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Siena could see when understanding dawned, but it was the wrong kind of understanding, and she winced when he spoke.
‘She needed the money? To fund her debauched lifestyle? That’s why you were willing to prostitute yourself?’
His crude words drove Siena up out of the chair. She realised somewhat belatedly that she would never have got away with such a flimsy explanation. Her whole body was taut, quivering.
‘No. It’s not like that.’ Siena bit her lip and took a terrifying leap of faith. ‘Serena was never in the South of France. She’s here. In England. She came with me when we left Italy. I lied.’
Andreas’s mouth twisted, ‘I know your proficiency for lies, Siena. Tell me something I don’t know.’
Siena winced again, but she knew she deserved it. Unable to bear being under Andreas’s scrutiny like this, she moved jerkily over to the other window and crossed her arms, staring out at the view as if it would magically transport her out of this room.
‘My sister…is ill. She’s had mental health issues for years. They probably started not long after our mother died, I was three and Serena was five. She had always been a difficult child…I remember tantrums and our father locking her in her room. Her illness manifested itself as bouts of severe depression in her early teens, along with more manic periods when she would go out and go crazy. It got so bad that she had psychotic episodes and hallucinations. She tried to take her own life during one of those times…not to mention developing a drink and drug addiction.’
Siena heard nothing from Andreas, and was too scared to look at him, so she continued, ‘Our father was disgusted at this frailty and refused to deal with it. It was only after her suicide attempt that she was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. Our father wouldn’t allow her to take medication for fear that it would leak to the press…’ Siena’s voice grew bitter. ‘Despite her party girl reputation she was still a valuable heiress—albeit slightly less valuable than me.’
Siena closed her eyes briefly, praying for strength in the face of Andreas’s scorn, and turned to face him. His face was still expressionless.
‘Go on,’ he said coolly.
‘When our father disappeared Serena went through a manic phase. It was impossible to control her. Physically she’s stronger than me, and her drinking was out of control. All I could do was wait until the inevitable fall and then persuade her to come to England. She knew she needed help. She wanted help. I found a good psychiatric clinic and she was accepted. I had some money left over from our mother’s inheritance that hadn’t been seized by the authorities and that paid for our move, and for Serena for the first few months of her treatment. It’s complicated, because she has to be treated for her addictions first.’
Siena looked away, embarrassed by her own miscalculation. ‘I thought that with my wages I could continue to pay for her upkeep, but I hadn’t really factored in the weekly cost. When I met you…again…there was only enough money left for a few weeks. She’s at a delicate stage in her treatment. If she’d had to leave now because we couldn’t afford it, the doctors warned me that it could be catastrophic.’
Siena braced herself for Andreas’s reaction, remembering all too well their father’s archaic views on mental illness.
Desperate to try and defend her sister, Siena looked back, eyes blazing. ‘She’s not just some vacuous socialite. It is a disease. If you could have seen her…the pain and anguish…and there was nothing I could do…’
To Siena’s chagrin, hot tears prickled and she quickly blinked them back. ‘She’s my sister, and I’ll do anything to try and help her. She’s all I have left in the world.’
‘What about your half-brother?’ Andreas asked quietly.
Siena still couldn’t make out his expression and her heart constricted when she thought of Rocco.
‘I knew I could never go to him. You saw yourself what his reaction was. I expected it. I remember that day he spoke of. It’s etched into my memory.’ Quietly she said, ‘I didn’t mean what I said about him…afterwards. I was angry and felt vulnerable. The day we saw him confront our father, if Serena or I had so much as looked in his direction we would have been punished mercilessly. You have no idea what our father was capable of.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
Siena felt as if she was in some kind of a dreamlike state. Andreas was asking these innocuous questions that cut to the very heart of her, making her talk about things that she’d talked about with no one. Ever. Not even Serena.
Her legs suddenly felt weak and she went back to the couch and sat down. She looked up at Andreas and said starkly, ‘He was a sadist. He took pleasure from other people’s pain. But especially Serena, because she had always been so wilful and difficult to control. She became his punching bag because he knew that I was the one he could depend on to perform, to be good.’
Siena took a shaky breath and glanced at her pale hands. ‘I learnt what would happen from an early age if I wasn’t good. He caught me painting over one of the palazzo murals one day…a painter had left some paints behind. He told me to follow him and sent for Serena. He brought us into his study and told Serena to hold out her hand. He took a bamboo stick out of his cupboard and whipped her until she was bleeding. Then he told me that if I ever misbehaved again this was what would happen: Serena would be punished.’
Siena looked at Andreas. She felt cold inside. ‘Serena didn’t blame me. Not then. Never. It was as if in spite of her own turmoil she knew that what he was doing was just as damaging to me.’
Andreas’s voice was impossibly grim, sending a shiver down Siena’s spine. ‘How old were you when this happened?’
‘Five.’
For long seconds there was silence. Siena fancied she could see something in Andreas’s eyes. His jaw twitched, and then he said, ‘I want you to tell me what happened in Paris that night.’
Siena
had known it would come to this. She owed Andreas this much. An explanation. Finally. Not that it could change the past or absolve her of her sins.
She fought to remain impassive, not to appear as if this was shredding her insides to bits. ‘That evening in Paris…when my father caught us…I panicked. I had not premeditated what happened. I was overwhelmed at the strength of the attraction between us. I’d noticed you all evening. I’d never felt anything like it before…’
Siena looked back at her hands. ‘I know you might not believe that…especially after I tried to make you believe I was more experienced than I was…’ She was afraid of what she’d see if she looked at him so she kept her gaze down. ‘When my father appeared I knew instantly what I had done—how bad it was. Serena was going through a rough patch. She was at home in Florence, being supervised by a doctor, but only because I had begged our father not to leave her alone…I was terrified of what he would do if he thought that what we’d been doing had been…mutual.’
