Keeping A Greek Secret, page 1
About the Author
Maya Blake’s hopes of becoming a writer were born when she picked up her first romance at thirteen. Little did she know her dream would come true! Does she still pinch herself every now and then to make sure it’s not a dream? Yes, she does! Feel free to pinch her, too, via X, Facebook or Goodreads! Happy reading!
Booklist
Books by Maya Blake
Mills & Boon
The Greek’s Forgotten Marriage
Pregnant and Stolen by the Tycoon
Snowbound with the Irresistible Sicilian
Enemy’s Game of Revenge
Diamonds of the Rich and Famous
Accidentally Wearing the Argentinian’s Ring
A Diamond in the Rough
Greek Pregnancy Clause
Royals of Cartana
Crowned for His Son
Out of Office Nights
Snowbound and Royally Forbidden
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
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Keeping a Greek Secret
Maya Blake
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN-13: 9780008946074
Keeping a Greek Secret
Copyright © 2026 by Maya Blake
Published in Great Britain 2026
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises ULC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
PROLOGOS. PARADOS. EPEISODION. Stasimon. Exodus.
The stages of a Greek tragedy according to the great Aristotle. Nelios Petralis boarded his private jet at London’s City Airport half-hoping he was at the denouement: exodus.
The finale of a decades-long plot was close but not quite close enough. He hadn’t asked for his life to turn out this way. He’d been plunged into a harrowing drama by those who should’ve made better choices. But, while he hadn’t started it, by God he intended to finish it on his terms.
Cradling his favourite tipple—aged whiskey that cost more than the average man’s monthly salary—he stared over the crystal glass at his right-hand man, Andreas Barbieri. He and Andreas had found each other at possibly the worst moment of their lives: cornered in a filthy alley with half a dozen bullies twice their size baying for their blood, all because they’d stolen a loaf of bread ‘on their patch’. They hadn’t perished that day, obviously, but they’d come far too close.
Nelios eyed Andreas’s Brioni suit, Savile Row tie and sleek Ulysse Nardin watch with a heartening sense of satisfaction. The outer trappings of success clawed out of the gutter, literally and figuratively. He didn’t ask the question bristling on his tongue—whether Andreas had ever imagined they would be here today—because he didn’t crave a trip down memory lane.
The three-hour meeting he’d just come from, one peppered with hoarsely voiced anguish and crocodile tears mingled with the stench of fear—from his opponents, never him—had been enough revisiting of his history for one day. His only regret was that another of those opponents had slipped his net through death some years ago—and, infuriatingly, remembering that fact still sent a lance of rage-tinged, wholly undeserving grief and regret through him, but that couldn’t be changed.
He took another sip, savouring the exquisite taste, just as Andreas looked up.
‘The meeting with the architects will start as soon as we take off. Would you like to go over the blueprints beforehand?’ he asked with a trace of the Sicilian accent he’d never lost, despite having been dumped in Athens decades ago, just like Nelios.
‘Not just yet,’ he murmured. The low, dark throb in his voice echoed the rumbling within him. The rumbling he had every intention of ignoring because it always went away. Whiskey and a little distance always put him back on an even keel. Although…this stasimon might take a little longer.
He hadn’t quite accounted for the little extra drama this afternoon in the form of the young woman full of fiery temper and righteous indignation. Definitely hadn’t expected the heat stirring through him when in the boardroom she’d defiantly hurled her, ‘I’ll make sure you regret this if it’s the last thing I do!’
‘How is the other matter unfolding?’ he asked now, with an extra-punchy layer of anticipation he didn’t quite care for, and yet couldn’t seem to discard. ‘Is she on her way?’
Eyes so dark they looked black, and vicious in some lights, glinted at him as Andreas’s brow quirked. ‘As predicted. Our spies came through. She is walking through the terminal as we speak. Guess she intends on carrying through with her threat.’
Neither of them even glanced out of the window at the VIP terminal where more drama was unfolding. Andreas shook his head. ‘It’s shocking how very little money it takes for nos to turn into yeses when your name is dropped.’
Nelios smiled wryly. ‘It’s not just my name—yours too.’ Although he knew his was weighty enough to swing things his way when required. ‘And economies everywhere are in the toilet. People do what they must to get by with a little incentive.’ Like we had to.
A sage nod from Andreas concurred that they’d both been there and done that, right before his phone pinged with an incoming text. His friend’s satisfied grunt said everything Nelios needed to know. He hadn’t set the trap, but he’d known about it almost the second it’d been created. And he intended to make full use of it.
He drained his glass as Andreas rose and headed for the front of the plane. In low tones, he informed the pilot and crew that they were ready for take-off—complete with their cheeky little stowaway. They’d been informed, on Nelios’s orders, not to raise the alarm or do anything about it.
For the better part of two decades—ever since he’d ditched the name given to him at birth by undeserving parents who’d turned out to be faithless and cruel, and dragged himself and his new name from the gutters of Athens—he’d planned every corner of his life with lethal precision.
The woman who was sneaking her way onto his private jet with the sole purpose of somehow disrupting his plans to take over her hotel—an all but done deal with very small fry indeed—shouldn’t have mattered this much, yet somehow …
He shifted in his seat, wondering just why she mattered to him. Was it because she was now connected to those who’d wronged him all those years ago? Because those scant minutes when she’d stood up to him in their meeting earlier replayed in his head with a vividness he couldn’t dismiss? Because her earnest desperation and flaming determination had struck a chord with him?
Whatever. He hated unsolved puzzles. That was all she was, he assured himself. And, by placing herself within his orbit, he could be done with this silly conundrum by the time he stopped to refuel. And, hell, maybe he could learn a thing or two about his enemies while he was at it.
A full hour later, long after his plane had taken off and levelled out over the clouds of the Atlantic, and his meeting with his architects had been satisfactorily concluded, Nelios rose from his club chair.
Andreas’s teeth bared as they did whenever he scented a conquest. Sometimes it was hard to believe anyone on earth was more bloodthirsty than Nelios, but here he was, witnessing the stark truth on his friend’s face. ‘Happy hunting.’
Nelios grunted. ‘The hunt was over even before it began, my friend. The real question is, what to do with my unwanted prey?’
His friend’s low laughter echoed in his ears as Nelios strode to the back of the plane, entered his bedroom, stretched out on his bed…
And waited.
* * *
She’d done it.
Dear God.
Vayle Lancaster couldn’t stop the shivers from unravelling through her, despite the adrenaline having fled her system hours ago. She was grateful for the tight closet bracing her back and knees otherwise she would’ve collapsed into a pathetic heap long ago.
From the glow of her phone screen she watched the countdown: another five long hours of being stuck in this closet. Then she could enact the next part of her plan. With any luck, she could be back home by the end of the day tomorrow.
Argentina was still hours away, though. No way would she make it all the way there hiding in Nelios Petralis’s wardrobe. Especially when the scent swirling around in here made her even dizzier.
God, how did he smell so good?
By being filthy rich and having parfumiers and other rich people’s accessories at his fingertips, that’s how.
She shook her head. True but not entirely. She’d noticed, with much annoyance and alarm while caught in that one-way verbal spat—because Nelios Petralis hadn’t lifted even an eyebrow when she’d let loose the volley of anger at his treatment of them—that the other guy, his right-hand man, smelled good too. But Vayle hadn’t fixated on his scent the way she had on Petralis’s.
Fixated? A rather strong word. But no other word accurately described how she couldn’t get it out of her senses. How she wanted to keep breathing it in as if it was vital oxygen…
Enough. Concentrate!
She wrapped her arms around her knees. It was a good thing she was neither claustrophobic nor afraid of the dark. That she was used to contorting herself into tight spaces.
Distressing memories tried to crowd her brain but she shook her head free of them and glanced back at her phone. She wished for a split second she’d thought to pack her earbuds, before she snorted under her breath. This wasn’t some jolly jaunt. Bopping to her favourite music wasn’t an option when she needed to remain alert. To listen out for her chance with Nelios Petralis when he came into his bedroom.
Would he be angry or display that fathoms-deep icy indifference he’d basked in all through their meeting this afternoon? The meeting, she recalled with horror, that had devolved into tears from her surrogate mother and a shocking lack of decorum from Vayle herself—but who could blame her? Far from meeting with Nelios to come to an agreement about a possible business agreement regarding her hotel, as she’d thought, he’d informed her coldly that he was stealing her inheritance right from under her nose!
Vayle wasn’t even sure which reaction she’d prefer. Both were terrifying. But, fortunately, not enough to dissuade her. She knew her subject matter inside and out. Knew like the back of her hand the hotel he was trying to annex. It bore her name, for heaven’s sake. Just as she knew that what she had to offer was everything he’d refused to accommodate in this cruel hostile takeover he seemed bent on pursuing, despite her hotel being ludicrously below his radar.
Four hours, forty-five minutes, then she could state her case, calmly and concisely and hope he listened and didn’t do anything drastic, like fling her out of his aeroplane from forty thousand feet into the frigid Atlantic.
Breathe, Vayle. Breathe.
Stowing away on his private jet had been a bonkers idea from the start but the potentially scary part—in which she’d imagined she would be caught before she boarded and thrown in jail—had gone surprisingly smoothly. Which didn’t say a lot for aviation security, but she would lament that observation another day. The second, scarier part was still ahead of her so she needed to stay calm for a little bit longer.
She dropped her forehead onto her knees, practising the yoga breath-control she’d striven to master through turbulent years when the slightest misstep could set tempers flaring. Banishing her to the dark.
Thankfully, those years were behind her. She just needed to do this one last thing for Agnes Adamis—her ‘surrogate mother’—the woman who’d opened her heart and arms to Vayle when she’d needed it most.
Bonkers or not, it was the very least she could do. Agnes could’ve returned to Greece after her husband Tolis’s death, as she’d strongly hinted at doing, but she’d stayed with Vayle and helped her through her own complicated grief after she’d lost the father with whom she’d had a fraught relationship. Even Agnes’s confession immediately after the meeting that Nelios’s treatment of them was her fault—that their past history had led to this—hadn’t dissuaded Vayle from pushing back against this billionaire’s bullying tactics. Hell, it’d only spurred her on. She knew a thing or two about bullies—her father had been one, hiding behind illness to make everyone’s life an absolute misery.
Whatever Nelios Petralis was hiding behind to treat Vayle and the woman she held dear like this—the woman who, shockingly, also happened to be his mother—she would hold him to account, if it was the last thing she did.
Purpose reasserted, she eyed the timer. Many more hours yet.
It wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes, stay calm and just breathe. Breathe. Breathe…
* * *
She wasn’t sure what woke her but the sound was far too close. Adrenaline roared through her system, making her jerk and… Argh!
‘Oh…oh crap! Oh God!’ The deadly cramp gripped her hamstring like vicious teeth sinking into her flesh and had her crying out a second time.
She scrambled out of the wardrobe on her hands and one knee while desperately trying to straighten her other leg and flex her foot to ease the wildly spasming muscle. It didn’t budge. Hell, it got worse…
‘Ah, there you are. I was wondering how long you intended to nap.’
Vayle froze, her stunned gaze falling on a set of feet. Bare masculine feet. Dry mouthed, her eyes moved up, inch by inch to bare, thick hair-roughened calves…bare knees…
Oh my God.
She should’ve averted her gaze then, and stopped this comedy of errors dead in its tracks, but no. Her stupefied gaze kept climbing. Climbing…
The tiniest layer of tension punched out when, thankfully, her gaze met the edge of a pristine white towel. But that dissipated quickly as another savage spasm ripped through her leg. She dropped and rolled over at his feet, her hands scrambling to grip her muscle.
‘What is wrong with you?’ the dark, unfortunately familiar voice bit out.
She winced. ‘Cramp. Help, please!’ Vayle couldn’t believe the tears that sprang to her eyes. She never, ever cried, no matter what. So what was this? Maybe she was more sleep-deprived than she’d thought.
No; going without sleep was another talent she could claim to possess. She’d always needed to keep one eye open in case George Lancaster—the vicious half-man, all monster, who’d biologically fathered her, and the man with a temperament trickier than mercury—had decided to torment her while she was asleep and unguarded. She’d learnt to withhold her tears and her protests, her silent defiance and lack of engagement eventually outlasting his sometimes hours-long rants.
