But in this moment, when emotional landmines exploded across his every sense, he knew what soldiers of war experienced. What it felt like to have one’s life flash before one’s eyes as devastation unravelled all around. For a long stretch of time, he saw everything he’d imagined the rest of his life would be detonate and turn to ash right before his eyes, leaving him with the most desolate landscape he’d yet endured. But, curiously, even that image didn’t linger.
It attempted to morph, take a different shape. He shut it down before it solidified. Because screw fate for attempting to rearrange his destiny without his permission. Screw karma for this…unacceptableeffort to show him a different landscape from the one he’d meticulously drawn out for himself while enduring those fists and darkness and humiliation.
Ignored his existence up till now…
Know you had a son…
He shook his head, wondering for a moment, but knowing he hadn’t misheard her. Vayle Lancaster had many faults but she’d never tossed out words she didn’t find a way of expressing one way or another.
Especially theone particular waythat still had the power to turn his insides out, which he most definitely wasn’t going to think about. Even if the consequences of it was right there in his face, in the form of a cherubic angel staring at him with open curiosity an infant this young surely shouldn’t possess. Unless that infant washisand thus superior in all the ways that counted.
His child.
The ominous sensation that had taken hold of him when he’d first set eyes on the boy built now, seizing every corner of his being. Setting off a pendulum of emotions he only seemed to feel around Vayle Lancaster.
No, that wasn’t true. Unbelievably, the woman quietly sobbing behind him also held that power, even after all this time. It was almost laughable that, having sworn never to clasp eyes on these two people again in this lifetime, he now found himself caught in the maelstrom of emotions they both triggered in him.
Well,threenow. He didn’t doubt that, had Apostolis been alive, he too would’ve merrily riled him. His heart lurched at the thought of the father he’d never seen again after that fateful night. The father who’d thrown him away.
Looking into the child’s eyes, something tight, profound and earth-shaking seized his chest, convulsed, jump-started and changed the very fibre of his being.
Glad you didn’t have that vasectomy now?
His breath caught, unprepared for that hissing taunt. For the unguarded punch to his solar plexus at the notion that this child, who had the power to trigger such weighty emotions in him, might never have existed.
Which meant what, exactly?
He shook his head again and redoubled his effort to corral his control. And when he succeeded—because healwayssucceeded—he levelled his most fearsome glare at the woman holding the child…his son…in her arms.
‘I’m willing to accommodate your belief that I knew about my…about this baby’s existence.’Son.Something inside him veritablyrumbledat uttering the word he’d stumbled on. He, whonever, everstumbled. But Nelios knew, and readily accepted, that the moment he took full possession of the truth a great many things would change, in ways even he wasn’t prepared for. So, yes, he was well within his rights to buy himself a little time. ‘Just as I hope you will accommodate my need to get to the bottom of it.’
Ne, he sounded more than reasonable. Surprising, considering the tsunami of sensations bombarding him. She must’ve thought so too, because those alluring blue eyes, eyes he’d watched glaze with pleasure so pure he’d never witnessed the likes of it before, widened a fraction.
‘I…could see my way to doing that,’ she murmured, then her gaze darted past him. ‘What about Agnes?’
His teeth clenched and he forced himself to turn round. To face the woman who’d once held his hand on the way to school before she’d turned into a monster. ‘What do you want? Why am I here?’
Agnes’s lips quivered for a second. Her gaze lingered on his face before they dropped. ‘I wanted to talk to you. Explain what really happened.’ Her face twisted. ‘And some other things I think you’re old enough to know now.’
A different sort of juddering moved through him. ‘New information?’ he jeered. ‘What could possibly explain anything away now?’ Nelios unfurled fists he’d bunched without conscious thought. Somewhere at the back of his brain, the hissing voice sounded again, demanding to know who was sticking their head in the sand now. But he refused to heed that vexing question. The simple truth was that he was reaching saturation point—wasn’t open to new stimuli.
He cut off the swell of bleakness attempting to drown him and spun round to face Vayle, and the baby, who turned his near-bald head to watch him with…Thee mou,was he getting judgement from his own son too?
Impossible.
‘We need to talk, Vayle,’ he said as evenly as the nonsensical tempest raging inside him would allow him. ‘Away from here,’ he added, just to be clear.
‘But…’ Whatever she’d been about to say withered away when her gaze jerked past him to Agnes. Whatever passed between the two of them—and, no, the reaction unfurling in his chest wasn’t jealousy—her face softened with a sort of understanding and she nodded. ‘Okay, I will spare you an hour. No more, just so we’re clear.’
He did well to keep his furious rejection of that limitation to himself. He was experienced in life and business enough to know when to bide his time and bite his tongue until he gained the ground he needed.
And Nelios knew, as he cast one look at Agnes and then at the woman who was settling his son into his push-chair in preparation to wheel it out, that far from coming here to slamshut the book of his horrendous past as he’d believed, a whole new chapter had unexpectedly opened up.
One he intended to have full control over.
No matter what.
‘That look between you and Agnes. What was that about?’ he asked the moment they stepped into the lift.
