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Dimitri stared into her green eyes, thinking how catlike they looked against her flushed skin. Her dark hair was tumbling over her tiny breasts and every instinct in his body was urging him to block her questions and make love to her again. But some of her words were stubbornly refusing to shift. Didn’t matter how much he wanted them to go away; they weren’t going to. Because she was right. As the mother of his child didn’t she deserve to hear the truth?
He gave an expansive flick of his hand—as if to draw attention to the dimensions of the huge room in which they lay. ‘You can see for yourself how privileged my background was. I was the only son of a hugely successful businessman and his devoted wife.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Or that’s what I thought I was—until the whole pack of cards came tumbling down.’
For once she was silent, but he felt her grow very still beside him.
‘I discovered that my life was nothing but an illusion based on lies and deception,’ he said. ‘It was all smoke and mirrors and nothing was as it seemed. My father wasn’t the respectable businessman I’d always thought. His respectability was just a front for his underworld dealings. He made the bulk of his money from drugs and gambling, and from human trafficking and misery.’
He could see her eyes widening in shock, but he forced himself to continue—as if suddenly recognising the burden of having kept this to himself for all these years. Because wasn’t that another legacy of criminality—that the secrets it created tainted everyone around with the sense of nothing being as it should be?
‘My relationship with him wasn’t good. He was the coldest man I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes I used to wonder if it was just something inside him which made him so distant—or whether it was something to do with me. I wondered why he sometimes looked through me as if I was invisible, or worse. As if he actually hated me.’ He paused. ‘It took a long time for me to discover why.’
‘Why?’
He could hear her holding her breath.
‘Because he wasn’t actually my father,’ he said slowly. ‘I was the cuckoo child. A product of a passionate liaison between my mother and the family gardener.’
‘Your mother had an affair with the gardener?’
He nodded and waited while she processed this piece of information.
‘And what was he like? This gardener.’
Dimitri frowned. He had been anticipating judgement—not understanding. Was it that which made him stray deeper into the memory—into the dark place he usually kept locked and bolted?
‘A striking man,’ he said slowly. ‘Tall and muscular, with tawny hair and blue eyes. I remember how much the maids used to idolise him and how women turned to look at him whenever he walked by. But most of all, he was kind. I didn’t realise that men could be kind. It never occurred to me to question why he used to spend so much time with me—way more than my father ever did. It didn’t even occur to me until much later that whenever I looked at him, it was like looking in the mirror. But afterwards I wished he’d said something—something to acknowledge that I was his. But he never did.’ He saw how wide her green eyes had grown. ‘Shocked, Erin?’
‘Not half as shocked as you must have been.’ She seemed to choose her next words with care. ‘But if your other father knew you weren’t his child, then why did he stay with your mother? Why didn’t he just divorce her and cut his losses?’
‘And lose face?’ Dimitri gave a hollow laugh. ‘Admit that some labourer had succeeded where he had failed? No. That wasn’t the way he operated. My mother’s punishment was to remain in a loveless marriage. Locked in a relationship based on fear with a man who despised her. And I think she felt the same way about me. I can certainly never remember her being warm towards me.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Maybe she didn’t dare show me affection because she knew it would enrage my father. Or maybe she saw me as a constant reminder of what she had done. Maybe I represented the failure she’d made of her life and her relationships.’
‘And the gardener? What happened to him?’
There was a long silence before he shrugged. ‘One morning he just wasn’t there any more. I remember it was winter and the front door was open and I went looking for my mother. I found her in the forest, in the little shed where he used to keep his tools. She was curled up on the floor crying her eyes out, half mad with grief.’
‘And did you...’ Erin’s hand crept over his and squeezed it. ‘Did you ever meet up with him again? Did you ever form some kind of relationship and make peace with the past?’
