Alexis: Greek Billionaires

By Anaïs Wilde

Alba had an ordinary life, one of those in which others decide for you and everything comes without you even choosing.

But Alba believes in Karma

One afternoon, that mysterious force attacks with force and Alba leaves her home to go to Greece with no money and no plan. There she discovers the joy of being herself and becomes a painter with everything: success, money, friends ...

And love?

That's more complicated, as Karma brings Alexis, a sweet-eyed billionaire as sweet and engaging as he is enigmatic, into the game. Karma, Alba and Alexis start the game ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ediciones Fortuna
• Release date: Aug 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071563700

Book preview

Prologue

They say that life is pure energy and that energy needs movement.

They say that it is enough for you to lay down your chips for life to start dancing with you, kickstarting a whole series of events that will forever change your path, your destiny.

They say that if you ignore destiny, it lashes out at you, hits you with the full force of circumstances.

I never believed in any of it. Once I heard it, I erased it from my mind. For many years I lived in absolute immobility, letting myself be swept away by the current.

Until one day something changed inside me.

Until that moment when I laid down my chips and a small displacement triggered a torrent of circumstances.

CHAPTER ONE

I had finally done it, left my little life in Albacete, and embarked on an adventure with no return ticket. Everyone said I was completely crazy. Well, I guess that's what they would have said if I had told them the truth instead of the huge lie.

I was escorted to the bus station. You know, by my father, my mother, my brother, my uncles and Marta, my lifelong friend. I was being pulled between hugs and tears. My older family members blamed the government. My father did it angrily, my mother with her eyes like two waterfalls. Marta winked at me and told me not to worry.

How lucky you are! She whispered in my ear as she hugged me. I would love to be in your shoes.

The truth is, I didn't doubt it. Even if Marta had known she was throwing herself into the void without a parachute or safety net, she would still have changed places with me. But Martha was Martha, crazy, uninhibited, brave. And I was me. Alba, the one who had never so much as broken a plate.

Anyway, at the station, everyone thought I was going to Madrid, where I would take a flight to Athens for a wonderful job in which, in the end, all my abilities would be valued.

Let's see, I have abilities, yes. I speak three languages, have completed a master's degree that cost my parents so much money, and could be said to be a hardworking girl. I was persistent, tenacious, punctual, and compliant. In short, a gem for the job market. But the months went by and the reality was that I couldn't get a real job. I covered a maternity leave in a call center, I spent a few months putting ingredients in a chain of pizzerias with home delivery and two summers serving tables on a restaurant terrace. That was my work experience. A bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and three languages ​​had served me well for that. Well, for that and so that I would NOT be given many other similar jobs because I was considered overqualified.

I knew that in Spain there were millions of young people like me. With enough studies to stop a freight train and watching life pass by while standing in the queue for unemployment benefits. However, my case was different from most. I did not blame the government, or the recession, or the price of oil or anything else for having to emigrate to make a living. Call me crazy, but something inside me was telling me with clarity that my situation was karma. Yes, pure and simple karma.

Karma for not listening to that inner voice that had been talking to me since I was little. The one that at the age of two dictated to me the mural that I made with wax in the entrance hall of the small apartment where I lived with my parents and my brother Carlos. That urge that led me years later to paint my backpack, my slippers, the school table. Anyway, I think you get it. I couldn't stop painting, that simple. I was not like other people, those for whom a table is a table and a white sheet just a piece of cloth used on a bed. I was born with eyes accustomed to seeing canvases on all empty surfaces. I hate emptiness. I think it's natural. Haven't you noticed? Nature also hates it. It covers everything with grass, flowers, plants sprout in the most unexpected places. You walk down the street and you realize that there are herbs that do whatever they need to make their way through the stones. At the sidewalk joints. Around the downspout of a gutter.

Like nature, I expressed that enormous inner world that overflowed in all the free spaces I found. I spoke little, drew a lot. Full color if I was lucky enough to have waxes, markers, or any type of paint. In black and white if I only had a piece of charcoal, as had been the case that summer after the family barbecue. When my uncle Paco began shouting about how he had painted the facade of his house white it was because he wanted it to stay that way. The whole family looked at my work with such disapproval that I froze, a piece of coal in my hand.

The reprimand was spectacular, then I was given a brush, soap, and a bucket of water. While the children of my family played hide and seek, I was forced to scrub away what I considered the best work of my life. I´m not just saying this but that spontaneous mural on the facade of my Uncle Paco's house was wonderful. Elves, mushroom houses... Anyway, I surrendered. That was the exact moment when I put a very fat plug on my creativity. No matter how much the urge to paint or draw something screamed inside me, I didn't feed it.

Karma.

Karma changes everything.

Some books say that you must follow your destiny or else it will attack you and come at you with all its fury. Your destiny is in what you like to do, that which makes you forget the passing of the hours, which makes your heart jump with joy. That is what the books on karma explain.

But I didn't pay attention. I focused on my studies, did all my homework, and behaved like the good girl I should be. Every Christmas that followed, Santa dedicated himself to always leaving me useful things like jeans, sneakers, a backpack for school. I received them with a smile that made my cheeks ache, but no one seemed to notice.

And I went to college.

Did I study Fine Arts?

No, of course not. Business for me.

What did the business world have to do with me?

So that you understand, I will explain it to you with a comparison: the same as a snail with a rhino.

Yes, but everything has its explanation. Since the world was not able to admire my art, at least I found solace in seeing happiness in the eyes of the people I loved. That glow that emanated from the eyes of my parents, my grandparents, even my aunts and uncles, was the most similar thing I had ever known to the admiration for a painting. Very soon in my life, I went from drawing landscapes to drawing smiles on the faces of those around me. I was good at pleasing others.

I decided to make my own life a work of art. I wanted to become one of those paintings that everyone wants to have in their living room. I devoted myself so diligently to the task, that for a moment I believed that the business world was everything I had always dreamed of, that I was a company with legs and there was nothing else that could make me happy. I ignored men, that was one of the requirements I had imposed on myself. Let's see... Not that I was a virgin, not at all, but I must also say that I lost my virginity by accident.

No, I didn't fall on my bike, even though I may as well have done, I say. It was at the village parties of my friend Marta. I remember it as if it had happened yesterday. Summer overwhelmed us with all the weight of its boredom. Forty degrees of boredom in the shade. We drank for the first time. I was seventeen, Martha sixteen. There was a boy. What was his name...? Luis, Pedro, Fernando. Do you see what I mean? It would have been better for me to fall on my bike and have my hymen stuck to the asphalt. Or to the dust of the village road. Or whatever, except for the penis of a boy whose name I don't even remember.

That said, we drank. A lot. The typical spin the bottle game of truth or dare. If you didn't want to lend yourself to the dares that started every time the neck of the bottle pointed at you, you had to drink. At that time karma was already messing with me, I am convinced. I hadn't entered college yet, but I was already telling everyone that the business world would be my future. And karma, which is all around us, must have heard me. The thing is the damn neck of that Coke bottle was always pointing at me. I danced, I sang, I went to shout crap to the house where the adults were. With a galloping heart. I peeked through the window. I shouted with all my might the full cuss word repertoire I had at the time - pretty poor, by the way. We've already said that I was a good girl. I crouched as if a bullet was coming straight at me. A man peeked out as I crushed myself against the wall, wishing the windowsill would cover me. And it covered me. Then I ran. I went back to the corral we were playing in. Everyone started laughing, except Luis... Or Pedro... Or Fernando. His name doesn't matter now. The thing is, everyone laughed, except one boy, the only thing I remember was that he was wearing a braided thread bracelet. He looked at me with compassionate eyes. He recommended that from then on, I should always choose to drink rather than do the dare.

You don't need to be embarrassed anymore, he said.

Life is a bitch. Losing your virginity with someone I remember talking to but not his name or face, go figure!

I drank. The bottle landed on me. I drank. The bottle landed on me. I drank. The bottle landed on me. Until the time came when my body no longer admitted alcohol.

My friend Marta's cousin had realized that the eyes with which Luis-Pedro-Fernando looked at me were not one of compassion but of desire. When on the umpteenth lap the neck of the bottle pointed at me and the ass at him, he said loudly that my punishment was to go with that person (Luis-Pedro-Fernando-whatever) to the barn. We were all drunk, though me more. People laughed and the boy had to pull my hand to get me up. I was completely unable to do it on my own. We started kissing as soon as we got to that place smelling like hot animals. I had never been kissed and I confess I liked the feeling. Alcohol sensitizes the senses, I know now. At that time, I had no idea. When the boy put his lips to mine in that sweet, soft way, I felt myself floating. He whispered in my ear that he had been in love with me all his life, from the first time he saw me. You see, he had never left town and it was the first time my friend Marta invited me. You can draw your conclusions about the meaning of all his life. But hey, I believed him. I floated rocked by the tongue of the boy whose name I can't remember. He ran his tongue around my mouth slowly, teaching me by example what to do. And the heat began to rise through my body. We spent a lot of time kissing. He laid me on the straw and threw himself on top of me, but he wasn't going crazy or anything like that, he just kept kissing me.

I guess he already had some experience, though not much, given his youth. Maybe he was really in love with me. The thing is, he didn't throw himself straight at my tits to squeeze them like there was no tomorrow. As if he were in the middle of a shipwreck and they were the only float available. My friends had experienced that type of treatment in their first experiences. I didn't, I was lucky at least in that. The nameless boy kissed me and started stroking my hair first. He stuck his tongue in my ear and I writhed in laughter. When I opened my eyes, I saw him there, on top of me, looking at me with lit cheeks and bright eyes. Then he got serious.

His hands went down my neck and before I realized, they reached my breasts. He stroked me