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‘Dimitri,’ she returned.
He cursed. This could go on all night.
‘I’m not going,’ she repeated.
He searched her tone for a hint of anger, or defiance, but was surprised to find there was none. Just a simple statement of fact.
‘You have to be there.’
‘Why? Why do you want me there?’
Such a loaded question. One he wasn’t yet prepared to search his soul to answer. ‘The press will be there. And it’s expected that you—as my wife—will be too.’
* * *
Anna felt her stomach clench and she instinctively pressed a hand to soothe it. So it wasn’t because he actually wanted her there. No. It was for appearances’ sake. She could feel the ridges and tension almost vibrating from her forehead. Why was it that everything Dimitri did or said seemed to continually feed into years-old insecurities?
For a whole week she’d said nothing, betrayed none of her feelings, terrified of making this strange stalemate situation worse. These briefly exchanged words were the most they’d said to each other since the morning after the wedding.
‘If that is the only reason you would like me there, then I’m afraid I shall have to decline.’
‘Have to... Anna, I’m not joking about this. You are coming with me.’
‘Until you give me a good enough reason, I’d rather spend that time with our daughter.’
She’d thought he’d stalk out. Leave. Yet again. But there was something anchoring him to the spot. And for just a moment she glimpsed a side of Dimitri she hadn’t been privy to yet. Gone was the amused, indignant man, gone was the patronising husband. He stalked towards her in just a few long strides, towering over her with broad shoulders that blocked out the setting sun, his eyes as dark as the night promised to be. The demand she had laid at his feet loosening the bonds around his secrets.
‘You want to know? Fine. I didn’t go straight from my mother’s home to my father’s.’
It took a moment for Anna to orientate her mind to how that might fit in with the charity event, but Dimitri pressed on while she struggled to keep up.
‘As I said before, it took my mother’s sister two months to track down my father. But during that time, I was put into the care system. My mother’s sister couldn’t take me in—she lived nearly five hundred kilometres from Piraeus in Kastoria. Her work wouldn’t allow her to take more than a few days away, and she couldn’t afford to lose her job.
‘So it was decided that I should be put into the care system, until something suitable could be arranged. What I didn’t know at the time was that the “something suitable” was code for until my father could be persuaded to take me in.
‘The people managing the unit were kind, or as kind as they could afford to be. The first day, my jacket was taken—and trust me, my mother wasn’t rich, so it wasn’t expensive by any standards. But, when I did nothing, my shoes were taken the next day. It’s funny what you cling to as a child. Amalia has her sculpture, I had only clothes—small things that my mother had worked hard for and were my only reminders of her. Pieces of her were being taken away from me, bit by bit, and I did nothing to stop it from happening.
‘Each day, I asked the adults what was happening, where I would be going, when I would be going. And each day they said, come back tomorrow.
‘Two months is a lifetime for a seven-year-old boy. Friendships made, fights lost... Most of the boys had grown up on the streets, tough, mean, clever. There was one kid who tried every day to run away, desperate to go back to where he’d been. But that wasn’t an option for me. There was nowhere for me to go back to.’
Dimitri took in a breath. It shuddered in his chest, as if the memories were shaking him to his very core. There had been no protection then. No Danyl or Antonio—the friends he wouldn’t meet until university. At the time, his seven-year-old self had thought that he was numb. Numb with grief, numb to the chaos and tension that he’d lived and breathed...but it had scarred him deeply. And only now, forcing himself to recall this time, did he realise how close to prison it had been. How they had both been tinged with the same fear, the same raw vulnerability. His life had not been his own, in either situation. And both times had forced him to realise that there was no one out there who could protect him. He had to protect himself.
‘I soon learned that if I didn’t fight back, if I let that soft heart form friendships with unworthy people, people who would lie, steal and cheat their way through the care system, I wouldn’t survive.’
He let out a huff. ‘I know that sounds dramatic, I know I would have continued to live, breathe, be fed. But...the boy my mother raised? Not so much. So I became tough. I fought for what little belongings I had, fought to keep the things that reminded me of her. I promised myself that I would never be in that situation ever again.’
I promised myself that I’d never let anyone be my weakness again, his inner voice concluded. Until Manos. Until that one thread of hope had formed and been severed.
‘When my father finally took me in, I had the best that money could buy—education, clothes, the biggest house I’d ever seen. It didn’t matter that Manos hated me on sight, that my father barely spared a thought to me other than how he could turn me into an asset for the Kyriakou Bank. It didn’t matter my father’s wife watched me like a hawk, as if I’d do something eventually to hurt her child. It only mattered that they gave me access to the tools that would allow me to ensure I was never beholden to another. I worked hard at school, at university in New York.’
The memories of meeting Antonio and Dan
yl softened features he hadn’t realised had become rock-hard.
‘And the moment I had enough money, enough power to create a charity for homeless children, I did. Antonio and Danyl helped too. Because none of us ever wanted a child to feel that same sense of helplessness, that same uncertainty. So once a year there we hold a gala. This year it is in Kavala, and we—you and I—will be there.’
Dimitri refused to turn to Anna. Refused to see the pity he knew would be there in her eyes. He’d never wanted her to look at him in that way. He never wanted to see that from her.
