how he said her name. Broken right down the middle. Like something had knocked all the air out of him.

“Adrian.” Her voice went quiet, instinctive. “What’s wrong?”

Voices in the background. Low. Male. Not her brother’s.

“I’m—” He stopped. Started over. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Vera, I didn’t mean to—”

“Where are you?”

Silence. Then a sound she hadn’t heard from her brother in years—a sharp, choked inhale. The kind that came right before crying.

Her stomach dropped.

Adrian was twenty-one. He didn’t cry. Hadn’t cried since their parents’ funeral, standing next to her in a suit two sizes too big, gripping her hand like she was the one who needed steadying.

“Adrian.”

A pause. Then—another voice.

“Your brother has been caught stealing from my company.”

Male. Deep. Something Mediterranean underneath the English, rolling beneath the words like a current under still water.

Something about it snagged at her—brief, shapeless, gone before she could pin it down. She didn’t have room for it right now.

The back of her neck went cold.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

She pressed her free hand flat against the washroom wall and forced herself to breathe.

“There must be some mistake,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “My brother doesn’t steal. He has a part-time tech job at—”

“At a branch of Demetriou Enterprises. Yes. I know.”

“The evidence is documented,” the voice continued. “You should come see for yourself. I’m sending you the address.”

The line went dead.

— * —

Vera stood there with her phone pressed to her chest and told herself to think. Not panic. Think.

Her phone buzzed—an address in the business district, the kind of zip code she only ever drove through on her way somewhere else.

She washed her hands. Old habit. Something to do while her brain caught up. Then she walked back out, untied her apron, and set it on the counter.

“Kate.”

Her coworker glanced up. Vera kept her face blank.

“I have an emergency. I’m sorry.”

“Go,” Kate said, already waving her off. “I’ve got this. Just let me know you’re okay.”

Outside, the Miami heat slammed into her like a wall. Vera flagged a cab, slid into the back seat, and gave the address.

She stared out at the glass towers sliding past, catching the afternoon sun like they were trying to blind her, and breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth—the same rhythm she’d gotten down at seventeen, standing over two closed caskets, holding a fourteen-year-old boy’s hand and refusing to fall apart because there was nobody else left to hold things together.

She could do this.

She’d done harder.

— * —

The Demetriou Enterprises building didn’t need a sign. It announced itself just by being there—floor after floor of glass and steel, more stories than she could count from the sidewalk, catching the sky and throwing it back like a mirror.

Vera walked in.

The lobby was all marble and silence, the expensive kind. A red-haired receptionist in a sharp black suit gave her a quick, involuntary once-over that buildings like this specialized in—diner uniform, modest bag, hair half-escaped from its bun.

“I’m here to see Mr. Demetriou.”

The receptionist’s expression flickered—surprise, quickly smoothed over—before she picked up the desk phone, said something brief in Greek, and set it down.

“He’s expecting you. Forty-second floor.”

A security guard appeared at her elbow like he’d been waiting for exactly this, and led her to a private elevator without a word. The doors closed. Vera watched her own reflection in the polished steel—the uniform, the loose hair, the flat, composed expression she was barely holding together. She looked exactly like what she was: a woman running on adrenaline and diner coffee, heading somewhere she really didn’t want to go.

The elevator opened onto a quiet hallway. Double doors stood half-open at the far end.

She could see Adrian through the gap—sitting with his hands laced in his lap, shoulders hunched in tight, exactly like they’d been when he was fourteen and she’d had to tell him about the rent.

She pushed the door open.

Her brother looked up first. His face crumpled with relief so raw it hurt to look at.

“Vera—”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand, gentle but firm. “I’m here. Just don’t say anything yet.”

She turned.

— * —

He was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window with his back to her, hands loosely clasped, looking out at the city like a man who owned a good chunk of it.

Which, she guessed, he did.

Then he turned around.

And the floor shifted slightly beneath her.

It was him.

She’d heard the name on the phone and felt nothing. She saw the face and felt everything. Dark hair. A jaw sharper than memory had any business keeping. And those eyes—that particular, impossible blue she’d spent four years telling herself she must’ve exaggerated.

She hadn’t exaggerated.

For one suspended moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

“Miss Holt.” His voice—low, accented—the same voice from a hotel room four years ago that she’d spent a very long time trying not to think about. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

Vera folded her hands in front of her and kept her voice level.

“Mr. Demetriou. I’d like to understand what happened here.”

He gestured to the chair across from his desk, unhurried, like a man with all the time in the world.

“Sit down,” he said. “We have a lot to discuss—starting, I imagine, with exactly what it’s going to take for me to forget your brother’s name.”