‘Your foster home went up in flames?’
He nodded. ‘Down to the last cinder. I got the kids out and waited until the fire brigade and ambulance arrived to take care of them. Then I put my plan in place and took my chances on the streets.’
If her chest had been tight before, it barely let her breathe now. Tears stung the back of her eyes. ‘That wasn’t a breeze, though, was it?’ she murmured.
‘Far from it. And especially not when I discovered I wasn’t alone.’
She blinked. ‘What?’
His mouth twitched. ‘Turns out another kid had the same idea.’
‘Andreas?’ she guessed.
He shook his head. ‘Capaldi. He’d followed me. So I was a thirteen-year-old in charge of a ten-year-old on the streets of Athens.’
Her heart leapt into her throat. She glanced back at her peacefully sleeping son, dying inside at the horror of imagining him ten years from now suffering what Capaldi had. And when her hand moved to cover his it was a conscious effort of empathy and encouragement. ‘How did you manage to…survive?’
‘By the skin of our teeth,’ he rasped. ‘And sometimes with borrowed fortitude.’
‘Is that…when you met Andreas?’
He jerked out a nod. ‘On the very night when I believed my luck had run out. We were cornered in an alley with a gang who believed we were trespassing on their territory. Andreas happened to be hiding in the same alley. And he, it turned out, had more experience with gang warfare than I did.’ He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask. He’d previously told her that Andreas’s story was his to tell if he wished, but she got the awful gist of it.
They remained in sombre silence for several minutes until she drew in a shaky breath. ‘What you said to me before, about my father’s flaws not being mine… You know that applies to you too, right?’
The corners of his mouth turned down but he remained in stoic, rigid silence. It felt essential that she try to get through to him. To break through the fortress of bitterness he’d built around himself.
‘Look around you, Nelios. See how far you’ve come. You’ve risen above the worst things thrown at you and triumphed. Don’t you think it’s time to let that little boy go?’
His smile was humourless. He didn’t follow her gaze, didn’t take in the evidence of all he’d achieved. If anything his face grew more sombre, more resolute. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t intend to ever let that little boy go. He’s the motivation that fuels me to remember what human beings are really capable of. How utterly despicable they can be.’
‘But keeping such a tight grip on the past means you can’t reach for a better future. Don’t you see?’ Again, the sense of urgency throbbing within her said she was pushing not just for him but for herself and Angelos too.
He glanced down at her, the blind fury in his eyes telling her he didn’t hear; that he was locked in that very same past. Several seconds passed before he controlled it. ‘Do you know, I kept track of those last foster parents? And, the second they foundthemselves a new hovel, they tried to round up the kids they’d endangered again. I made sure they never fostered again.’
‘How?’
His smile was filled with satisfied vengeance. ‘Turns out if you bombard a certain helpline with stories of abuse, even the laziest social worker eventually gets off their ass to do something.’
‘This just proves my point. You’ve done so much for others. Don’t you owe it to yourself to take that next step and put your past to rest?’
His jaw clenched tight in resolute mutiny.
She sighed. ‘Then you’ll never leave that alley. Never truly find peace. Is that what you really want?’
He snapped his gaze from hers and returned it to the glittering sea. ‘What I want is answers. And so I guess I should thank you for facilitating that.’
‘Once Agnes gives you all the answers you need? Then what?’
Another macabre smile etched his face for a single moment before it was gone. ‘Then I’ll use it as fuel to ensure I’m by far a better parent than they ever were. Then I will be vindicated for cutting them out of my life. I moved on a long time ago, Vayle. This will just confirm I was right to do so. But moving on doesn’t mean the broken parts of me will eventually be fixed. It’s too late for that. Sorry to burst your little bubble, but that’s never going to happen.’
Shock rocked through her, keeping her rooted to the spot as he turned and walked away. Far from believing she was breaking through to him, it seemed Nelios didn’t intend to budge an iota, despite his clear pain. So, while her every instinct screamed at her to follow him, to keep battering at the fortress, her head overruled it. Nelios was deeply entrenched in his ways and beliefs. One conversation wasn’t going to overcome that.
If she had the time and patience, and it seemed she had eighteen years of it, then what was the hurry?
She turned from the blissful view and padded over to pick up her son. Hugging him close, smelling his baby scent, she told herself that, no, there was no hurry, even if that clock inside her whispered that time might not be the tool she needed in this endeavour.
That she might need…something else.
