Sydney, Australia
Present day
Dawn was breaking over the harbour and the buzz of activity was heating up. The CBD (Central Business District) never slept, its army following developments in world markets around the clock.
It was here that the Fanari Tower stood, almost on the water’s edge, hungry to lick the waves, dying to dive in and conquer the world, as hungry as the company it housed, as ravenous as its captain and his ambition. The Tower was the headquarters of the billionaire Andrew Le Charos’ flagship company, Fanari Enterprises Limited.
Andrew was standing by the window in his office admiring the view of the glorious Sydney skyline with the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge practically at his feet.
It was a glorious day and the sun was shining over the magnificent harbour which was already alive with boats criss-crossing the blue waters, heading for Manly, Bondi Beach, the CBD and Darling Harbour, and some venturing out to sea and further afield.
The phone started ringing. He rushed to his desk and picked it up. He did not speak. He knew the answer before he heard the voice at the other end uttering two sentences:
‘It’s done. Package left on late Q flight from Istanbul.’ “Q” stood for Qantas Airways. It was hardly original code, but it would have to do. Andrew had decided not to send his private jet as that would be too conspicuous even in an out of the way airfield outside Istanbul.
Andrew put down the phone and picked up his other secure line.
‘The markets are open for business. Activate project Golden Horn.’
He could not feel excited just yet until the package had been safely delivered home.
Andrew wanted that icon badly, but had no way of knowing that it was most probably a fake. He knew Elli was after it too. He had a general idea of what she was up to through his spies and especially his favourite informant, his mole inside the Valchern Corporation. But he needed more information.
He had no plans to allow Elli to win. He would sabotage her at every possible turn. They had been business rivals for years. They both played on the global stage for the highest stakes and they both hated losing. Not that they often did.
Andrew was second cousin to Katerina’s father, Andros, and he had been estranged from his extended family for four decades. It was a clash of wills between him and his father that led to him, at twenty-four, going into voluntary exile in Australia, as far away from Cyprus as he could. Finding out that he had been adopted did not help.
He worked hard and he built one of the country’s biggest fortunes. Life had made him tough, but he was ambitious and ruthless. He was not known for his kindness. He was respected and feared, but not liked. However, up until his mid-forties he was different and he was genuinely charming and devastatingly attractive and cocky.
When in a chance encounter, as rivals in a bid to take over a company in Australia, he met Elli Symitzis, he was smitten; sparks were flying. They fell in love and got married a few months later. But the honeymoon did not last long. The children, Aristo and Vasilis, were five and three respectively when he began to change. That’s when the fights started, huge terrible rows. And he had started to drink heavily and refused any hand of help or advice offered by Elli and close friends who cared for him deeply.
Once he beat up Elli badly. That for Elli was the final straw. She would not tolerate physical abuse or mental for that matter. It was then that they decided to end their marriage amicably.
The divorce was issued a few months later and they went their separate ways with Elli keeping full custody of the children. There were no lasting financial hung-ups, obligations or court orders flowing from the divorce. It was a clean split.
It all looked so promising at the beginning. They were the perfect couple, the perfect family. But the end should not have been surprising, because nothing can be perfect. Perfection is always an illusion, a deludingly subjective state of affairs or simply happiness or contentment at a particular moment or period in time.
Andrew wanted nothing to do with his children. The children never knew who their father was. Elli wanted to tell them and pleaded with him, as she thought that it was important for them to know — they were bound to be asked at school or elsewhere — even if he did not want to meet them, let alone have any contact or relationship with them.
However, he was adamant and dead against it and so whenever the question would pass their lips as was expected of children who would not fail to notice that other children had fathers, she would tell them that he had died. They were young enough for any memories they may have had of him to be suppressed in a dark and isolated part of their brain. It was unlikely that anything would happen, even an even of seismic proportions, to trigger and tease those memories to the surface.
The identity of their father remained a closely-guarded secret and, surprisingly, whether out of respect for Elli or a, probably, misguided view of the children’s welfare or both, never came out in all this time, around thirty years now and counting, even though there were many people who knew the truth.
Misguided or not it was the right thing to do, as it was for Elli to be the first to tell them when she had decided that the time was right. But, somehow, it never was the right time. The wall of silence held up, as sturdy as the Great Wall of China that had lasted for centuries and was still going strong.
Now, almost thirty years on, the children, now adults, only knew him as a rival businessman and crossed paths with him only in business.
Andrew had decided that a reconciliation with Elli and Andros’ family, albeit a temporary one, or at the very least some kind of relationship, would be useful to his current ambitions. At least having Elli and them on his side, or pretending to do so, would divert their attention and buy himself time for his plan to be put into motion.
He wanted it all. He would have it all. Everything that Elli had. He was in the process of enlisting the help of shareholders of the Valchern Corporation through the Manoukios-led branch of the family shareholders and of the Madame Marcquesa de Parmalanski, leader of the Ruinands, mortal enemies of Elli’s and of the Order of Vlachernae.