Chapter 4 - The Floor Nikos Vardis Swore Did Not Exist

By evening, the sedative in Nikos’s system had begun to clear.

The doctors still refused to discharge him, but they allowed Detective Ortiz to arrange a secure video call with officers inside Vardis Meridian headquarters.

Marin sat beside the bed translating only when needed. Nikos’s English was strong enough for business, but exhaustion made every word slower, and the investigation kept moving through legal terms, police shorthand, and details he could not afford to misunderstand.

On the screen, officers stood inside a narrow concrete corridor lined with shelving.

Theo Karras sat on the floor against a wall, wrapped in a foil emergency blanket. His face was bruised. One wrist was swollen. He looked furious rather than frightened.

“Niko,” he said in Greek.

Nikos leaned toward the screen.

“Theo. What happened?”

“I was stupid.”

“That narrows nothing.”

Theo almost smiled.

Then he told them.

At seven that morning, Theo had received a message from Celia Arden asking him to retrieve an original copy of a shareholder agreement before the board meeting. She said the digital version contained a scanning error that could affect the incapacity clause.

Theo knew of no paper archive on twenty-three.

Celia sent him a temporary access code.

When he entered the hidden records suite, someone struck him from behind.

He woke hours later with his phone gone.

“How did you send the picture of Preston’s door?” Nikos asked.

Theo frowned.

“I didn’t.”

The words chilled the room.

Ortiz leaned closer to the camera. “Your number sent it.”

“My phone was taken.”

Nikos stared at Marin.

Someone had wanted him to believe Theo was moving freely.

Someone had also known exactly which photograph would force Nikos’s attention toward room 814.

“Why Preston?” Marin asked.

Theo heard her through the speaker.

“Who is that?”

“Marin Whitlock,” Nikos said. “She kept me from taking a second pill.”

Theo stared at her for a long second, then nodded once.

“Preston called me last night. He said Celia asked him to prepare a translated summary of the emergency board materials in Greek.”

Nikos’s expression hardened.

“I never requested Greek copies.”

“I know. That is why he called.”

Theo explained that the company’s governing documents were legally controlling in English, but Nikos often reviewed complex provisions in Greek before major votes. Celia knew that. Preston had noticed something strange in the translated packet.

“What?” Ortiz asked.

“He would not say on the phone. He said the translation made one clause sound narrower than the English original.”

Marin looked at Nikos. “The incapacity clause?”

Theo nodded.

Nikos sat back.

The board vote was supposed to determine whether he should temporarily transfer authority to Adrian because of alleged medical decline. If the Greek summary understated the board’s power, Nikos could sign or consent without realizing what he was actually surrendering.

“What does the English clause really do?” Marin asked.

Nikos’s jaw tightened. “If invoked under the right conditions, it can transfer voting control of my founder shares to an interim executive committee.”

“For how long?”

“Until the board certifies capacity.”

“And who chairs the interim committee?”

“Adrian.”

Silence settled over the hospital room.

Ortiz asked officers to photograph every box in the hidden archive.

Theo shook his head. “Do not just photograph them. There is a cabinet at the back with red seals. Celia was obsessed with those records after the Thessaloniki port strike.”

Nikos’s eyes narrowed.

“That was eight years ago.”

“What happened?” Marin asked.

“A union pension fund accused one of our subsidiaries of diverting insurance payments. We settled. Celia handled everything.”

“Did you know where the money went?”

“No. I was told an accounting vendor made errors.”

On screen, an officer opened the red-sealed cabinet.

Inside were ledgers.

Not modern binders or digital printouts. Actual paper ledgers, each marked with shipping codes and handwritten initials.

One officer held a page to the camera.

Nikos leaned forward.

“What is that symbol?” Marin asked.

He did not answer.

His face had changed.

A small blue emblem had been stamped beside several entries: a circle broken by three horizontal lines.

Marin knew that mark.

She had seen it on the back of old postcards in her grandmother’s apartment.

For years she had assumed it belonged to a travel agency.

Her grandmother, Eleni Whitlock, had kept a dozen of those cards tied together with ribbon in a kitchen drawer. Thessaloniki. Marseille. Limassol. Montreal.

Always the same blue stamp.

Marin heard herself say, “I have seen that symbol before.”

Nikos turned toward her.

“Where?”

“At my grandmother’s house.”

The room went completely still.

Nikos stared at her as if the language she spoke were no longer the most surprising thing about her.

“Your grandmother,” he said carefully. “What was her maiden name?”

Marin swallowed.

“Eleni Markou.”

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Nikos’s face lost all color.

For the first time since Marin met him, he looked not like a man calculating risk but like a son hearing a dead parent’s unfinished sentence. He asked her to repeat the name, slowly. Marin did. Around them, the hospital equipment continued its indifferent beeping while a connection buried for decades became impossible to dismiss.