Chapter Eleven #2
What had he still not told her? ‘What, then?’ she asked.
He hesitated, rotating his tumbler of whisky between his long, lean fingers.
His head was slightly bent, his face cast in shadow, so Ashley could only see the blade of his cheekbone, the straight line of his nose and the fullness of his lips.
He was as beautiful as a Greek statue, and in that moment, he felt just as remote.
‘While we were still talking,’ he finally said, his voice low and toneless, ‘I was arrested. Right in front of you. Handcuffed and dragged away.’
A soft gasp escaped her as her mind formed the seemingly impossible image. ‘In the middle of the ball?’
He glanced up at her, and the bleakness in his eyes made her gasp again. ‘Yes.’
Ashley shook her head instinctively. Surely she would have remembered that? And yet…already jagged pieces of a puzzle flashed through her mind: a scream, a sob, her own choking fear… Her fingers tightened on her glass.
Nico leaned forward. ‘Do you remember now?’ he asked in a low voice that thrummed with intensity.
‘Not…not really.’ Her voice was thick. ‘Just… I don’t know. Just…flashes of feeling.’
‘What kind of feeling?’
‘Fear, mainly,’ she admitted numbly, the sensations still swirling through her. ‘My own overwhelming fear.’ She had to swallow hard. ‘But I don’t know if it’s from that night. Who can say…?’
‘Why,’ Nico asked, leaning back, ‘Would you be afraid?’ He almost sounded scornful, and Ashley couldn’t blame him.
She needed to be more honest. ‘Because I was terrified of my father,’ she admitted. ‘Back then.’
Nico frowned, his dark brows drawing together. ‘Terrified…?’ he repeated, still sounding sceptical.
Ashley looked down at her glass, and then took another sip of whisky, this time managing not to wince at the taste.
She needed the fire that stole through her, giving her the courage to say more.
‘Yes, terrified,’ she stated baldly, meeting Nico’s gaze once more.
‘He wasn’t just unkind, like I said before.
He was…abusive, for many years.’ Admitting as much made her feel as if she’d exposed her raw nerves to touch and light, everything in her twanging with the anticipation of pain.
Nico said nothing but simply stared at her, waiting for more.
‘Mainly emotionally,’ she continued stiltedly, ‘But also sometimes physically. And if I was talking to you and he didn’t like it for some reason…
’ The knowledge trickled through her, coldly and surely.
‘I would have been utterly terrified that night,’ she finished flatly, ‘Of what he might do to me after.’
Which might have something to do with why she’d forgotten it so completely…and disastrously.
Nico stared at Ashley, noting the strained pallor of her face.
Her eyes were huge and dark, her lips pressed together.
Her fingers clenched her glass, so her knuckles were sharp and white.
Whatever else she was hiding, he realised he believed her about this.
He just didn’t know how much it changed things.
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He took a sip of his own drink as he tried to organise his swirling thoughts. ‘I’m sorry about your father and how he treated you,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘It was a well-kept secret. My father was known to be incredibly charming. No one doubted it, at least until he was arrested.’ She smiled thinly, but Nico found he couldn’t smile back.
‘Yes, I can believe that,’ he replied tightly as his stomach clenched with memories.
He knew just how charming and convincing Chase Woodward could be.
‘But…’ He paused. ‘You didn’t seem terrified to me,’ he told her honestly.
‘I’m not saying you weren’t,’ he added, ‘Just that…it felt different.’ When they’d been talking, it had felt warm and sweet.
As for afterwards…it had been all cold indifference, her face a blank mask.
‘I was good at hiding my feelings,’ Ashley told him with a small, sad smile and a little shrug. ‘I had to be. My father punished me for a week when someone asked me if I was unhappy in front of him.’
Nico felt himself go cold at that carelessly given detail. ‘What do you mean, he punished you for a week?’ he demanded.
She shrugged again, this time even more dismissively. ‘Oh, he had all sorts of tactics. On that occasion, I think he just locked me in my room. It could have been worse.’
‘Locked you…?’
‘The housekeeper snuck me food,’ Ashley assured him. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’ She pressed her trembling lips together. ‘It was the more…humiliating punishments that I couldn’t stand.’
Humiliating…? Nico did not like the sound of that, and he could tell from the way Ashley’s throat worked, and her lips still trembled, that she didn’t want to say anything more.
‘I had no idea,’ he admitted in a low voice.
Even when she’d said her father had been abusive, he hadn’t quite grasped just how much. ‘I’m sorry.’
She shook her head as she blinked rapidly. ‘You don’t need to be sorry. My father is the only one to blame—and me, I suppose, for letting it go on for so long.’
‘You were a child—’ he protested.
‘It didn’t stop until he was arrested,’ she cut across him, her quiet voice full of self-regret. ‘I was twenty-nine years old at the time. Hardly a child.’
‘Still,’ Nico insisted, angry on her behalf. ‘You can’t blame yourself.’
‘I don’t,’ Ashley told him, but he didn’t think she sounded convincing.
‘At least,’ she amended with an attempt at a wry smile, ‘I try not to. But it can be hard, when you look back on how you once were, and you wonder why on earth you just took it for so long.’ She shook her head, her hair tumbling from its chignon to frame her face in unruly tendrils.
‘Why wasn’t I smarter? Stronger? I’ve asked myself that so many times. ’
‘Yes,’ Nico agreed, his voice turning hoarse. It was a question he had asked himself many times, as well. Why had he trusted Chase Woodward so completely and naively? Why had he let himself be led, like a lamb to the slaughter, without even so much as a suspicion about where he was going?
Like Ashley, it was hard not to blame himself…
which was why he’d fixated on getting his revenge.
He’d thought it would finally satisfy him but so far, he had to acknowledge, it hadn’t.
Taking over the last remaining bastion of Woodward wealth had only left him with questions and confusion when he craved certainty and closure.
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember,’ Ashley remarked quietly, her voice laced with sorrowful regret.
‘It’s the strangest feeling, not being able to.
’ She shook her head slowly. ‘After my father went to prison, I had…something of a wobble.’ She gave a shaky laugh.
‘Ruth Boxall helped me through it. Without her…’
She trailed off as Nico with effort kept his expression neutral.
Ruth Boxall’s husband had simply stood aside while Chase had framed him for embezzlement.
The Chief Financial Officer of Woodward Investments had to have known what was really going on, and yet he’d said nothing.
Had Ruth known too? Had Ashley, and she’d forgotten that, too?
‘Anyway,’ Ashley resumed, ‘I saw a therapist, which was helpful, and it came up then that I couldn’t really remember some things from that time in my life, but I was okay with that.
I framed it, at least in my own mind, as just blocking out painful memories, the way anyone might.
I didn’t think I’d forgotten anything specific, anything that should be remembered.
And I suppose I always thought that, if I wanted to revisit that time, I would be able to.
I didn’t think I’d suffered from some kind of amnesia. ’
She paused, her expression clouding as she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
‘But then last night…when you said I’d become upset and there was just this blankness in my brain…
it scared me. It made me wonder what else I’ve forgotten.
So maybe I really do believe that I’ve met you and I just didn’t remember, as incredible as that still seems.’
Nico couldn’t keep a cynical laugh from escaping him. ‘You think I’m the one who shouldn’t be believed in this situation?’
She held out one pale, slender hand to him in appeal.
‘Nico, try to understand. Imagine if someone told you they’d met you and it was life-changing, but you had absolutely no memory of it.
Wouldn’t that give you pause, at least? Make you wonder if they were lying, especially when that person had taken over your company? ’
He finished the last of his whisky in one long, burning swallow. ‘I have no reason to lie.’
‘Nor do I.’
Which left them…where, exactly? They were both silent as the night settled around them, full of shadows and stars.
He believed her, Nico realised heavily. With all the trauma she had suffered, she must really have forgotten.
But did it change anything, truly? She’d still ignored him when he’d pleaded with her, something he had no desire to remind her of now.
And, yes, maybe that was because she’d been afraid of her father, but he’d gone to prison—for five years.
A character reference from Woodward’s daughter on the witness stand might have strengthened his case, might have changed so much, not just for him, but for his family, his brother…
‘You believe me?’ Ashley finally asked into the silence.
‘Yes,’ Nico admitted heavily.
She gave him an unhappy little smile. ‘You make it sound like it doesn’t change anything.’
Nico set his glass on the table with a final-sounding clink. ‘I’m not sure it does.’
‘But…’ Her forehead furrowed as her clouded gaze scanned his face. ‘Why not?’
‘Because whether you forgot or not doesn’t really matter,’ he explained. ‘What happened still happened.’
Ashley leaned forward, her eyes brightening with both curiosity and urgency. ‘But Nico, you still haven’t told me what happened. Why were you arrested?’
The silence between them felt electric; if either of them broke it, Nico thought he would be able to see the sparks, feel the shock.
Finally, he spoke. ‘For embezzling ten million dollars from Woodward Investments.’
Ashley’s breath hissed between her teeth as she shook her head in instinctive denial. ‘What…?’
‘I didn’t do it.’ He waited a beat before adding, ‘Your father did.’
‘Oh…’ The single syllable was released on a long, wavering note as Ashley leaned back against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes. She looked less surprised, Nico thought, than regretful.
‘The memories coming back to you now?’ he asked coolly.
Ashley’s eyes flew open. ‘No. I just… I’m sorry that happened to you. Were you…?’ Her voice wavered. ‘Were you prosecuted?’
He laughed then, an ugly sound he couldn’t help, because her question sounded so disingenuous, so dainty, as if she imagined that he’d had no more than a spot of bother, a night at the police station, perhaps, before it had all got straightened out.
‘You could say that,’ he told her. ‘I spent five years in prison for your father’s crimes. ’
For a second, Ashley simply stared, her lips parting, her eyes going wide.
As far as a reaction went, Nico found it spectacularly unsatisfying.
He felt as if the reason that had fuelled him for so long had evaporated in a puff of smoke, a single gasp of surprise.
How could he let revenge guide his decision now? And yet…how could he not?
What kind of man would he be simply to shrug his shoulders and turn aside from another man’s utterly ruthless and scheming vindictiveness? To roll over and act as if it hadn’t changed his life, his family’s life, his brother’s…?
But, just as Ashley didn’t like to remember painful parts of her life, Nico thought grimly, neither did he. He tried never to think about Roberto, and what those five years had cost his brother. The medical treatments he could have had, if Nico had been earning. The care he could have been given.
‘Nico,’ Ashley whispered, her voice a raw ache. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘So you should be.’ His voice came out harsh, harsher than he’d meant it to, because, damn it, he felt far too much.
Ashley jerked back. ‘You still blame me?’ she whispered unsteadily. ‘Even though I’ve told you…?’
‘Do you really think you’re all that innocent,’ Nico demanded, his voice a throb of emotion, ‘Just because you don’t remember?’
‘But…my father…’ she faltered. ‘He was the one. I might have forgotten our meeting, but I know I wouldn’t have known anything about the embezzlement or your arrest. I never had anything to do with his business. He wouldn’t have let me, even if I’d shown an interest.’
‘You were there,’ Nico told her flatly. ‘You saw me arrested right in front of you. You saw me…’ He found he couldn’t go on. ‘You did nothing,’ he finished.
‘What could I have done?’ she cried, colour flaring into her cheeks.
Even now she strove to absolve herself, to insist on her innocence. Some things never changed. Nico shook his head in dismissal, too weary—and still too angry—to continue.
‘Nico, I’m serious.’ To his surprise, she uncurled herself from the sofa and walked over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him, like a supplicant to the throne. ‘What could I have done?’ she whispered as she looked up at him.
She blinked back tears, her lips trembling. ‘You spent five years in prison,’ she whispered wonderingly. A tear spilled and trickled down her cheek. ‘What could I have done to keep that from happening?’