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She stood. The file slid from her silk-clad thighs to land at her feet. The symbolism crushed her. Her life, her history, tossed to the ground as if it meant nothing. And itwasnothing, wasn’t it?
This file, these black-and-white-striped papers she’d agonised over for months, had only increased her need to know more. The need to know where and who she came from. It hadn’t eased her curiosity, only raised more questions.
And more doubt.
She wasn’t who she’d thought she was. She was not Flora Bick, daughter of dairy farmers. She was the abandoned child of a drug addict. Father unknown.
Placing a hand to her chest, Flora struggled to drag in a breath. She felt trapped.
She ran then.
Ran fast.
She didn’t close the door behind her. She did nothing but make her feet move along the corridor with abstract art on its every wall and past windows offering a different view with every step away from her hotel room to bring her to a spiralling staircase.
Flora fingered the golden banister and hesitated. There would be people if she went down the stairs. No space to move because she’d be shoulder to shoulder with strangers stealing all the air she needed. Just the way her parents stole it at home. Giving her no room. No air. No space to think.
She wasn’t in her little village any more, straddling the border between North Devon and Cornwall. There was nowhere to seek sanctuary. No windblown forest to hide in. There were no fields. No cows. No beach to comb. She was in a city. A great big city. With every corner, every street, full of people living, moving, talking. Always talking.
She craned her neck, looking up at the stairs that curved around to another invisible floor. What if she kept going up?
Her chest tight, and panting, she fisted the fabric of her dress at her waist, hiked the too-long skirt above her bare feet and climbed. Seeking another place. Solitude. Sanctuary.
Breathlessly, she reached the top floor. A dead end. With her back to the wall, she leaned against it, catching her breath.
Click.
The wall behind her had moved...
Raffaele tugged the buttons loose at his throat, but the stiffness lingered. The tightness in his jaw was becoming an ache.
Every window held a light...every street was ablaze. Even the trees lining the snaking paths far below held little fires in them.
But not therightkind.
Not the kind that burnt. Not the kind that raged inside him. Those flickering lights all over London could be turned on and off with a switch. He did not have a switch. His fire always burned. But he kept the oxygen levels low. Never gave it room to breathe. Contained it by will.Hiswill.
He pressed a palm to the floor-to-ceiling window and took a sip of the brown spiced drink in his too-tight grip. Its wetness wasn’t enough to douse the heat inside him. It roared against it—against the alcohol travelling down his throat and into his gut—challenging it to take him under. Challenging him to take another sip—spill another measure into the tumbler. Knock it back. Find oblivion. Forget for an hour. A minute. A second. Let the rage go.
For what? Peace will never be yours again.
The voice mocked him with its truth. Because he would never know peace. He’d never known peace. But sleep...? He craved it. Its blanket of shadows. Its darkness.
But he couldn’t sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes he saw hismamma. He could not let go because he had no right to. He wasn’t allowed to forget or to sleep because he was to blame. Only him.
The inquest had delivered its verdict.
No medical negligence.
He swallowed. Hard. Tried to dislodge the lump in his throat. She’d been too thin. Too frail. She’d left everything she knew, everything that brought her comfort, to live in a facility with people who didn’t know her—couldn’t protect her the way he could. She’d lost the battle with her depression. Died. Because the one time she’d needed him to hold her hand and pull her back from the edge he hadn’t been there.
Guilty as charged.
He’d been the one to beg her to go to the facility. L’Essenza del Caso, they’d called it. The Essence of Chance. A haven to explore one’s self. To heal in safety with twenty-four-hour therapists available to talk.
His mother hadn’t wanted to talk. She’d wanted his father. Still. After thirty years of abandonment...of rejection and lies.
