A Shameful Consequence(6)

‘Well, I’m here now.’ Nico shrugged, his words dripping with sarcasm when they came. ‘What could be nicer than spending a day with my family?’

He ate, and sat bored through the speeches, deciding it had been foolish to come.

Women flirted.

Beautiful, gorgeous women. One in particular was to his usual taste and how easy it would be to take a bottle of champagne from a table, take her by the hand and go up to his room. Yet he glanced at Constantine as she danced with her husband, and silently felt regret, for she had spoilt his appetite for silicone tonight. All Nico could think was, Lucky Stavros.

It was the first time he had felt even a hint of envy toward Stavros.

The son of his father’s business rival and competitive friend, always the children had been compared.

Always Nico had won.

Except on duty.

Nico had not gone into the family business—he had chosen to go alone. At eighteen, to the protests of his family, he had headed for the mainland, worked as a junior in banking and then, when still that had not satisfied, he’d headed to America. He had faked a better résumé, and how impressed they had been with the young Greek man who could read the stockmarket. How painstaking building his own portfolio had first been, but then, with passion and determination, he had scanned global markets, invested in properties when prices had crashed, sold them when the pendulum swung back.

It always did.

How easily Nico saw that. Could not understand how others could not, for they sweated and panicked and sometimes jumped, where Nico sat calm, watching and waiting for new growth in the fertile ashes.

Each visit back home he returned richer and, despite the fights in private, his father was proud that always his son was better.

It would, though, Nico decided, be hard to match the rare beauty of Stavros’s bride.

Poor thing.

The thought jumped uninvited to the forefront of his mind as he watched her dance, not with her husband but to the tune of tradition. He watched her vie for her husband’s attention, but he was too busy talking with his koumbaros, irritated when she tapped him on the shoulder and told him they must now dance. He watched as Stavros ran his hand down her bottom and then said something into her ear.

And then he saw her pull away.

A flash of hurt, anger perhaps, in her eyes and Nico knew it had not been a compliment that had come from Stavros’s lips.

He was sure, because that was the way on Lathira, as Constantine would soon find out, that even on her wedding night she had been criticised.

It was death by a thousand cuts, the world she had entered, and he had just witnessed the first.

She would be part of Lathira’s social set—have lunch with the other trophy wives and then back to the gym the following morning to pay for it. They would seep the life from her till she was as polished and as hard as the rest, and Nico did not want to sit and witness even a moment of it. It had been a mistake to come. Nico did not do sentiment, did not enjoy weddings. All they did was cause a vague bewilderment—to share your life, your future, to entrust yourself to another?

He looked at the bride, who was not blushing but pale and visibly stressed, at his parents, who sat tense, at the couples that forced smiles and conversation, and he searched for something that might discount his theory that love did not exist. He looked around the room and there were two boys, raiding the table, laughing as they ordered cola from the waiters. Two brothers causing mischief, and he felt a twist in his soul that came from nowhere he could place.

‘I’m going to retire.’ He waited for the protest from his parents but the only protest he got was from the blonde whose name he couldn’t for the life of him remember.

‘Will we see you in the morning?’

‘Perhaps.’ Nico shrugged. ‘Or I may leave early.’

‘Come and see us on Lathira soon,’ his mother said. ‘It has been ages.’

‘I’m here now,’ Nico pointed out, because this visit had to count as one, for he would not be back for months now.

He wished he loved them.

As he walked out of the ballroom, Nico wished he was blind to their faults, but all he saw were greedy, ego-driven people.

He collected his room keys, was advised that his things were in his room, but instead of heading up there on a whim he turned and headed out to the streets.

Past the church and the taverna, along the road to the fishing boats and the fishermen who sat smoking and drinking on the beach. He followed a path that should not be familiar except he seemed to know where it led, and he walked, somehow at ease with the seamier side of town, past the late-night bars to the street that forked into cobbled alleys. He could hear breathing behind him and heavy footsteps but Nico felt no fear.