CHAPTER THREE
‘Nik, it’s me.’
Nikolas paused, steeling for what was to come: a loan of money, a shoulder to cry on. Not that he would deny his little sister either. Over the years she’d wept a flood down the phone, usually about being unloved—by lovers, by Evangelina, though he doubted it was the latter this time, or money. Their parents had set her up in the café-bar and he knew that it was doing very well. So…it wasn’t money, or their mother…It will be Eugénie, he thought.
‘Nik! You there?’
She sounded plaintive, washed out. He focused his attention.
‘I’m here, Lek. What’s wrong?’
‘Why do you always say that when I call?’
He laughed. ‘Do I?’
‘Yes, you bastard. You do.’
Nikolas smiled to himself. She was the only person in the world who could get away with calling him that.
Ther
