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Milly’s breath came out in a soft gasp of sorrow. ‘Oh, Alex...’
‘They both died.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have been able to save them.’
‘How?’
Could he really tell her all of it? The terrible truth? Yes. He had to. For both of their sakes.
He took a ragged breath and opened his eyes. ‘Let me start at the beginning,’ he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MILLY WATCHED AS Alex walked away from her, loosening his bow tie and shedding his jacket and cummerbund. Even now, especially now, he looked devastatingly attractive—his body one of leashed power and innate authority, his face drawn in stark lines of remembered pain. She wanted to put her arms around him. She wanted to tell him she loved him.
But she didn’t dare, and she knew now was not the time anyway. Now was the time for Alex’s story, at last. And perhaps it would draw them closer together. She prayed it would.
‘The beginning,’ Alex stated flatly, ‘is that my father was a terrible man. Abusive to my mother as well as to my sister Daphne and me.’ Milly opened her mouth to express her horror and sorrow, but Alex cut across her before she could frame a word. ‘He was clever about it, so no one knew outside the family. He always made it feel as if it were our fault—we’d done something to provoke him.’ A pause as Alex stared out of the window, lost in memory. ‘He would fly into terrible rages.’
‘I’m sorry...’
‘On the outside, we looked like the perfect family. My father was successful, my mother beautiful, Daphne and I were model children. We were too scared to be anything else. As a family we were private, because we had to be. We didn’t make friends, we kept everyone as an acquaintance. It was easier that way.’
Which explained so much about Alex’s need for privacy and distance now, Milly thought with an ache. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets as he stared out at the night.
‘But then my father went too far. He broke my mother’s arm, and that was something she couldn’t hide.’ Another pause, and Milly wished he’d turn and look at her. ‘I confronted him. I was fifteen by then, practically a man. And I beat him within an inch of his life. Broken nose, broken jaw, broken wrist. Internal bleeding. He was in the hospital for weeks, thanks to my fists.’
Milly couldn’t keep from gasping at the awful image. She suspected he’d meant to shock her, and he had. But she still wanted to hear the rest of it.
‘What happened then?’ she asked softly.
‘He pressed charges. My father thought he was above the law, but he wanted to make sure I wasn’t.’ Alex let out a rush of breath as he shrugged. ‘I ended up spending a few months in juvenile detention. Not the high point of my life. But by the time I came out, my father was long gone—he’d taken a corporate job in the Middle East. And my mo
ther was married to my stepfather, Christos.’
Milly waited, knowing there had to be more. Much more. After a long moment, Alex resumed his story. ‘I was angry and impossible, but Christos took me under his wing. Treated me like his own. And I learned self-control.’ He paused. ‘Christos was tough on me, but in a good way. But we all had scars from my father’s treatment, and that showed itself in different ways.’ He paused, and Milly waited, her heart in her mouth. How much more could there be to this awful story? And yet she knew there was worse to come. He hadn’t even spoken about his sister yet, not really.
‘Daphne married an abusive man when she was just twenty,’ Alex resumed. ‘Nikolaos Aganos. We didn’t realise what was going on at first. She hid it well, but we’d all become experts at hiding. And perhaps we didn’t want to realise. Perhaps we closed our eyes, because we were experts at that too. But then it got worse—it always does. And two years ago, she finally left him, running to me, bringing her four-year-old son Talos with her.’ He fell silent, his expression bleak, his body taut. ‘I’ll never forget how she looked, coming to my door. A black eye. Bruises...bruises on her throat.’ His voice caught, and Milly reached out a hand, desperate to comfort him even as a sense of dread seeped into her stomach. She knew Daphne was dead, and that there had been a fire...
‘Oh, Alex...’
‘And Talos was so terrified, he had become mute. He wouldn’t say a word, just clung to her and hid his face.’
‘That must have been so terrible,’ Milly said quietly. Any words felt utterly inadequate. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
‘You know what my reaction was?’ Alex asked in that flat tone she had come to hate, except now she knew how much pain that toneless delivery could hide. ‘Anger. Just like before, with my father, I felt rage—a consuming, overwhelming fury, one I could not control. And I let that guide me. I let it drive me. I never learn, do I?’
Milly stared at him uncertainly. ‘What...what do you mean?’
‘I left them there, Daphne and Talos. I left them alone in my house even though I knew they were hurting and terrified. And I went in search of Aganos. I think if I’d found him, I might have killed him.’ He gave her a cold smile, the coldest she’d ever seen. ‘In fact, I’m quite sure I would have.’
Milly’s heart lurched as that persistent dread swirled inside her, the most corrosive of acids. ‘But you didn’t find him...’
‘No, because while I was out in the city baying for his blood, he’d gone to my house...and set fire to it.’
Milly’s hand covered her mouth. ‘No...’
‘Yes. Daphne and Talos were sleeping. The doors were locked. When I came back, the whole place was in flames.’
So why was he the one with the scars? Milly studied him, the clenched fists, the heaving chest, the eyes full of pain. ‘You went in,’ she said softly. ‘Didn’t you? To rescue them?’
