It took a second for this to sink in, and for Cassie to grasp the magnitude and when she did she went cold all over. ‘Ares…’ she breathed. ‘I didn’t see anything online…why…?’
It all made horrific sense now, the way he’d always seemed reluctant on the boat, happy to let her navigate. Going down into the cabin as little as possible.Sleeping on deck.
‘It’s not online because my parents had it all but scrubbed from the web. It’s still there if you dig for it but they don’t like to be reminded of any chink in their armour, any sign of weakness.’
‘What happened?’
‘The kidnappers, an organised crime gang, asked for a ransom, but my parents refused to pay. My older brother, he was the smart one, they didn’t want to risk him being kidnapped if they paid.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘Ares, that’s so wrong. Did they hurt you?’ She couldn’t recall seeing any physical scars but then she hadn’t been much focused on taking a survey of Ares’s body last night. It had been an instrument of pleasure. Not something to scrutinise. She wanted to though, some day. Lay him out on a surface and inspect every inch of him. She pushed that aside.
He let out a short sharp laugh. ‘Not physically no, apart from some bruises from rough handling. A bump on my head. Maybe concussion.’
He didn’t have to tell her the scars were inside. To this day. She felt guilty. She remembered him trying to persuade her to take a plane.
‘Is it just boats or…?’
His mouth compressed. ‘Mainly boats… I’m not great in small spaces with locked doors, but it’s not as bad.’
Something struck her. The memory of how he’d taken charge during the storm. ‘How did you learn to sail if you hated it so much?’
A flash of pain crossed his face. ‘My father. He would not tolerate a son who couldn’t sail a boat. He made no allowances for what had happened—he insisted I sail at every opportunity. After all, I belonged to one of the world’s biggest shipping dynasties. He saw it as akin to getting back on a horse after being thrown.’
Cassie’s mouth fell open in horror. After a moment she said, ‘What a monster. Ares, I’m sorry, if I’d had any idea…’
‘No one knows how it affected me. Not really.’
Her chest felt tight. ‘Your own parents compounded the trauma.’
‘They didn’t care. It wasn’t them that rescued me, it was the police.’
Cassie sucked in a breath. Her parents had been focused on hating each other more than loving her or Caius but she knew they wouldn’t have just abandoned them to their fate in a situation like that.
‘That’s why you broke with them.’
Ares nodded. Cassie sat back and absorbed this. It had been so bad and the abandonment had been so traumatic that not even inheriting a vast dynastic business and fortune had swayed Ares from his vow to break with his parents.
‘What about your older brother? Did you ever talk to him about it?’
Ares shook his head. ‘He tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t articulate what I’d been through. The terror of not knowing what would happen, of knowing there was no escape. My parents didn’t encourage me to talk about it with anyone. My brother was being groomed to succeed, my parents pushed us apart, I can see that now.’
‘So you had no kind of therapy?’
Now Ares laughed out loud and shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Maybe if you had you wouldn’t still be having panic attacks.’
He looked at her, sharp. ‘How do you know what that was?’
‘You saw my reaction to that arguing couple yesterday… I’ve had to learn to manage my anxiety around witnessing any kind of confrontation. I know it’s not as traumatic as what happened to you but—’
He put a finger to her mouth and shook his head. ‘It’s not a competition, Cass. We’ve both been affected by what happened to us.’
Chapter Nine
ARES WAS MOMENTARILY ALONE. Cassie had gone down into the cabin to get them coffee.
He felt hollowed out after his panic attack, but also something else, a sense of calm. He’d never had that reaction in front of anyone before. He could still feel her hand on his arm, cool, then taking his hand, leading him over to the seat. Her compassionate eyes. So blue. Hair wild and tangled around her shoulders. Bare thighs. His T-shirt.
