Page 2 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

But that was just the thing. He wanted to twist the knife in her back. Why? She didn’t have a clue. Her father’s untimely death, after the Akakios empire had ruined him, was punishment enough, Lynna figured. But Athan wanted something more from her.

She refused to give it—whatever it was. Refused to let him hold anything over her. Even though he continued to try. “The best revenge is a superior dish served to haunt his dreams for the remaining days of the year I’m cooking for someone else.”

“That isnothow the saying goes,” Maude said grimly.

“It’s howmysaying goes,” Lynna returned. She surveyed her brownie sundae.Perfect.She grabbed it and the tablet where her friends were faces in boxes. She moved into the living room of her cozy flat in London and settled into her overstuffed armchair. “Besides, this isn’t the normal month of work for him. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll prepare for the wedding, cater the wedding, then I’m just on call for the remaining two weeks.”

“You’re catering theweddingof a man who destroyed your family. It’s an affront.”

Lynna took a bite of her sundae, reveled in the homemade whipped cream. The brownie and ice cream she’d made lovingly from scratch. “I happen to like catering weddings, Irinka. Regardless of the bride and groom.”

She supposed this was something of a ritual. Her friends and coworkers protested. She listened to each of their concerns and dismissed them one by one.

Because Lynna Carew did not need anyone’s approval. She never had.

Maybe she didn’trelishthe feeling ofwaitingon Athan. But the higher insult would have been if he’d forgotten her and her family entirely. Clearly, the Carew name—or at least the dishes she made—still haunted him insomeway, or he wouldn’t keep hiring her, year after year. He wouldn’t have asked her to handle the food for his very private, very exclusive and expensive if small, upcoming wedding.

Maybe he thought he was torturing her by hiring her a few weeks out of every year, but she never let on that she hated him. Never made a bad meal to punish him. She behaved like the consummate professional every year for the past five years.

And then took her paycheck straight to the bank.

If he wanted emotion, he was barking up the wrong tree.

“You’re going to poison him this time, aren’t you?” Maude asked. With just a little too much hope in her tone.

“Not at all. That hardly helps business. But do you know how many people are going to wantmeto cater weddings like this, make cakes like this after I succeed? It’s going to set me, andus, up for life. I happen to think there’s a kind of poetic justice to the whole thing.”

It didn’t bring her father back, but nothing did. It didn’t pay for her brother’s education, but her work at Your Girl Friday was doing that. It didn’t change what the Akakios family had done, but nothing would.

So why not profit off them?

Perhaps once upon a time she might have considered Athan a friend—a family one, if not a personal one. She might have thought of him and his father as good men, just like her father.

And then almost six years ago, they’d both betrayed her father so deeply—stealing away from him every last share of the business he’d built from the ground up. Making the public think Aled Carew was a criminal and the mighty Akakios family had righted a wrong.

They had succeeded. Her father had not recovered. Financially or from the shock and pain and stress of being treated this way by people he’d not just trusted, but loved like family.

An aneurysm had taken his life not six months later. It had nearly destroyed her family. Would have if Lynna hadn’t determined that no one else got to destroy them.

So no, she didn’t mind her yearly job for Athan. She didn’t mind catering his wedding. She might hate him. She might hope to one day see his and his father’s end.

But for now, she would happily take his money to do what she was good at, to do what she loved and to set her on the path to her own wealth. Eventually.

A wealth no one else, especially an Akakios, could take away.

* * *

Athan Akakios had arranged everything almost exactly as he wanted it. He would be marrying Regina Giordano, daughter of his father’s current business partner, in two days’ time. And once he had taken over the Giordano half of the company, he would oust his father.

Once and for all.

It seemed only fitting that Lynna Carew be involved, all in all.

For five years, he had watched for some crack in her armor. He’d waited for her to refuse the job. To approach him, accuse him, tear him into pieces.

He’d deserved it.

And maybe, what he really wanted, wassomereaction from her to wipe away the memory of her crying at her father’s funeral. Hidden in a little room because she’d remained strong for her mother and brother all through the burial.

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