The Greek's Green Card Bride - A Billionaire Romance Read online

  Eva pulled her head from her hands and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You’re sorry?” Dimitris repeated, his voice filled with disbelief. “You’re sorry… about what? I don’t understand what’s going on here, Eva.” He seemed to forget, for a moment, that the agents were listening to them.

  Then that reality came back to him, and his tone changed. “Don’t answer that,” he said. He turned to the officers. “You’re all wrong about this,” he said. “She doesn’t have offshore accounts. Are you guys crazy? She lives in this little apartment, and she worked for six years as a hostess at a restaurant, practically for minimum wage. Why would she do that if she had money laid aside? Your theory doesn’t stand. This is ridiculous.”

  The male officer interjected. “What exactly is the financial relationship between the two of you?” he asked.

  “I don’t have to answer that,” Dimitris said, his voice loud and clear. “And neither do you, Eva.”

  During the brief moment of silence that followed, Eva allowed herself to believe that Dimitris was right. She didn’t have to talk to the government agents anymore. They would just leave, and she and Dimitris would carry on with their day as planned.

  First, they would stroll through Meridian Hill Park. They’d then wander to the wharf, and sit on a bench, looking out on the sparkling water. A relaxed lunch at The Red Door Grille would follow, and the afternoon would turn to evening. When the sun set, she’d curl up again in Dimitris’s strong arms.

  When the male officer walked toward her with handcuffs extended, her daydream disappeared like steam off of a coffee cup.

  “Eva Rhames, you are under arrest on suspicion of identity fraud and money laundering. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney.”

  Eva stood and willingly held out her wrists. Agent Rogers fit her slender wrists into the cool metal cuffs, and then secured the lock.

  “We’re bringing you in for questioning,” the agent went on. “Mr. Atheos, you’re welcome to follow us to the station.”

  “This is totally uncalled for,” Dimitris said. His voice raised up a notch as Agent Rogers placed a hand on Eva’s shoulder and guided her toward the door. “Let go of her!” he said.

  Agent Mackenzie intervened. “Mr. Atheos, I need you to step back, please,” she said.

  Eva hung her head as she exited her apartment.

  Once out in the hall, she saw two of her neighbors peering out of their doorways, curious to see what the commotion was about. Marge was still in her pink flannel pajamas, and she clutched her large tabby cat in her arms so that the cat wouldn’t escape into the hallway.

  Eva was aware of Dimitris shouting behind her. “Let me through. You’re blocking my way. This is crazy! I’m telling you, you have the wrong person. This is all a mistake!”

  Marge looked at Eva’s face, her eyebrows knitted in concern. “Eva, dear, are you okay?”

  Eva didn’t have to answer. She saw Marge’s gaze travel down to the silver cuffs around Eva’s wrists. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. She gripped her tabby tighter to her chest, and then stepped back into her apartment and closed the door.

  The other neighbor wasn’t as bashful. He addressed his question to the agents. “Hey, what are you taking her in for? Is she going to jail?”

  Eva felt her cheeks burn with shame. Agent Rogers didn’t answer the question; his hand was steady and firm on her shoulder, and he simply kept walking.

  Suddenly, Dimitris was at her side. He jogged slightly and then caught up to her.

  Eva could hear Agent Mackenzie calling out orders for Dimitris to stop, but he ignored this.

  He focused on Eva, “Baby, I’m going to jump in a cab and follow along right behind you as they take you in. Don’t worry. I’ll be there. We’re going to get you out of this. We just have to make them understand that there’s been a mistake. Okay?”

  Eva nodded but remained silent. She wished that her arrest was a simple misunderstanding, but she knew that wasn’t the case.

  “It’s complicated,” she said. Her voice came out a mere whisper.

  They reached a staircase, and the hallway narrowed. Dimitris was forced to take a position behind Eva and the officer that was guiding her along.

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then was aware that he was watching as she was loaded up into the SUV. When she chanced a look out the window of the car, she saw Dimitris standing barefoot on the sidewalk. His easy, relaxed charm was gone. He ran a hand through his hair. His brow was furrowed.

  She looked away.

  The car started up and pulled away from the curb.

  Eva chanced a look back to the sidewalk in front of her apartment. Dimitris was gone.

  She let her head fall back against the seat and closed her eyes, wondering what on earth he must be thinking in that moment. She could imagine him as he ran back up the stairs, barefoot. He’d likely hustle around the apartment, searching for his shoes, and pocketing his phone. He would then have to return to the sidewalk to hail a cab.

  The entire time, his mind would be racing. Surely he’d try to process what had just occurred, just as she was trying to process it, herself. Unlike her, however, he had no idea what had transpired in her past to cause her to choose to use forged paperwork.

  What a disaster, she thought to herself. Just as it started to seem like things were going well for us.

  She let her mind wander over memories of the night before, and then their early morning together. It had felt so magical to wake up in his arms, in the comfort of her own bed. He’d looked so handsome, sleeping soundly at her side, and she’d felt so giddy and happy as she’d slipped out from under the covers and moved to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

  She’d wanted to surprise him with something homemade, and she knew that muffins would make the whole apartment smell good. She remembered how excited she’d been while stirring the batter and then scooping dollops of it into the muffin papers.

  That all felt so far away, though it had only happened an hour or so before.

  There’s no way we can go back to that, she thought darkly. Everything is different now.

  Chapter 17

  Eva

  The sun was setting as Eva walked, at Dimitris’s side, down the wide staircase that led from the federal detention center. She felt as though she’d been in the building for weeks, but in reality, only ten hours had passed since she’d been arrested.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly to Dimitris. He’d paid her bail, and she was grateful for that, even as she dreaded the conversation that was to come.

  “I don’t know what they were thinking, accusing you of all that,” Dimitris said. “Don’t worry. We’re going to set them straight.” His words lilted with his accent, which seemed to get stronger when he was upset.

  The paved walkway that led from the detention center brought them through a series of fences and checkpoints. Once they’d crossed through the final chain-link fence, Eva saw a sea of cars. The evening sky provided a pale, bruised backdrop to the rows of vehicles.

  Dimitris walked quickly, and she kept up with him.

  When they reached a silver sports car, sandwiched between a truck and a van, Dimitris pressed the key fob in his hand and a quick beep cut through the air.

  Eva felt so drained. She hadn’t eaten all day, besides the few bites of muffins that she’d managed before the agents arrived that morning. She’d been offered food while in custody but had refused to eat. Her stomach was in knots, and the thought of food repulsed her.

  She slid into the passenger seat and reminded herself to breathe deeply. While she pulled air into her lungs, she focused on remaining calm.

  It won’t do me any good to dissolve into a puddle of tears again, she thought. The long day had given her ample time to think, and she’d seen clearly that she could not continue to behave as she had that morning.

  Dimi
tris got into the driver’s seat, closed his door, and turned to face her. “We’re going to clear your name,” he said to her with determination.

  Eva forced herself to take another deep breath. Then she said, “No, Dimitris, we’re not. I’ve made some mistakes, and I think I have to own up to them.” She felt so exhausted, it was difficult to speak. She didn’t feel she had the energy for the conversation that they desperately needed to have.

  Despite the weariness that pulled at her, she forced herself to go on. “I’ve told you a lot about my past,” she said, “but not everything.”

  He set the keys down on a little tray in the console between them and shifted in his seat. “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Whew,” she said with an exhale. “I don’t really know where to start.”

  She looked out at the truck next to them. Above it, she saw a fringe of treetops in the distance. “I grew up in Long Island, like I said,” she began. “My father had a dry cleaning business. I thought that he was a very hard worker. All I knew was that he left early in the morning and came back late at night. I assumed he put long hours into his business.”

  She bit her lip and recalled the impression she’d had of her father when she was growing up—his distant nature, the low voice he used whenever he was on the phone, and the way he always smelled of cigar smoke.

  “I was just a kid. What did I know?” she said, flicking her eyes over to Dimitris. As she’d expected, it was too hard to look at him, so she looked down at her lap as she continued.

  “When I was a teenager, I started to pick up on clues that something wasn’t right. There was the way my neighbors scurried away whenever Dad’s friends came over. There were strange conversations that I overheard—always just little fragments, but gradually those fragments came together to form a complete picture. I began to suspect that my dad was involved in organized crime.”

  She sighed. “I was in denial for a long time. I moved out, went to college, and then started a career of my own. The whole time, I suppressed what I knew about my dad. I just couldn’t face it.”

  “You were an only child, right?” Dimitris asked.

  Eva nodded. “Yes. It was just me and my dad. My mom left when I was young, like I told you.” She looked up at him. “I haven’t lied to you, Dimitris. I haven’t made anything up. I just didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

  He nodded, which felt encouraging.

  She looked to her lap again and fidgeted with her hands as she continued.

  “I just wanted so badly to be normal. I had two roommates in college. One had a father who was a dentist. The other girl’s dad worked as the regional manager for a chain of hardware stores. I just pretended that my dad was the same as theirs—just a regular dad who worked hard to earn a living. That’s the story I told myself, and I got really good at believing it.”

  She licked her dry lips and wished she had some gloss or lip balm on hand.

  “So what happened?” Dimitris asked.

  A family walked by the car, heading for the detention center. They were talking loudly, and snippets of their heated conversation were audible from inside the car.

  The teenage boy cussed vehemently, while an older woman argued back with just as much passion.

  “Can we get out of here?” Eva asked Dimitris. Their surroundings were depressing her. She longed to take a hot shower.

  He nodded, picked up the keys, and stuck them in the ignition. Before he cranked the key, he looked to Eva. “This is good, I think,” he said. “It’s good we’re talking about this.”

  Then why does it feel so bad? she wondered. She felt like the knots in her stomach were only getting stronger and more tightly formed, the more she talked.

  Dimitris started the car, and they were both silent as he pulled out of the lot. Eva was aware that he was waiting for her to continue her story, but she stayed silent as he navigated toward the highway that would cut across the city in the direction of her apartment.

  Finally, when they reached the highway, she went on. “It turned out, I was really good at denying what my dad was up to. I got wrapped up in my college courses, my new group of friends, and my life in New York. I saw my father less and less. We’d always been distant, so it was no big deal. I graduated, and a few months later I opened up a small gallery in SoHo. I was young and inexperienced, but extremely driven. My place did well, and within a couple of years I managed to pay off my business loans.”

  “That’s a major accomplishment,” Dimitris said. He depressed the blinker and navigated a lane change. Once he was in the lane to the far left, cruising past the slower traffic, he glanced over at her. “You must have worked really hard.”

  She nodded. “I did. I was at it day and night. I never quit. In a way, I think it was my way of further distancing myself from my dad—I saw him maybe once or twice a year at that point, and only for very short visits. But each time I saw him, it was more and more clear to me that he was up to no good.”

  “By the way he was behaving? Or things he said?”

  “Both,” Eva said.

  She sighed and looked out at the traffic. The night was growing darker. All but a very few cars had their headlights on. Eva saw fellow drivers turn their heads as they passed, probably checking out the fancy sports car Dimitris had rented.

  “It was so confusing,” Eva went on. She reached a hand up and rubbed her temple, in an attempt to ward off the headache that she felt creeping into her skull. “Then one day, in the fall, I drove to Long Island to pick up some old medical records. I walked into the apartment I’d grown up in. My dad still lived there, of course. I had a key, and my dad wasn’t expecting me. I overheard him on the phone.”

  “What was he saying?” Dimitris asked.

  “He was talking about bank accounts that he’d set up in my name. He said something about how the police were watching him carefully, but they weren’t keeping tabs on me, so he could conduct business under my name and get away with it.”

  “Whoa,” Dimitris said. “Your own father was using you in that way?”

  She nodded. “I stood there, frozen. Then he started to say that there’d been some problem with the Mafia. He was worried that some pretty dangerous people were out to get him.”

  Dimitris swore under his breath. “That’s not good,” he said. “I’ve heard about the Mafia in your country. They can be very violent, yes? Crazy people.”

  “Oh, yes,” Eva said, nodding her head again. “And believe me, I wasn’t too eager to find out how crazy they were. I left my dad’s place before he even noticed I was there. Before I left the area, though, I caught sight of a car full of guys who looked like mobsters. They were going to go rough my dad up, I was pretty sure. They looked primed to fight. One of them caught sight of me and headed in my direction.”

  She shivered involuntarily as she said this. She’d had nightmares about that particular mobster’s face for years afterward.

  She went on. “Since my dad had dragged me into the whole thing by using my name, I decided to run. And the truth is, I never stopped running.”

  Dimitris kept his eyes on the road. Traffic had slowed ahead of them. They were nearing the heart of the city, along with some of the most popular exits. Traffic had backed up onto the interstate, due to the cars waiting to get off of the exit ramps. Bright red taillights flashed in front of them. Dimitris braked, and the car slowed.

  As they reached a slow crawl, Dimitris looked over at her. “So that’s where the new name comes in?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She swallowed. This was the part of her story she was least looking forward to telling. It was the part where she needed to assume some responsibility for her choices. “Maybe I could have gone about it all better,” she said. “If I’d had time to think things through, maybe…” Her voice drifted off. She thought of her father.

  Dimitris spoke gently. “Eva, the man raised you,” he said. “Your other option was to turn him in, yes? And go about getting protection from the law.
But how could you? He’s your father. Some part of you probably still wanted his love.”

  Eva felt tears spring to her eyes, but she fought off the urge to cry. She’d cried enough over the last twenty-four hours as it was.

  “Yes, he’s my father,” she said. “But if I’d gone straight to the police, I could have avoided so much trouble. As it was, I panicked. I packed up a few suitcases and boxes of belongings and stuffed them into my car. I called my dad’s friend Bobby and asked him for help. He was the only one of my father’s friends who was ever nice to me, and sure enough, he came through with some documents I could use so that I could start fresh. That’s what I wanted, see? A fresh start.”

  “So he was the one who forged the documents,” Dimitris said. The sluggish traffic they were sitting in began to flow again.

  “Well, he didn’t do it, but he had one of his contacts do it. I didn’t ask for details—I really didn’t want to know what the process was like.”

  “It wasn’t aboveboard, I’m guessing,” Dimitris said.

  “I figured as much,” Eva said. “I was certain that if I got caught using them, I’d go to jail, but I was so happy to be getting a clean start that I was willing to take that risk. I had my life, you know? I was grateful for that.”

  Dimitris was quiet as he processed this. They were flying along now, and every few moments a green sign with reflective white lettering announced an upcoming exit.

  Eva read the signs as they passed. “You’re going to want to get in the right lane, just up here,” she said, pointing down the road. “My neighborhood isn’t far off.”

  Dimitris nodded and switched lanes.

  Beyond telling Nikki her story, Eva had never verbalized all that she’d been through. She wondered what Dimitris thought.

  With her peripheral vision, she could see his profile. His jaw was set, and once in a while she saw it tighten and then release, as if he was clenching his teeth.

  “You’re angry,” she said.

  “I wish you’d told me all of this before we agreed to file our marriage application,” Dimitris said.