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‘For any particular reason?’ she asked.
‘I liked it.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘You look as though there’s more to it than that.’
Surprise briefly flashed in his features and he was quiet for a moment, thinking, before he shifted his head once. ‘When I was a boy I used to live just over there.’ He pointed across the glittering bay to a small town on the water’s edge. Unlike the sparsely populated coastal region where Ares’s mansion stood, this village looked full to the brim, tightly packed houses jostling for space. ‘My grandfather was a fisherman, and I’d go out with him sometimes. There were barely any houses here then. Two or three enormous sprawling homes that—to my eyes—looked like palaces.’
Bea sipped her champagne, listening intently.
‘When I made my first billion American dollars I bought one of these homes.’
Bea gaped. ‘Your first billion?’ She shook her head a little ruefully. ‘Exactly how many billions do you have?’ She grimaced, regretting the forthright question immediately. ‘Don’t answer that. I shouldn’t have asked.’
He flexed a brow. ‘It’s a matter of public record. I have no issue with you knowing.’
‘Oh.’
‘Current estimates put my wealth around the hundred-billion-dollar mark. It fluctuates a little, depending on international markets and world events.’
Bea blinked. ‘I can’t even imagine what that’s like.’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘The thing about money is that once you have enough to feed yourself and your family, buy a secure home, a warm bed, it doesn’t really change that much. There’s not a huge difference between ten thousand dollars and ten billion, to my mind.’
Having lived through homelessness and poverty, Bea supposed he was uniquely placed to comment on that.
‘You must have felt pretty damned good walking in that door for the first time though,’ she said, nodding back towards his home, now a distant speck far beneath them.
‘I felt better when I bought our first home, actually,’ he said quietly.
‘Our?’
‘My brother, Matthaios, and mine. He was still at school. Back then I’d amassed what I thought was a fortune—spare change now, really, but to me, at the time, it was a king’s ransom. Being able to buy an apartment outright, to know that, whatever happened, Matthaios would have somewhere safe to live—that was the best feeling I’ve ever known. This was enjoyable, but nothing will ever compare to that.’
‘He’s your younger brother?’
He nodded but his demeanour shifted, so that he seemed closed off and distant. ‘He’s two years younger.’
‘You’re close?’
A terse nod.
‘You said he’s sick?’
Ares’s eyes flashed to hers, dark emotions tumbling through their depths. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. Is it serious?’
‘It’s a...lifelong condition.’
She frowned, sympathy tugging at her heart-strings.
He sighed heavily. ‘My mother was a drug addict. My brother inherited her...tendencies. I should have realised sooner what was happening.’ Self-directed anger thickened his voice. ‘As teenagers, we had no money—he couldn’t drink or do drugs; it simply wasn’t an option. But, once things improved for us financially, he found it easy to procure whatever the hell he wanted.’
Bea’s heart tightened.
‘I worked a lot. I didn’t see what was right in front of me, despite having witnessed my mother’s addiction play out for years. I should have known he was losing himself to drugs, alcohol—whatever he could get his hands on.’
She shook her head to dispel the blame Ares was laying at his own feet. ‘You were working so you could support him,’ she reminded Ares gently.
