Alexio made no response. On one level, he could not believe that this peculiar conversation was actually taking place. Once he would have laughed in his father's face at the very idea of an arranged marriage. But, for almost two years, Alexio had been living in a hell of grief from which he only escaped when he buried himself in work. In a desperate attempt to obliterate the yawning emptiness inside him, he had flung himself into a series of wild affairs but no miracle recovery had followed. Indeed, if anything, those shallow sexual entanglements had left him with a sour taste in his mouth.

"It is an honour that Minos Gakis should have approached our family with the offer of his daughter," Sander continued with quiet persistence, watching his volatile son with hopeful measuring eyes for his reaction. "He has a very high regard for your business acumen and his health has been troubling him. He needs a son-in-law whom he can trust."

Alexio was grimly amused by that clever speech, which suggested that a marriage arranged between families rather than by the young people concerned was as common an event as it had once been in Greece—for it was anything but. He was also marvelling at how the attention of one of the world's richest men appeared to have blinded his astute father to less palatable truths. "Minos Gakis is an evil bastard and a thug. You know it and I know it."

"Nevertheless, his daughter, Ione, is a well brought-up and decent young woman," Sander continued with determination, convinced that only such a marriage would have