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‘Carrie…’
‘No, please, whatever you want to say, just let me say this first. I believed Violet’s lies that you set her up and I listened to her drunken ranting about you in the same way she would drunkenly rage about James and not once did I question them. As a journalist, you would think I would have had the sense to verify it all first, and I want you to know I am sorry for believing that about you and for all the lies I told in some stupid, futile, dangerous attempt at revenge. I could have caused your business and reputation untold damage and I am truly ashamed of myself. I think… I think I lost my mind.’
It was all true, Carrie realised bleakly as she spoke her confession.
She didn’t need to verify Andreas’s version of events. She knew the truth in her heart.
‘What you have had to deal with these last three years would cause anyone to lose their mind,’ he said quietly.
‘It wouldn’t cause you to lose yours,’ she said with certainty. ‘I don’t think anything would ever cause you to lose your mind.’
‘I came close when my sister and brother-in-law died,’ he admitted. ‘I couldn’t fix that. All the other stuff my family and I had had to deal with before then, it was all fixable, even my parents’ health issues. However bad things got, there was always hope. Tanya and Georgios’s death…what hope was to be found there? But then you know all about that with your own mother.’
She nodded. ‘Death is the one thing that can’t be fixed, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the finality,’ he agreed. ‘One minute they are there the next they are gone and all that’s left are the memories. But I had Natalia to care for just as you had Violet after your mother died and…
‘Why is Violet living with her father now?’ he interrupted himself. ‘Why wasn’t she living with him before? I always assumed she was an orphan.’
‘She might as well have been an orphan for the time he gave her. Raymond, Violet’s father, divorced our mum and moved to America years before Mum died. When she did die he didn’t want Violet—he had a nice new nubile wife and was living the childless dream. We agreed that he would continue paying for Violet’s education—did I tell you he was also rich?—and that she would become a weekly boarder so I could concentrate on my studies, but that she would live with me at weekends and holidays. He gave us both an allowance for it to work.’ Her smile was bitter. ‘When it came to money, his generosity was limitless.’
‘And that’s when you became Violet’s guardian?’
‘Yes. He handed his twelve-year-old daughter’s welfare into my nineteen-year-old hands and washed his own hands of the pair of us.’
‘Theos.’ He gave a low whistle. That was the same age Natalia was now. He’d been a grown man of thirty-one when he’d become Natalia’s guardian. ‘I didn’t realise you were so young when you became her guardian. And her father didn’t want her? No wonder she went off the rails.’ He shook his head, unable to comprehend how a man could turn his back on his own child. Natalia wasn’t even his and he knew he would lay down his life to protect her. ‘Why is she with him now when he didn’t want her before?’
‘I blackmailed him.’
He found himself smiling. ‘Really?’
She met his eye and matched the smile. There was no joy in either of their curved mouths. ‘I’d been begging him for years for help and he kept fobbing me off and fobbing me off. She almost died from that beating, Andreas. She was in a coma for three days. Something in me went ping. I didn’t even think about what I was going to say, I just phoned him and said if he didn’t fly over and see his daughter and finally take responsibility for her then I would publish a photo of Violet’s battered body on the Internet and tell the world he’d refused to help her.’
‘And that worked?’
‘He arrived the next day. A week later he flew her back to America with him. I don’t know why I hadn’t threatened it before but I’d spent so long just getting through each day, caring for Violet, plotting my revenge on you and James…’ She winced. ‘Sorry.’
‘It is okay.’ He slid off the bed and knelt before her. Taking her hand in his, he kissed the palm. ‘No more apologies. I’m the one who is sorry. I should have told you, not the school…’
‘You did the right thing.’ Carrie squeezed the hand holding hers so tenderly. ‘You were protecting Natalia. Violet would have been expelled sooner or later. She was using drugs on school property. They would have noticed eventually.’ She shrugged then took a deep breath. ‘I should have noticed. I should have seen what was happening to her—I did see—but I didn’t know what I was seeing. Does that make sense?’
