by Abby Green
She heard the sound of Andreas pouring himself a drink and turned around to find him handing her a small tumbler of Baileys. She was surprised that he’d remembered her favourite drink and took it in both hands, avoiding his eye.
‘Sit down, Siena, before you fall down.’ His tone was admonitory.
Siena looked around and saw a chair sitting at right angles to the couch. She sat down and took a tiny fortifying sip of her drink, feeling the smooth, creamy liquid slide down her throat.
Andreas went and stood with his back to her at the window and Siena regarded that broad back warily, her eyes dropping to his buttocks. Instantly she had a flashback to how it had felt to have him between her legs, thrusting so deep—
He turned around abruptly and she flushed.
‘So, is it that you have some masochistic penchant for menial labour after a life of excess? Or perhaps you’ve acted completely out of character, had a fit of conscience and handed all the money over to a worthy charity? I want to know what you’ve done with my money, Siena. After all, it’s not an inconsiderable sum…’
Siena saw the narrow-eyed gaze focused on her and sensed his insouciance was a very thin veneer hiding simmering anger. Futility threatened to overwhelm her. She could try to lie—again—make up some excuse. But she did owe this man an explanation. A lot more than an explanation. She owed him his money back.
Carefully she put down her drink. Her mind was whirling with what she was contemplating. Could she just…tell him? Appeal to his sense of compassion? After all, hadn’t she seen it in action?
Knowing that her sister was finally safe and would be looked after for the forseeable future, and telling herself that she didn’t have to divulge everything, Siena tried to glean some encouragement from Andreas’s expressionless face.
She looked down at her hands in her lap for a long moment, and just before the silence stretched to breaking point said quietly, ‘The money was for my sister, not me.’
Silence met her words, and she looked up to see Andreas was genuinely confused. ‘You said she was in the South of France with friends…’
Siena could see when understanding dawned, but it was the wrong kind of understanding, and she winced when he spoke.
‘She needed the money? To fund her debauched lifestyle? That’s why you were willing to prostitute yourself?’
His crude words drove Siena up out of the chair. She realised somewhat belatedly that she would never have got away with such a flimsy explanation. Her whole body was taut, quivering.
‘No. It’s not like that.’ Siena bit her lip and took a terrifying leap of faith. ‘Serena was never in the South of France. She’s here. In England. She came with me when we left Italy. I lied.’
Andreas’s mouth twisted, ‘I know your proficiency for lies, Siena. Tell me something I don’t know.’
Siena winced again, but she knew she deserved it. Unable to bear being under Andreas’s scrutiny like this, she moved jerkily over to the other window and crossed her arms, staring out at the view as if it would magically transport her out of this room.
‘My sister…is ill. She’s had mental health issues for years. They probably started not long after our mother died, I was three and Serena was five. She had always been a difficult child…I remember tantrums and our father locking her in her room. Her illness manifested itself as bouts of severe depression in her early teens, along with more manic periods when she would go out and go crazy. It got so bad that she had psychotic episodes and hallucinations. She tried to take her own life during one of those times…not to mention developing a drink and drug addiction.’
Siena heard nothing from Andreas, and was too scared to look at him, so she continued, ‘Our father was disgusted at this frailty and refused to deal with it. It was only after her suicide attempt that she was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder. Our father wouldn’t allow her to take medication for fear that it would leak to the press…’ Siena’s voice grew bitter. ‘Despite her party girl reputation she was still a valuable heiress—albeit slightly less valuable than me.’
Siena closed her eyes briefly, praying for strength in the face of Andreas’s scorn, and turned to face him. His face was still expressionless.
‘Go on,’ he said coolly.
‘When our father disappeared Serena went through a manic phase. It was impossible to control her. Physically she’s stronger than me, and her drinking was out of control. All I could do was wait until the inevitable fall and then persuade her to come to England. She knew she needed help. She wanted help. I found a good psychiatric clinic and she was accepted. I had some money left over from our mother’s inheritance that hadn’t been seized by the authorities and that paid for our move, and for Serena for the first few months of her treatment. It’s complicated, because she has to be treated for her addictions first.’
Siena looked away, embarrassed by her own miscalculation. ‘I thought that with my wages I could continue to pay for her upkeep, but I hadn’t really factored in the weekly cost. When I met you…again…there was only enough money left for a few weeks. She’s at a delicate stage in her treatment. If she’d had to leave now because we couldn’t afford it, the doctors warned me that it could be catastrophic.’
Siena braced herself for Andreas’s reaction, remembering all too well their father’s archaic views on mental illness.
Desperate to try and defend her sister, Siena looked back, eyes blazing. ‘She’s not just some vacuous socialite. It is a disease. If you could have seen her…the pain and anguish…and there was nothing I could do…’
To Siena’s chagrin, hot tears prickled and she quickly blinked them back. ‘She’s my sister, and I’ll do anything to try and help her. She’s all I have left in the world.’
‘What about your half-brother?’ Andreas asked quietly.
Siena still couldn’t make out his expression and her heart constricted when she thought of Rocco.
‘I knew I could never go to him. You saw yourself what his reaction was. I expected it. I remember that day he spoke of. It’s etched into my memory.’ Quietly she said, ‘I didn’t mean what I said about him…afterwards. I was angry and felt vulnerable. The day we saw him confront our father, if Serena or I had so much as looked in his direction we would have been punished mercilessly. You have no idea what our father was capable of.’
‘Why don’t you tell me?’
Siena felt as if she was in some kind of a dreamlike state. Andreas was asking these innocuous questions that cut to the very heart of her, making her talk about things that she’d talked about with no one. Ever. Not even Serena.
Her legs suddenly felt weak and she went back to the couch and sat down. She looked up at Andreas and said starkly, ‘He was a sadist. He took pleasure from other people’s pain. But especially Serena, because she had always been so wilful and difficult to control. She became his punching bag because he knew that I was the one he could depend on to perform, to be good.’
Siena took a shaky breath and glanced at her pale hands. ‘I learnt what would happen from an early age if I wasn’t good. He caught me painting over one of the palazzo murals one day…a painter had left some paints behind. He told me to follow him and sent for Serena. He brought us into his study and told Serena to hold out her hand. He took a bamboo stick out of his cupboard and whipped her until she was bleeding. Then he told me that if I ever misbehaved again this was what would happen: Serena would be punished.’
Siena looked at Andreas. She felt cold inside. ‘Serena didn’t blame me. Not then. Never. It was as if in spite of her own turmoil she knew that what he was doing was just as damaging to me.’
Andreas’s voice was impossibly grim, sending a shiver down Siena’s spine. ‘How old were you when this happened?’
‘Five.’
For long seconds there was silence. Siena fancied she could see something in Andreas’s eyes. His jaw twitched, and then he said, ‘I want you to tell me what happened in Paris that night.’
Siena
had known it would come to this. She owed Andreas this much. An explanation. Finally. Not that it could change the past or absolve her of her sins.
She fought to remain impassive, not to appear as if this was shredding her insides to bits. ‘That evening in Paris…when my father caught us…I panicked. I had not premeditated what happened. I was overwhelmed at the strength of the attraction between us. I’d noticed you all evening. I’d never felt anything like it before…’
Siena looked back at her hands. ‘I know you might not believe that…especially after I tried to make you believe I was more experienced than I was…’ She was afraid of what she’d see if she looked at him so she kept her gaze down. ‘When my father appeared I knew instantly what I had done—how bad it was. Serena was going through a rough patch. She was at home in Florence, being supervised by a doctor, but only because I had begged our father not to leave her alone…I was terrified of what he would do if he thought that what we’d been doing had been…mutual.’
Siena felt movement and then Andreas was sitting down beside her. His fingers were on her chin and he was forcing her to look at him. Her belly somersaulted at the look in his eyes. It was burning.
‘You’re telling me that you didn’t set out to seduce me? That it wasn’t just boredom? And that you only denounced me out of fear of what your father would do?’
Siena swallowed. Shame filled her belly. She whispered, ‘Yes. I was a coward. I chose to protect my own sister over you… But I had no idea how far my father would go.’
Andreas let her chin go and stood up, his whole body vibrating with tension—or anger. Siena couldn’t make out which.
And then he exploded, ‘Theos, Siena. You wilfully ruined my life just because you were too scared to stand up to your father?’
Siena stood up. It was as if a lead weight was making her belly plummet. She should have expected this, but still her head swam and her stomach churned. ‘I’m sorry, Andreas…so sorry. I went looking for you that night to try and explain…’
Suddenly Siena’s powers of speech failed her. All she could see was Andreas’s eyes, burning into her, scorching her. With a soft cry she felt the world fall away, and only heard the faintest of guttural curses before everything went black.
CHAPTER NINE
ANDREAS STOOD WATCHING Siena’s sleeping form on the bed. He’d only just managed to catch her before she crumpled to the floor, and he cursed himself for lashing out. Emotions had roiled in his gut. He’d been so angry—incandescent—to learn the truth of what had happened. If it was the truth.
A small part of him wanted to insist that she was lying—making it up, thinking on her feet—but he’d seen the ashy pallor of her face. The way her eyes had looked inward, not even seeing him. No one could have faked that.
The magnitude of what this meant, how it changed things, was impossible to take in. If it was the truth.
Andreas threw off his jacket and dropped it to a nearby chair, where he sat down and pulled at his bow-tie. He’d taken off Siena’s shoes and covered her with a blanket. From here he could see that perfect profile, the shape of her body, and he felt the inevitable beat of desire. It had surged into his blood as soon as he’d seen her again, as if it had merely lain dormant.
His fists clenched. The thing was, could he believe her? Andreas’s mind went back to that cataclysmic evening, and when he thought about it now, without the haze of anger and rage, he could remember that Siena had been icy, yes, but there had been something else in her eyes. Terror?
Her father had had a tight grip on her arm. Too tight. He’d forgotten that detail. And her father had fed her the words: ‘You would never kiss someone like him, would you?’
Andreas felt disgust. She’d been a day away from eighteen. Innocent. Naïve. Terrified of her father. And not for herself, for her vulnerable sister.
Questions piled on top of questions.
Andreas frowned as another wisp of a memory returned. He’d been called to his boss’s office after DePiero’s henchmen had laid into him, and had had to explain what had happened.
Andreas had been so angry at his own pathetic naïvety when he should have known better that he’d lashed out. Tried to make it seem, at least to himself, as if he might have had some control over the situation. At one point they’d heard a noise outside and Andreas had gone to the door, which had been ajar. He’d looked out and thought he was seeing things when a flash of ballgown disappeared around a corner.
Had that been Siena? Looking for him? Andreas frowned deeper, trying to remember what he’d said, and it came back in all its brutal clarity: ‘I’d never have touched her if I’d known she was so poisonous…’
He could laugh now. As if he’d had a choice! As if he’d have been able to stop himself from touching her! She’d enthralled him then and she enthralled him today. He was incapable of not touching her if she was within feet of him.
Uneasiness prickled over Andreas’s skin. Without the anger and rage he’d clung onto for so long he felt stripped bare and made raw by all these revelations. And yet one thing was immutable: now that Siena was back in his life he was not about to let her go again easily.
* * *
When Siena woke she was completely disorientated. She had no idea who or where she was. And then details started emerging. She was in a huge bed and what looked like a misty dawn light was coming through the open curtains. She could see only sky.
She looked around and saw a palatial room, rococo design. She frowned. How did she know it was rococo? She was covered in a soft blanket and her head felt sore. Siena raised it and winced when her hair tugged. She pulled it free of the band, loosening it.
She pulled back the blanket and saw she was in a white shirt and black skirt. It all came rushing back. The reception. Seeing Andreas. Him pulling her out, bringing her here. All her words tumbling out. She’d told him…everything. He’d been angry. And she’d fainted. Siena was disgusted with herself.
Siena put a hand over her eyes, as if that could stop the painful recollections. Slowly she sat up and pushed the blanket aside, stumbled on jelly legs to the bathroom. When she saw herself in the mirror she made a face. She looked wan and washed out, her hair all over the place. She felt sticky in her uniform. She saw the shower and longed to feel clean again, so she stripped off and turned on the powerful spray, stepped under the teeming water.
Andreas. She shivered. After washing herself thoroughly Siena stepped out and dried herself off. It was time to face Andreas in the cold light of day.
* * *
When Siena emerged into the main reception room of the sumptuous suite she still wasn’t prepared to see Andreas sitting at a table, drinking coffee and eating some breakfast. She’d dressed in her shirt and skirt, leaving off the bow-tie and shoes. She was barefoot and felt self-conscious now—which was ridiculous when this man knew every inch of her body in intimate detail.
Andreas lowered his paper and stood up. A chivalrous gesture that caught at Siena somewhere vulnerable. She moved forward, her heart thumping against her breastbone. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was husky. ‘I don’t know what came over me… Thank you for letting me sleep.’
Andreas pulled out a chair at right angles to his and said coolly, ‘Sit down and have something to eat. You’ve lost weight.’
Siena came forward and avoided his eye. She had lost weight. She’d hadn’t had much money for food. Sensing his gaze, Siena looked at Andreas and it was intense.
Tightly he said, ‘I’m sorry for lashing out at you like that last night… It was just…a lot to take in.’
Siena’s heart contracted. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘I checked out what you told me about Serena.’ He sounded defensive. ‘I would have been a fool not to after everything…’
The brief warmth that had invaded Siena cooled. ‘Of course.’
Siena felt fear trickle down her spine even as hurt lanced her. He hadn’t trusted her. ‘What are you going to do?’
Andre
as’s mouth tightened. ‘Nothing. Your sister deserves all the care she can get after a lifetime of being subjected to that kind of treatment.’
Siena felt momentarily dizzy. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she blurted out, ‘I’ll pay you back…the money. If you could let me set up a payment plan…?’
Andreas looked at her incredulously. ‘On the kind of wages you’ve been earning? You’d be paying me out of your pension.’
Siena flushed and straightened her back, clinging to the small amount of pride she had left. ‘I’ll find another job. There are grants for people on minimum wage, training schemes…’
Andreas was grim. He poured her some coffee and pushed a plate of bread towards her. ‘You don’t need to pay me back. If you’d told me in the first place what you needed the money for I would have helped you.’
Now Siena was the one to look at him incredulously, and she remarked bitterly, ‘Forgive me if I don’t believe you. You hate my guts. You wanted revenge. If I had told you that my feckless sister was in a clinic to sort out her addictions and mental health issues you would have sneered in my face.’ Siena looked down. ‘I was afraid you might try to use her to get back at me—after all, that’s what my father always did.’
Siena missed the way Andreas winced slightly.
He said heavily, ‘My best friend committed suicide years ago, and I witnessed the devastation it wrought. I don’t underestimate mental health illness for a second. I might not have been initially inclined to help, but if you had explained to me—’
Siena looked up, unsettled by this nugget from his past. ‘What? Explained the tawdry reality of our lives? The sadistic bullying of our father?’
Andreas’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why did Serena not leave once she could?’
Siena swallowed, ‘She didn’t leave because of me. She wouldn’t leave me behind. And then…once I got older…she was too dependent on our father’s money to fuel her drink and drugs addiction. When she could have left she didn’t want to. As perverse as that sounds.’