Page 42 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Mr Zakynthos,’ he says, eyeing me warily. ‘I hear you wish to speak to me?’
‘I don’t think…’ Katla begins.
‘Yes,’ I say, ignoring her and turning to him. ‘I do wish to speak to you. Do you have an office where we can talk in private?’
Tanaka can’t afford to be rude. I’m too powerful. Vulcan Energy would swallow his little company whole if I wanted it to, and I may yet want it to, depending on what answer Katla Sigurdsdottir gives to the ultimatum I intend to put to her.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Follow me.’
I smile and hold out my hand to the icy queen currently staring daggers at me, in an ‘after you’ gesture. The antlers and the cheerful Christmas sweater should be covered in a rime of ice, given the chill pouring off her, but that doesn’t faze me. I expected ice from her.
The man beside her moves, reaching to grab her elbow as she goes to follow her boss. ‘Kat,’ he whispers urgently.
‘Let her go,’ I say before she can react, and I don’t hide the threat in my voice. She is mine now and no one touches what’s mine.
He flushes and drops his hand, yet he must have some modicum of bravery, because he glares at me. ‘I’m her husband,’ he says, as if sensing my intentions.
I know she was married. I also know that she left him six months ago.
‘Not any more,’ I say.
Then I walk past him, following Katla out of the room.
CHAPTER TWO
Katla
My heart isbeating so fast I can barely get a breath and I can feel him following behind me, dark and as full of electricity as a thunder storm.
Ulysses Zakynthos: CEO of Vulcan Energy, a huge energy conglomerate that spans half the globe, and utterly ruthless when it comes to business. Utterly ruthless when it comes to other things as well, or so I’d heard. Not that I’d taken much notice of him before the meeting Tanaka Solar had with Vulcan.
Afterwards, though…
Afterwards, I couldn’t think of anything else.
He was sitting opposite me and I could almost feel the energy pouring from him. A seething, electric magnetism that made the breath catch my throat.
He was dressed in black, the way he is now, his suit and shirt perfectly tailored, with a silk tie lying like a thread of gold in the coal seam of his business shirt. His hair was short, as ink-black as his shirt and the straight black slashes of his brows. His features were roughly hewn, as if a sculptor hadn’t bothered with the finer details of his proud nose, his imperious forehead, his carved cheekbones and his hard mouth.
It was his eyes, though, that held my attention. They were the same deep-gold as his tie, and molten. He was a furnace, generating heat and throwing out energy wherever he went, a living embodiment of the company he headed.
‘Handsome’ is too pretty a word for what he was. Compelling, mesmerising and hypnotic are words more suited to him.
He looked at me from across the meeting room table and I felt as if the air was igniting all around us. I tried to ignore it, because if this was Ulysses Zakynthos then indeed every word the media said about him was true. He was dangerous, ruthless, the expansion of his own company relentless. And, if he wanted to swallow Tanaka Solar whole, then we were going to have to be very careful indeed.
Tanaka is a small company, but fast growing, and Mr Tanaka wants to stay in control of it. I support him in that. He took a risk when he gave me this job, because I’m not an easy person to work with. I am outspoken and blunt, and some people don’t like that, especially coming from a woman. Certainly my references weren’t wholly glowing. But Mr Tanaka only cared about my skill with money and, while I believe I’ve proved myself in my time working for him, I still owe him.
Anyway, though it was a tense meeting with Vulcan Energy, we managed to emerge from it without giving up anything, and I thought I’d seen and heard the last of Ulysses Zakynthos. Yet, not a day later, he called me and asked me out to dinner. I refused, of course, because, while I might be separated from my husband, I wasn’t interested in starting another relationship. Most especially not with him, a man more a force of nature than a human being.
Which is why I have to keep my senses sharp as I follow Mr Tanaka now, heading towards his office, bitterly conscious of the man behind me.
Me—that’s what he said he wanted. He was here for me.
He swept into the staff Christmas party like a king sweeping through a crowd of commoners, leaving everyone silent and staring in his wake. I hadn’t noticed him, because John arrived unexpectedly and was busy telling me what a big mistake I’d made when I’d walked out on him, and that he wanted me to come back to him. So it wasn’t until Ulysses Zakynthos was basically right in front of me that I realised he was there.
He was the last person in the world I either wanted or expected to see and I hated how every muscle in my body tightened in response to his electric presence. Then his golden eyes met mine and instantly I felt it again—the sense that the air around us was so charged that all it would take would be one spark for it to all go up in flames.
I didn’t like that feeling one bit, so I wasn’t polite to him and I wasn’t welcoming. I’m suspicious of people as a general rule—certainly of what they say, because people lie all the time—and actions matter to me. So the arrogance of him swanning into our Christmas party and demanding me, as if I was a possession of his and not the CFO of an up-and-coming solar energy company, instantly got my back up.
