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PROLOGUE
'You want me to do what?' Nikos Vassilis stared at the old man seated at the desk
Yiorgos Coustakis looked back with a level gaze At seventy-eight he was still a for as they had been when he was young They were the eyes of a
Especially human souls
'You heard hter and you can go ahead with the er'
‘Maybe,' replied the younger man slowly 'I just didn't believe you’
A twisted sos Coustakis's mouth 'You should,' he advised 'It's the only deal on the table And a deal, after all,' he said, 'is what you've flown four thousand miles for, ne?’
His visitor kept his hard, handso in front of Old Man Coustakis was a otiation with him Certainly he did not reveal the exasperation he had felt when the head of the Coustakis empire had phoned hiht before last to tell him that if he wanted a deal he'd better be in Athens this n it
If it had been any one else phoning hiiven him short shrift He'd had Es was not what they'd been doing But Yiorgos Coustakis had attractions that even the spectacular Esme, queen of the catwalk, could not compete with
The Coustakis e any woman for
But was it a prize worthup his freedom?
For a woman he'd never met? Never laid eyes on?
Nikos shifted his gaze past the penetrating dark eyes and out through Ehl plate-glassAthens lay beloded, polluted, unique One of the most ancient cities of Europe, the cradle of western civilisation- Nikos knew it as a child knew its parent - he had been raised on its streets, toughened in its alleyways, te crucible
He'd clawed his way up off the streets, fighting tooth and nail, pushing poverty behind hi deal, until now, at thirty-four, it was as if he had never been that unwanted, fatherless boy running wild in the alleyways