Chapter Ten #3
‘Another monster who shouldn’t have been allowed to sire children.’
‘Parakaló, don’t say that,’ she begged.
Aware his emotions were near to imploding, he reined himself in. Settling back, he stared at her. ‘Fine. Go on, then.’
‘I came back for you—six months later. When I realised I was being put off. Discouraged from asking questions.’
Shock rushed to fill the hollows inside him, then he shook his head. ‘That’s a lie! You never came back.’
She sent him a sad smile. ‘I came, but no one knew what had happened to you. I eventually traced you to a home that had burned down.’ She wept silently, shaking her head in despair. ‘I was so terrified…’ She stumbled to a stop.
Nelios was reeling from the revelation that she’d returned to find him herself. And from a niggling he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
‘So you came for me. And left again. Then what?’
‘Every moment I could spare, I came back to Athens. But you…you seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.’
His lips pursed. ‘Between the authorities, who were very keen to lock me away in another home and throw away the key, and unsavoury characters who preyed on children my age, I was forced to become a master at hiding on the streets.’
She flinched. Her hand darted out, beseeching. He clenched his gut because his feelings were in danger of softening, her pain feeding into his. And he couldn’t afford that.
Then the niggling congealed into a tangible question. ‘You keep saying “I”. Where was Apostolis?’ he demanded.
Tears filled her eyes, and a different hollow opened inside him.
‘Forgive me, Nelios. We… I was always going to tell you when you were older…’
‘Tell me what?’ His voice as sharp as a scalpel digging straight into his heart. Because that heart knew what was coming.
Her eyes closed. ‘Apostolis was not your father.’
That stopped him, numbed him from head to heel.
‘What?’
Agnes’s hand twisted in her lap. ‘You were conceived before I met him. I was young, na?ve. Your biological father left before you were born. Apostolis had always wanted me and he married me to save my reputation. To give you a name.’
Nelios stared at her. The floor had shifted under him, but still he didn’t move. ‘And he hated me for it.’
‘Not at first, but…’ Her voice cracked. ‘Eventually, he resented how much I loved you. He saw you as a barrier to me loving him. And he…he gave me an ultimatum.’
He swallowed. ‘Say it.’
‘He said it was him or you.’
Silence.
Nelios stepped back as though she’d struck him. ‘And you chose him,’ he whispered.
‘I thought I could fix his relationship with you. That if I kept the marriage intact, he would relent and I could bring you back. But time passed and—he made it impossible. Every time I tried, he reminded me of what I owed him. And I couldn’t stand against him.’
‘Yes,’ he said, voice low and lethal. ‘You were a coward.’
She didn’t argue. ‘Yes, I was.’
The truth settled between them, finally out in the open.
‘You were my mother,’ he said, softer now, but somehow more brutal. ‘You were supposed to fight for me.’
‘I know.’ More tears slid down her cheek, catching the light like glass. ‘And I’ll never forgive myself. But you must know—I loved you, Nelios. I loved you so much. And that’s why he came to hate you. Because you were always mine.
‘A year—that was all I planned to be away from you, regardless of what Lancaster or Tolis wanted. Not…’
Two decades.
His throat burned and his fists clenched, but the dam didn’t break. Not yet.
He turned away, facing the tall windows. The sun outside was too bright, too cruel. But he let it burn him.
‘I don’t know if I can forgive you,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Not yet.’
Agnes nodded. ‘Then I’ll wait. For as long as it takes.’
He didn’t answer. Just stood there in the wreckage of his life, knowing it was indeed too late. He had nothing to offer Vayle, after all.
Nothing at all.
Agnes continued to speak. ‘I also hired a private detective to look for you.’
Another bolt of shock lanced his middle. ‘You hired a detective?’ he echoed woodenly.
‘Ne. But that went nowhere.’
He knew why. He, Andreas and Capaldi had paid a fisherman to smuggle them into Sicily on his boat so they could find menial work on a vineyard.
He’d scrimped and saved for the better part of two and a half years.
He’d returned to Athens and bought his first hotel for pennies, courtesy of the failing economy.
He’d put in the papers to change his name the same day and never looked back.
Her soft sobbing refocused his attention on her. ‘The investigator said it was likely you were…’ She stopped, unable to form the words.
He spoke them for her. ‘You were led to believe I was dead.’ And here, now, was the exodus he’d always wished for. But, rather than experience the satisfaction of a well-earned denouement, his own personal Greek tragedy appeared entirely formed of acts of poor judgement and mistimed endeavours.
‘Until Vayle and I heard from your lawyer wanting her hotel.’ She rose, approached and caught his hand in hers, gripping it tightly. ‘Forgive me. Parakalo. There wasn’t a single day when I didn’t think about you. Regret what I did.’
Nelios didn’t pull away.
But, even as he allowed himself to absorb the series of unfortunate circumstances that had brought him to this point, something whispered to him that he’d been irreparably altered.
In a way neither he nor anyone else might be able to fix.
Vayle opened the French doors and started walking, just as she’d done yesterday after putting Angelos down for his nap. Nelios had been gone just under twenty-four hours. It felt like years.
She walked past the middle point of the island, through the olive and orange groves, skirting the craggy beach and climbing the cliff till she reached the highest point.
There she sat, watching the waves crash relentlessly against the rocks below.
Salt spray mixed with tears she didn’t want to dash away as an hour passed, maybe two.
It was good to get it all out so she could be strong for Angelos…
for the new life she carried. With a hiccup, she slid her hand over her belly, heavier emotions clogging her throat.
She hadn’t even had time to absorb this miraculous news until now.
Now she had, an untouched piece of her heart filled with love her for the baby growing inside her.
‘I will love you too, through thick and thin. I promise you.’
‘Vayle.’
She shook her head, believing the deep echo of her name was a trick of the wind.
‘Agapita, please come away from the edge.’
Startled, she glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Nelios’s deep flinch and paling face. She didn’t want to hope and couldn’t bear another bout of rejection, so she faced the turbulent view once more. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because watching you tumble off this cliff will be the tragic melodrama that finally kills me; I’m sure of it.’
She shrugged and kept facing forward. ‘I’m feeling melodramatic. I thought I’d come and see the literal expression of my feelings.’
‘It would please me greatly if you stepped back a little more.’
Perhaps it was cruel to relish the strain in his voice. To know the thought of losing her shook some part of him. Anger bubbled up. She’d put everything on the line, and for what?
Her fingers tightened around the white plastic stick in her pocket, resenting the jolt of unjustified guilt she felt. She managed, barely, to kick herself out of that mindset. She’d done nothing wrong. They’d done this with their eyes wide open.
‘I’m not in the mood to please you, Nelios. What are you doing here, anyway? Weren’t you going to be in Athens for several days?’
‘At the risk of more melodrama, I couldn’t stay away.’
‘It’s a good thing then that this island is big enough. Until I leave, we can stay out of each other’s way.’
A rough sound escaped him. ‘So you’re leaving?’
Misery filled her but she forced a nod. ‘I don’t see that I have a choice,’ she said. Then waited…and waited.
When the tiny seeds of hope died, she snatched the plastic stick from her pocket. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing back here so soon when you seemed hellbent on leaving, but I’ve already kept this from you when I should’ve told you yesterday.’ She held the pregnancy test out to him.
For endless seconds he looked poleaxed. Then he lunged forward and snatched it from her, staring at it before his eyes met hers, then dropped to her belly. ‘You’re…’
‘Pregnant with our second child? Yes. As fate would have it.’
His gaze dropped back to the test and this time she read his emotions accurately: shock; pride; elation. But those emotions were locked away far too quickly, leaving behind a landscape that grew increasingly grey…inhospitable.
‘I will be a good father to this child too, you have my word. But…’ He paused, his chest heaving far too dramatically, rivalling the heaving in her soul.
The certain knowledge he was about to knock her world to smithereens.
‘I’m terrified that’s all I can give, Vayle.
After what I discovered…’ He stopped, inhaled, then blew out his breath.
‘If you’re open to a fifty-fifty custody arrangement, I’ll be in your debt for ever. ’
Her heart squeezed, but she shook her head to clear it. ‘What do you mean, what you discovered?’
A wave of guilt swept over his face. ‘I met with Ag…my mother. She told me…’ He shook his head. ‘Forgive me for not listening to you, Vayle.’
‘Not until you tell me everything. I have a right to know, I think.’
‘Ne,’ he agreed.
She listened as he retold his conversation with the woman who’d birthed him. Relief shuddered through her, over and over. Her every hope for him, for the woman she’d believed in who’d been like a mother to her, had been realised.
‘So they came looking for you. They didn’t abandon you,’ she affirmed softly.
‘She didn’t, no.’
His emphasis made her stiffen. But she still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She waited, because there was more.