Deadly Little Lies by Jeanne Adams Page A

“Does that mean something good or something bad?”
    She laughed and it made her blue eyes twinkle. “You make it so easy to forget that you weren’t born here. It means something good.”
    â€œEh-la, well, thank you, then. I’m afraid I was very much the starving student. I wanted to go to university in America, my father was against it. He wanted me closer to home. I wanted to get away from him and from my brother and from all the watching eyes. And frankly, from all the women.”
    He said it without thinking, because it had been true. Then he winced for it must have sounded pompous, macho and arrogant. Carrie’s response told him he was right.
    â€œOh, really?” Carrie drawled. “That sounds chauvinistic.”
    â€œHmmm, it is,” he muttered, struggling to figure out how to explain without sounding even worse. Only this woman could disconcert him so. Perhaps that was why he had always been so intrigued with her. “In the suburb outside Athens where my father kept his estate, he had many families who worked for him. My brother had run through one generation of the daughters, and when one of the young women got pregnant, my father gave her money.
    â€œUnfortunately young women and even young men, everywhere, when they need a job, will do many things they might not otherwise do to secure their future. There were also the daughters, and sometimes the wives, of my father’s associates, who would follow me around or seek to come into my room.” He felt the heat rise in his face at some of the memories associated with that time. “My father made sure everyone knew that he had pitted my brother and me against one another to prove our worth. What is the old saying? To the victor go the spoils? That was to be the deal.”
    â€œOh, my gosh, that’s terrible.” Carrie looked shocked, appalled.
    Dav nodded. “It was. You never knew who was helping you because they liked you, or thought you would be the winner in the game, or who was helping to actually hurt you.” And some had truly, truly hurt him, in those games. Dav tried to make his tone lighter, more upbeat as he finished his story. “He made only one rule. We could not kill one another, for if either of us died, he would give it all away, he said. Neither Niko nor I would inherit if we were rash enough to cause an inconvenient accident.” Dav sighed, thinking back to what had started the question. “He also made it known that if we managed to kill one another, he had no compunction about naming a bastard grandson as his heir.”
    â€œWhich attracted even more women, looking for a chance for a child.” She quickly picked up on the ramifications of his father’s pronouncements. “What a dangerous, cruel game your father played with you both,” she said, and he saw pain in her eyes.
    Pain for him. His appreciation for her deepened, something he’d thought impossible.
    â€œTrue,” he said lightly, feeling her caring soothe the old ache of his father’s callousness. He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. “Thank you for caring about that. At the time, I thought little of it because I had grown up with such treatment. It seemed ...” he hesitated to say it, but they had already revealed much. He wanted to share more, and if his plans ever came to fruition, she must know the truth anyway. He would not have a wife who did not know the darker side of him, so he must be willing to speak. “It seemed normal.”
    She nodded. “People can get used to a lot of cruelty, can’t they?” He agreed and they both pondered in silence as they ate. Trying, evidently, to change the somber mood the revelations brought, she asked, “So what happened when you came to America?”
    â€œHe cut me off,” Dav said, shrugging, as if it hadn’t hurt, hadn’t devastated the young man he had been. “I managed a scholarship,