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‘Very good at “the computer science thing”...’
‘Used in a very different way from what I had intended...’
‘I will not allow a murderer to care for my daughter...’
Someone was telling Célia to breathe and a distant part of him recognised that it should have been him. Him making sure she was okay. But he was held in a vortex of shock and fear. They should have known something was wrong when Meredith’s legal team didn’t go after him for all the things they had suspected they would. They didn’t need to. Because they had Célia. His mother had used Célia to bring him to his knees.
At that precise moment, Célia finally looked up at him. Her eyes glistening with unshed tears, her breath finally coming back to some semblance of normality.
‘Leave us,’ he demanded of the lawyers. As if sensing the storm brewing, they filed out of the room leaving Célia and Loukis alone.
‘Loukis—’
‘Explain what just happened to me.’
‘I...’
‘I can’t do this for you, Célia. I have no idea what just happened. So just...tell me.’
‘My father took the technical specifications from me and used them to bolster the designs for Paquet’s combat drone. One that has since been sold around the world as one of the top ten UAVs available—’
‘UAV?’ he interrupted.
‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.’
‘So they were right?’
‘Loukis, I didn’t do it,’ she pleaded. ‘My designs were never intended for combat or the defence industry. I had no idea—’
‘But they are right.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ he roared, unable to hold himself back. Everything he’d done, all of it, to protect his sister, it was slipping through his fingers like sand.
‘Because I thought the records were sealed. Because I thought my father left my name off the designs.’
‘Just how naïve are you? It’s a legal patent. Of course he would have had to put your name down on the paperwork.’
He was half convinced that he was now shaking as much as Célia. Only he was furious. And she was scared, he realised, desperately attempting to pull back on the leash that had been lifted from his anger. He was going to lose. He was going to lose Annabelle. And Célia...
‘I didn’t tell you because I was ashamed. Because I know what those drones have done and will continue to do. Why do you think I was so determined to counter that with the charity work I do?’
‘Well, it’s not like I would have been able to guess that with you keeping so many damn secrets.’ The line was petty and he hated himself for it, but couldn’t stop it.
‘I didn’t tell you,’ she said finally, in the softest of voices, ‘because you wanted the perfect fiancée. You didn’t, in fact, want someone whose reputation is worse than your own.’
He couldn’t deny her words. He knew she was telling the truth. That she had believed no one would find out. And he could see that she was destroyed by the revelation in court, by the knowledge of what her designs had been put to use for. But did it matter? Right now, to the granting of guardianship over Annabelle?
He turned away from her then, unable to bear the weight of her watery eyes. Each glint cut against him, burying into his heart, exposing a raw pain, a deeper truth. One that could not be denied. All this time he’d roared and railed against the pain of being abandoned, rejected in favour of money. His father left a broken shell by the divorce and never quite fully recovering. And Loukis, himself, left horrified and damaged by the knowledge of his worth in his mother’s eyes.
But now this time, it was he who was being forced to make the choice. It felt as if he were being torn in two, a painful wrenching that he feared he might never soothe. Neither option would provide enough to compensate for what he would lose.
His mind worked furiously, trying to forecast the outcome of whatever his next move was, until he was dizzy with an infinite number of futures, all of which left him sacrificing something vital to him.
Fury raged within him as he realised that the price he would have to pay for Annabelle was Célia. This beautiful, impassioned, kind, supportive woman who had snuck beneath every single defence he had. And he couldn’t have her. Not if he wanted to protect Annabelle from their mother.
Célia could see it. The moment that he realised what she, herself, had come to realise as soon as Meredith had cried out the wordmurderer. There was no way that she could stay. She was now the greatest threat to his guardianship over Annabelle. A far worse threat than any that Loukis could have represented, or even foreseen.
