I stepped back from the pool, hoping to restore a level head. Because sex wasn’t part of our bargain. It was the mind-altering drug that had led us here in the first place.
‘So, does this island have a name?’ I asked as he slowly advanced.
‘Neostros,’ he supplied, without taking his hooded gaze from me.
‘You named your island after yourself? How...narcissistic.’
He shrugged off my words. ‘More like the other way around. My grandfather bought this place long before I was born and he named it. My parents were vacationing here when my mother went into labour. I was born in one of the houses on the other side of the island.’
That glimpse into his early life made me yearn for more.
‘Is your grandfather still alive?’
His face closed up, but not before a flash of twisted pain and bitterness marred his expression. ‘No. He died of a heart attack as a direct result of attempting to dig his family out of hard times.’
Looking around me, seeing unfettered opulence at every turn, it was hard to believe that any Xenakis had ever experienced a minute’s hardship. ‘Hard times? How?’
Again his mouth twisted cynically. ‘Another unfortunate example of someone wanting something more than they deserved. In this case it was my grandfather’s overambitious business partner. He ran the business into the ground, then left my grandfather to pick up the pieces—but not before extending to him a business loan with crippling interest rates. The strain was too much for him. It broke my grandmother first. After she died... Well, it broke him.’
‘From what I can tell, you come from a very large family. Didn’t anyone step up to help?’
Neo lifted his hand and caught up a curl of my hair that had come loose. For a long moment I thought he wouldn’t answer me, that he intended his intimate caress to swell higher between us until we drowned from it.
When his eyes eventually met mine, residual bitterness lingered, but the heat had grown. ‘I don’t want to talk about my family anymore. As you can see, someone did step up. Ax and I did what needed to be done to get back what we’d lost. But in doing so we were reminded over and over again that greed and avarice will push people into deplorable behaviour to the exclusion of all decency.’
I opened my mouth to refute it. His fingers left my hair to brush over my lips, stopping my
words before I could speak them.
‘If you seek to convince me otherwise...again, Sadie, I urge you to save your breath.’
He’s showing you his true colours. Believe him.
‘So you choose to operate from a position of bitterness and cynicism?’
A hard light glinted in his eyes momentarily before his expression grew shrewd, almost calculating. ‘Don’t you? Tell me what happened with your father.’
The sudden switch sent a cold shock wave through me. ‘What?’
‘You take pains to avoid discussing him even though he’s alive. And I’ve deduced that he’s a major reason for your mother’s troubles. Why the secrecy? What did he do to you?’
I firmed my lips, refusing to be drawn into the painful subject. But he’d answered my questions, even though it had been clear he didn’t want to discuss it.
‘Up until I was sixteen? Absolutely nothing. He was a decent father and I guess a good enough husband—I never heard my parents argue or even disagree about anything major.’
Neo frowned. ‘What changed?’
‘I came home from school one day to find my mother sobbing hysterically. When she calmed down enough to be coherent she handed me a postcard my father had sent from Venezuela. Only problem was, he was supposed to be on a business trip to Ireland.’
Strangling pain gripped my chest, stopped the flow of words for a moment. Neo’s fingers trailed down my jaw to rest on my shoulder and, as weakening as it was, I took comfort from the warmth of his hand—enough to finish the sorry little tale of how my family had broken apart with a few scrawled lines on a cheery little exotic postcard.
‘He basically said he didn’t want to be married anymore. Didn’t want to be a father, and he was never coming back. He’d already instructed his lawyers to file divorce papers. What he didn’t warn us about was the fact that he hadn’t kept up with the mortgage payments for over six months. Or that he’d cleared out their joint bank account. I was still absorbing the news when the bailiffs turned up two hours later with a court order and threw us out of our home.’
Neo cursed under his breath. ‘Where did you go?’
‘My mother had some savings. Enough to rent us a flat for a year. It would probably have gone further if...’ I stopped, fresh shame and the raw anguish of laying myself bare halting my words.
His hand curled around my shoulder. ‘If your mother’s gambling problems hadn’t started?’