She’d spent years breaking free and now, just as her life and freedom were hers and hers alone, she found she was pledging herself to a man with the same controlling instinct she had spent so long kicking back from.

Christian had over-protectiveness down to an art.

He hadn’t merely employed a bodyguard for her, he’d employed an elite squad of hardened ex-soldiers.

Unfortunately they didn’t come with personalities, all having been highly trained never to crack a smile or share banter. In the safety of her apartment building she could forget all about them, but the second she stepped outside they would materialise.

As much as she found their presence stifling, she was grateful. She’d never imagined the paparazzi could be any worse than when she’d been seventeen. She’d been wrong. Eight years ago it had been mostly the Italian press with a handful of Brits thrown in. This time their number included Greeks—lots of them—Americans, French... She swore she’d even heard a Japanese voice throw questions at her. She’d known her engagement to Christian would generate a frenzy but had not been prepared for such madness.

like royalty; the sister of Rocco Mondelli, the man credited with dragging the House of Mondelli kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, a man who’d recently married one of the most famous supermodels in the world; Alessandra Mondelli, the former scandal-hit teenager who’d become

being called a slut any more. She’d kept her dark sunglasses on and answered only one of the hundreds of questions that had been thrown her way

looking forward to the wedding?’ someone

course,’ she’d replied with what she hoped

his sunglasses permanently attached to his face too, had also been mobbed. As had Rocco, who ignored every single question. Rumours had started circulating in the past few days about the punch, a new frenzy

the madness, she leaned back in the leather seat and gazed out at Athens, the city that would play a huge part of her life

to as ‘the cradle of Western civilisation.’ Even if she’d been unaware of its history, she would have recognised it. It had seeped into the walls, some pristine, some falling apart at the seams. With ugly apartment blocks and majestic buildings, it was a city that managed to be cosmopolitan yet obviously

the first time she felt something akin to excitement

in a place where she knew no one, she now saw a huge opportunity. If she could ever get anywhere.

The Novel will be updated daily. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

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