A Deadly Twist by Jeffrey Siger (free novel reading sites .txt) 📕

publisher must have known Bear killed the manager,” said Dimitri.

Andreas nodded. “Bear was unstable. Knowing what Bear knew, I doubt the publisher would have allowed him to live much longer.”

“This publisher guy must be a psycho himself,” said Dimitri. “Anything he considers potentially harmful to his family name, he eliminates.”

“Precisely why I want Nikoletta to get her story out there ASAP. Once it’s published, the harm will be done and he’ll no longer have a reason to go after her.”

“Except revenge,” said Toni.

“I was thinking more about him going after you, Andreas,” said Dimitri.

Lila’s head jerked away from her husband’s chest. Andreas kissed her forehead. “Let’s see what happens after Nikoletta’s article comes out.” He pulled Lila snugly back against his chest. “Then I’ll decide what has to be done to protect my family.”

* * *

Later that night, before going to bed, Andreas took a walk around the house to make sure all the doors and windows were locked. As he pulled shut the sliding door to the terrace, he heard, “Whoa, there. Is this your way of telling me to go to bed?”

Andreas slid open the door and stepped outside. “Just taking precautions in an effort to limit my run-ins with two-legged madmen to one per day.”

“At the risk of raising your count to two, come, sit beside me.” Tassos patted the couch.

Andreas slid the door closed behind him, walked to the couch, and dropped next to his friend.

“Tough day, huh?” said Tassos.

“They all are, but when someone comes that close to taking you out…” Andreas shook his head. “Thanks, by the way, for taking the shotgun away from that nutjob.”

“It was nothing.”

“We both know that’s not true. He had the barrel pointed straight at you when you came at him, and he still had more than enough juice to pull the trigger.” Andreas smacked Tassos on the thigh. “You can still move pretty quickly when you have to.”

“For an old man.”

“Nope, for any man.”

Tassos sighed. “We do what we have to do to protect our friends.”

“For sure.”

“Now, it’s my turn to thank you.”

“Me?” said Andreas. “For what?”

“I don’t know how many more years I have left, and—”

“Stop with that sort of—”

“Just let me finish.” Tassos swallowed. “And that’s had me wondering recently what really matters anymore. I can’t contribute as I once did…so why bother to learn new things, visit new places, make new friends? What’s the use? I’m just a relic.”

“How much longer do I have to listen to this?”

“Shh, I’m coming to the good part. They say people suffering from deep depression—which I don’t see myself as having—can benefit from shock therapy. It literally jolts them back to realizing how beautiful life can be. This afternoon on this terrace with that shotgun in my face, I experienced a sort of shock therapy. Not only did I realize in a matter of seconds that I could still contribute, but also how lost I’d be if I let anything bad happen to those I loved.”

Andreas sat quietly for a moment, then thrust a fist into the air. “Right on.”

Tassos laughed. “I’m serious. I feel…different now. Better, for sure. Like maybe I’m back on track, headed toward some purpose.”

“What sort of purpose?”

“Not sure yet, but one will come to me. I’m certain of that.”

Andreas smiled. “Look out, bad guys of the Greek Isles, Tassos is back.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Within a week of Andreas’s return to Athens, Nikoletta’s exposé appeared as a front-page story in the newspaper owned by her publisher’s biggest rival.

The publisher countered with stories in his paper accusing Nikoletta of being, on the one hand, a deranged purveyor of libelous fake news and, on the other, a disgruntled employee under exclusive contract to his company, barred from publishing elsewhere. In bold letters across the front page of his paper, he threatened to sue her, the paper that had published her story, and anyone else who “dared to libel his family by repeating Nikoletta Elia’s lies.”

The trouble was, Nikoletta’s story included copies of documents substantiating her claims, and news organizations throughout the EU found them quite convincing. With the Brits having been under siege by her former publisher’s paper for years over Lord Elgin and the Parthenon Marbles, the bloodthirsty UK press had a field day, running story after story of how generations of the publisher’s family had systematically plundered their own homeland while blaming others. The Germans seized on what they saw as an opportunity to undercut Greece’s World War II reparations claims by, “in the interest of full transparency,” releasing a trove of previously unreleased documents listing the current owners and provenance of artifacts and other treasures claimed by Greece to have been destroyed in World War II. Many of those records related to transactions that in no way involved the publisher or his family, but they did name other prominent Greek families, now drawn into the spotlight.

As the publisher’s defense of his family grew to ever more vituperative attacks on the European press, CNN got into the act with a special report titled “Has Greece Lost Its Marbles?” The premise of its piece questioned whether the broadening scandal might jeopardize even Greece’s legitimate claims for return of its plundered treasures.

Despite all the heat, the publisher showed no sign of backing down. When members of Parliament and prominent citizens urged him to end the battle of words and address his concerns in court, he labeled them “useless, spineless embarrassments to those who know what it means to be Greek.”

He used even harsher words to describe his longtime managing editor, Giorgos Pappas, who resigned in protest over his boss’s treatment of Nikoletta. Never, though, did the publisher address his critics directly or, for that matter, the substance of Nikoletta’s reporting.

Instead, he did what came naturally to him: he berated, bragged, and bullied.

* * *

Sunday mornings in the Kaldis household generally meant breakfast together, followed by church with the children’s grandparents, coffee at a place of the grandparents’ choosing, and in summer, a trip to the beach.

This Sunday morning,