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She straightened her shoulders. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’ His tone silky smooth, he leaned forward. ‘I want to know everything, Grace. And don’t leave anything out.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve already told you most of it. I had this idea for the coffee shop, and—’
‘I’m not interested in your business. At this point in time I probably know more about your business than you do. I want to know about you. Go back further.’ His eyes didn’t shift from her face but his fingers drummed an impatient rhythm on the table. ‘Back to your childhood. When did you realise that you were dyslexic?’
The breath hitched in her throat and she was suddenly swamped by feelings that she’d kept carefully hidden for years. ‘It really isn’t relevant, and—’
‘Not relevant?’ His fingers stilled and his voice was dangerously soft. ‘Grace, someone is ripping off your business.’
She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I know that.’
‘And the reason they’re able to rip off your business is clearly because they think you won’t be any the wiser. You don’t check the figures, do you?’
Mortified, she felt her face burn. It was like being back in a maths lesson, she thought miserably, when every other child was able to understand except her. ‘No,’ she said huskily, ‘I don’t check the figures. Not on the computer and not on paper.’
‘So how do you know how the business is doing? How do you keep on top of what’s happening with your business financially, if you can’t make sense of the numbers?’
‘Verbally. I just work with people that I trust and I rely on them to tell me what I need to know …’ her voice tailed off and she shook her head as she realised the appalling naïvety of that statement ‘… or what they want me to know. It isn’t the same thing, is it?’
His mouth tightened. ‘It didn’t occur to you that they might be taking advantage?’
She blinked several times to clear her vision. ‘Why would it?’
He stared at her with naked exasperation. ‘Because that’s what people do, Grace. This is the real world and it’s a harsh, unfriendly place. In the real world people lie and cheat and take advantage of each other.’
‘Not all people,’ she said quietly, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. ‘There are plenty of people with good in them.’
‘Stop being so generous.’ He thumped his fist on the table and rose to his feet, visibly aggravated by her statement. ‘That attitude is the reason that people were able to take advantage of you. You need to stop seeing good in everyone and toughen up. Otherwise you’ll never succeed.’
The words were difficult to say but somehow she managed it. ‘I haven’t succeeded. I’ve lost money.’
‘No. Someone else has done that for you.’ He frowned. ‘Your instincts told you that you should have been in profit, isn’t that right?’
‘I knew that the cafés were busy and that we were taking lots of money. I thought we should have been in profit, but our costs seemed high.’
‘And you didn’t question those figures?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I have,’ he growled, raking his fingers through his hair and pacing across the room towards the huge glass window. ‘I’ve spent all morning questioning those figures. Do you want to know the answers?’
Did she want to know? Her legs suddenly shook and the sickness rose in her stomach because she knew instinctively that what he was going to say wasn’t going to be easy to hear. But since when had life been easy? When had she ever shied away from the hard and difficult? ‘Of course I want to know the answers.’ If wrong had been done then she wanted to put it right.
He turned to face her, his eyes dark, his hair gleaming blue-black in the strong light. ‘Your father has been splitting the money with the dealer. Together they’ve driven up the price for the coffee while paying the bare minimum to Carlos and Filomena at the fazenda.’
Her father.
The sick feeling inside her intensified and she shook her head in an instinctive denial. ‘There must be some mistake.’ But even as she said the words she knew that there wasn’t. And that knowledge tasted like poison in her mouth.
‘It was your father.’ His voice was brutally harsh, as if he was afraid that showing sympathy might somehow dilute the impact of his announcement. ‘And that’s not all.’
There was more?
What more could there possibly be?
How much deeper could the pain go?
