Page 104 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

And it wasn’t brave if she quailed at the first hurdle, was it? She forced herself to go on. “A few years after I married your father, the relatives who helped themselves to the estate that my grandfather left me got in touch. They were looking for a handout, naturally. Philosophically, I will say that I find it interesting that the people who steal things can never seem to hold onto them. It’s almost as if they know that it was never theirs to begin with.”

“Philosophically,” he replied in a low, dark tone of voice, “that is a remarkably interesting position for you, of all people, to take.”

Jolie chose not to take the bait.

“I wanted very much to encourage them to go to hell,” she told him. “But I couldn’t. I don’t care what happens to the pair of them. When I look back, it isn’t even the money that upsets me. It’s the fact that they destroyed all the memories I had of my parents. And my grandparents.”

She thought of the pictures in the hall. Moments that could change for her depending on who she was when she looked at them again. Moments that could have different meanings over time. That was what her aunt and uncle had stolen from her—that ongoing conversation with still images. That ongoing communion with those stories over time.

But Apostolis’s gaze was getting darker by the moment so she kept going. “They sold it all or they threw it out, and the only thing that’s left of the people I loved the most in this world is me.” She shook her head. “That’s the part I find unforgivable.”

“You forgive theft, however.” His tone was scathing. “What a fascinating morality.”

“It’s not that I forgive it. It’s that, in the fullness of time, what haunts me about that situation isn’t what I had to do to survive it, but what I must grieve because of their carelessness. Their greed. There is a distinction.”

“If you say so.”

But if anything, he looked...thunderous.

“The trouble is that they have a daughter,” she said, and she could feel everything inside her revolt. As if her own body would fight her to keep this in, but she was resolved. “Her name is Mathilde. I’ve only met her once in person, but we have kept in contact ever since.” She blew out a breath, because this was more difficult than she’d anticipated and she had expected it to be an uphill climb. “She texts me. That’s how I know she’s okay. Our deal has always been simple. I pay them off. And they...treat her well.”

“You doubt this.”

“I think they wouldn’t know how to treat a piece of garbage well,” Jolie said, more sharply than she’d meant to. “Much less a girl. But I have insisted that they educate her as I was educated. I have insisted that they do not treat her the way they treated me. Or worse.” She searched his face, wanting to implore him, but somehow sensing that he would not be open to it. “Do you understand? I had to keep her safe. That’s what I’ve been doing. And I need to continue to do it for the next few years, until I am free and can help her myself. In person.”

And for an eternity, or possibly more, they only sat there like this.

His gaze on hers like a hammer.

“So let me make certain that I’m understanding this story,” he said at the dawn of what must have been the tenth eternity. “It is richly detailed, and yet, somehow, it is missing some critical information.”

Her chest hurt. “I don’t think that it is.”

“You met this girl once, but she has somehow become the center of your life.”

Jolie eyed him. “Not everyone is like you, Apostolis. Some of us do not treat every interaction like a transaction, with prices to be paid at a time of your choosing. It’s hard to imagine, I know.”

“This is the daughter of two villains, according to your telling, yet you have somehow assumed responsibility for her. In a way that many parents do not assume responsibility for their own children.”

“It’s called empathy,” she said quietly. Because it was that or shout. Or scream. Or worst of all, sob. “I can’t say that I expect you to know the feeling, but I would have thought that you’d heard of it.”

“But why?” He asked the question too softly. It made a kind of warning shoot along her spine. “There are so many lost girls in the world. Why this one?”

“Why...?” That warning shot through her again, but she had started down this path. She had to keep going. She had to see it to the end—and she wasn’t sure why she felt that so keenly. As if this was ado or diesituation. “I suppose she reminds me a little bit too much of me.”

“Now it makes sense. Narcissism, I can believe.”

Jolie shot to her feet, surprised to find that she was shaking. “You don’t have to believe anything that I say. I don’t know what possessed me to imagine that you might. But Mathilde is all there is, Apostolis. She’s the last secret I’m holding onto.” When he only stared back at her in that same way, she shook her head. “Now you know everything. And look at you, you’re even angrier than before.”

“I’m not angry. I just don’t believe you.”

And it cost her more than she wanted to admit to keep her voice calm. “It’s almost as if you’re afraid that if you did believe me, this whole fantasy world that you’ve built up will come crumbling down.”

“Do I live in a fantasy world?” Apostolis laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. “I rather thought that it was a prison.”

She wanted to shout at him. She wanted more than that—what she’d really like, she thought then, was to take one of his priceless sculptures and throw it at his head.

But that would be another act of war.

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