Prologue

ZEPHYR NIKOS looked out over the Port of Seattle, remembering his arrival here with Neo Stamos over a decade before. Things had been very different then. Everything Zephyr owned fit in the single tattered duffel bag he’d carried. He still had that duffel bag stored in the back of his oversized walk-in closet, behind the designer suits and top-of-the-line workout gear.

It was a small reminder of where he had come from, and where he would never be again.

They had been so sure this was the place to start their new life, the one that would move them as far from the backstreets of Athens as a man could get. And they’d been right.

Two Greek boys from the wrong side of the tracks had built not just a business, but an empire worth billions of dollars. They dined in the finest restaurants, traveled by private jet and rubbed shoulders with the richest and most powerful people in the world. They’d realized their dreams and then some.

And now Neo was in love and getting married.

had found domestic bliss first. Zephyr wasn’t sure he would ever find anything like it. In fact, he was near positive he wouldn’t. Oh, he might marry someday, but it

early that a smile made as effective a mask as

a long time ago, though he guarded that secret as well as he guarded all his others. Secrets he would

the age of ten. Neo could not imagine anything worse than his own messed-up

him, it had been the first step in distancing himself from a life he wished he could forget. His father had thought nothing of selling Zephyr’s mother’s “favors” along with the other women who “worked” for him in the business that supplemented his less than stellar income from the family olive groves. And he

would come back. He’d missed her and cried and prayed every day she would return. A few weeks later, she had.

no longer part of his. Which even a small boy, barely old

to hide

had had to leave. Now his best friend, Neo, had gone with him and they

considered their first step toward a new life, the life they now enjoyed. But Zephyr

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