Page 45 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

“She drove into a bridge.”

Emma startled.

“That’s awful. What a terrible accident, Vasilios.”

His ice cream was finished and both hands were now propped behind him.

“An accident, yes,” he said with a low voice. “Except it wasn’t.”

“You mean…she killed herself?”

“She was in deep financial trouble. The money she’d received from my father in the divorce settlement—while most would consider it a fortune—barely supported her extravagant lifestyle. She’d made a few bad investments, guided by a cousin of hers who dabbled in financial planning but was in fact a scammer—and by the end was up to her eyeballs in debt. She’d appealed to my father, and grandfather, for help, but it fell on deaf ears.”

“Oh, Vasilios,” Emma’s eyes filled with tears.

“In their defence, she’d been generously compensated when their marriage dissolved, and they could have had no idea how desperate she was.”

“If they had, do you think they’d have helped?”

“I think Costa would have done anything to spare me from growing up without a mother.”

It was too much—not what he said, but what was implied by the statement. Costa would have moved heaven and earth to prevent that fate because losing his mother had broken young Vasilios’s heart. Of course.

Emma had been consoling herself all this time that Vasilios didn’t really have a heart, that he was as cold and closed off to commitment as any human could possibly be, but she’d never really been satisfied with why. His explanations hadn’t made sense. Sure, his father and grandfather had made bad choices, had given terrible examples of marriage and relationship happiness and fidelitybutVasilios was every inch his own man, completely capable of choosing a different lifestyle to them. He could have fallen in love and married, and made sure that marriage was totally different to what he’d witnessed as a child.

But he hadn’t, because in the end, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t put his heart on the line again. He wouldn’t run the risk of being hurt, of losing someone as he’d lost his mother. Of knowing the pain of having the rug pulled completely out from under him.

Emma understood that.

She’d known the same pain, though not at such a tender age, not with the same kind of love, either. By the time Jack had died, she’d known she no longer loved him. Their baby had been all she’d cared about, all the reason she had to even contemplate staying. The loss of her pregnancy had been the hardest thing of all to bear.

And having known that loss, she was terrified of ever loving again too, of ever hoping she might be blessed with a child, or even children, of putting her heart so completely on the line only to risk it being destroyed.

But for Vasilios, a young, five year old Vasilios, there was nothing for it. He’d lost his mother, then been sent to a father who hadn’t wanted him, and from Ricardo, to boarding school. At five! And who knew what his life away had been like?

Vasilios had only briefly mentioned that he’d been sent off to school, and his voice hadn’t conveyed any hint of how that had made him feel, but Emma doubted a five year old who was mourning their mother could have delighted in the experience.

But what about his grandmother? Why hadn’t she fought to keep Vasilios? Why hadn’t she insisted he stay with them? To protect him from Costa’s womanising ways? Or was it simply that none of the adults in Vasilios’s life had been selfless enough to put him first?

She shifted suddenly, driven by a primal instinct to comfort in the only way she could, moving to straddle him, and wrap her arms loosely around his neck so their faces were close together. His eyes widened and he stiffened, then relaxed, as though forcing himself.

“I am so sorry that happened to you,” she whispered, repeating word for word the condolence he’d given her on another occasion, when she’d been the one opening up to him. “That’s a lot for a young boy to bear.”

A muscle jerked in his jaw and she knew his first instinct was to brush off her words, to act as though none of it really mattered, but of course it did. The shockwaves of his mother’s death were still being felt by Vasilios. What else explained his resolute detachment from anybody? Even Costa! He’d pushed the older man out of his life, until it was almost too late. True, Costa had been hardly perfect as a person, but as a grandfather? He’d loved Vasilios, he’d cared for him when his own father had been so useless on that score. But Vasilios hadn’t wanted to love anyone else. He hadn’t wanted to lose them.

And now, he was staring down the barrel of losing Costa and doing everything he could to avoid it. But it wasn’t avoidable. Costa had made the same calls as Vasilios, when he’d first been diagnosed. He’d seen multiple specialists for multiple tests and the answers had all been the same. In the end, Costa could only accept what they were telling him, and try to live out his life in the best possible way.

“Listen to me, Vasilios,” Emma said, urgently, then paused because she wasn’t entirely sure how to put into words what she was feeling. “Nobody knows how long they’ve got on earth. Costa has lived a good, long life and the best thing you can do for him now is exactly what you’re doing. Not this,” she clarified, pointing in what she thought to be the general direction of the oncology centre. “But by being there with him, talking to him, including him in your life. By forgiving him for not being perfect and for letting him know that you forgive him.”

Emma needed to leave.

She needed to leave them both.

But her own sense of self-preservation suddenly took a backseat to Vasilios, to the little boy who’d lost so much and who’d grown into a man who was, she suspected, scared to lose anyone else ever again.

“I’ll be here with you,” she whispered. “Until the end, until Costa…” she trailed off into nothing. “If…if that’s what you want.”

He stared at her for so long without speaking that she felt as if she’d walked ten paces onto a tightrope with no protective harness. The drop was terrifying. She waited and finally, he kissed her, and groaned, and she felt in that kiss the same passionate surrender and fear that swallowed her whole whenever they were together.

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