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‘Nothing,’ he said tightly, shoving his phone into his back pocket. ‘Forget it, Sybella. I wish you well with your activities in the Hall. You’ve fought hard for it.’
With that he walked out of her life, latching the garden gate behind him.
Her environs shrank back down to normal size and everything went back to being as if he’d never been there. Only a part of Sybella understood there would be no getting over him as she had her parents, and Simon. Because she’d found her true self with Nik, the real Sybella—strong, passionate and brave—who had been there all along, only she would have to be a little braver because she was once more on her own.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NIK STOOD ON the perimeter of the mine that had been the foundation of his fortune.
It was so vast and for once he didn’t see the wealth it represented, the mastery over nature, the supplier of thousands of jobs. He saw it as what it would be for generations, even if he closed it now. A scar on the land. A reminder of all the destruction Sybella stood in opposition to.
She wanted to restore things, to use over what already existed, to make good on the past by bringing it into the present.
All he did was butcher and destroy the things that had hurt him. Lashing out like the nine-year-old boy he had once been, who had lost everything and wanted somebody to pay.
Anybody.
His stepmother was a convenient monster to slay.
Nik kicked a clod of earth near his boot and watched it spatter a few feet in front of him.
It had been three days since he flew out of the UK.
But not a moment passed when he didn’t have the oddest feeling, as if something were screwing down in his chest. He woke in the night, chilled, furious with himself.
Every email his assistant passed on about the Mendez show in Milan next week had him visualising Sybella, the look of sheer devastation in her eyes.
He shouldn’t have said what he had about her husband, even if it was true.
She thought he was trying to play God, when really all he was doing was trying to mend what was broken. Although ever since he’d told her his plans that broken thing hadn’t seemed all that important. What had taken primacy was trying to fix things with Sybella.
He’d come up with the apartment on the spur of the moment. The look on her face. The way she’d pulled away from him. Her refusal to consider leaving the village. It had all coalesced to push him out, and all he’d heard was, I came here with Simon. I stay here with Simon. You’re not fit to wipe his boots.
But if he was honest she hadn’t said any of that. She’d been over the moon about the visitors’ centre in Sybella fashion—quietly pleased, and then a little defiant at his complete lack of response.
No wonder she’d lost it with him.
Did he want her to fit into his life instead of making the adjustments to fit into hers?
He knew what a good, healthy relationship looked like. It was the one Deda and Baba had. It was exactly what Deda had been trying to get through his thick skull when he’d arrived down here in January.
‘I’ve found you a girl.’
When had he started thinking he didn’t deserve that? What was it Sybella had said? ‘You’re letting the hatred twist you into something you’re not.’
But deep down he’d always believed that he was that thing. He’d been fighting with this weapon inside him that told him he wasn’t a Voronov, he could do whatever it took to play the world and people like his stepmother at their own game. Only that weapon was currently at his own throat and it probably always had been.
The day he’d left Edbury his brother had rung him. He was in the chapel in the west wing at the Hall and he’d been so frustrated after his argument with Sybella he almost hadn’t picked up.
‘Nice shot of you and Marla Mendez. Deda is furious.’
‘Deda’s the least of my worries.’
Nik had looked around the high vaulted ceiling of the chapel where apparently he’d agreed tourists could pay their kopeck for the privilege and gawp at the stained glass and the slabs on the ground under his feet, where he’d been told sixteenth-century inhabitants of the Hall were buried.
‘He emailed me a photo, you and this woman you’re seeing.’
