Page 36 of Devil's Riches

Greg smirked. “I’m not.”

“Alexis, what’s going on?” Nate asked.

I swallowed hard and looked at him. “Your mom and Greg… I think they were…”

“Were what?”

“Together,” I murmured.

“Together? You mean…” He trailed off as a look of profound horror blossomed on his face. “No. No fucking way.”

Greg spoke up again. “It’s not that we were together. We still are,” he said. “We have been since we were teenagers. Only ever wanted each other.”

Nate snarled and backhanded him across the side of the head. “Shut the fuck up.”

The older man recoiled from the blow, but the smile remained on his face. “Hit me all you want. It won’t change the fact that I’ve been sleeping with your mother for thirty-three years.”

Nate stepped back, chest heaving. “I know you’re lying. Colette told me how you treated Mom when you were younger. You fucking hated her.”

“Colette is half-right,” Greg replied, cocking his head. “I wasn’t nice to Annalise in public. We decided that it had to be like that so no one would realize how we truly felt about each other. You know how society can be when it comes to relationships like ours.”

“I wonder why,” I muttered sarcastically. My stomach was still heaving with disgust.

“Things were different for us when we were alone together,” he went on, ignoring my jibe. “She was the only woman I ever wanted, and I made sure she knew it. We kept it up for years without anyone noticing a thing. After I left for college, I couldn’t come back to the estate to see her very often because we had to keep up the pretense that I didn’t like her, but we still saw each other as much as possible. She sneaked up to the city to visit me once a week. Kept doing it after she got married, too.”

“You’re so full of shit.” Nate stepped back, red face twisted with fury. “She loved my father.”

“She never loved Francis. Never,” Greg replied in an acid tone. “He was just a means to an end.”

“What end?” I asked.

“She needed to keep up appearances,” he said. He gestured to himself. “See, it’s normal in our world if a rich, good-looking man remains a bachelor. But it’s not so normal for a beautiful woman to stay single. So we knew she’d have to get married eventually to stop anyone from getting suspicious about us. She eventually found a nice, handsome guy and convinced him to be with her, and that was Francis. She didn’t love him, though. She saved all that for me.”

I slowly shook my head. “That’s why you didn’t go to their wedding. You couldn’t stand seeing her with another man. Couldn’t stand knowing that she’d have to sleep with him.”

“Why should I have to stand it?” he snarled, jerking on the chains again. “She was mine! Do you have any idea what it was like seeing her with him, pretending to be happy when she should’ve been with me?”

“No, but that’s mostly because I can’t comprehend being in love with my own sister,” I muttered, shaking my head.

He leaned forward and rubbed his forehead, lips twisting into a grimace. “It was even worse when she started trying to get pregnant. I knew she felt like she had to produce an heir for the family, but it still made me sick every time she told me one of those fucking things was growing inside her. I fed her drinks with Mifepristone and Misoprostol in them whenever she came to see me with that kind of news, but I always knew it was only a matter of time before one of them stuck.”

As he spoke, horror washed through me like Arctic ice. He was evil. Pure fucking evil.

“What are Mifepristone and Misoprostol?” Nate asked.

I looked at him with wide eyes. “Abortion drugs,” I said in a hollow voice. “They make you miscarry if you take them.”

Nate turned his attention back to his uncle. “You did that to her?” he asked, voice soft but deadly. “The woman you supposedly love?”

“I did it because I love her!” Greg said. “Can you imagine seeing the woman you love carrying some other asshole’s child?”

“God, you’re fucking disgusting,” I spat at him.

He rolled his eyes upward and leaned back. “Hey, I let her have one of them eventually, didn’t I?” he said. A slow smile spread over his face again. “Of course, there’s a reason for that. One that I’m sure you’ve figured out by now.”

“What are you talking about?” Nate asked in a low voice, hands clenching into fists.

“Come on, Nate. Haven’t you ever wondered why we look so alike?”

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