He waited until almost all the staff in the office had left, before stalking down the empty corridor of the offices to his father’s suite. He didn’t want anyone else dragged into this mess. Before he entered his father’s room, he looked back down the opulent halls of the empire of his family. He almost let go of a guttural sarcastic laugh that was threatening to escape from his tightly pressed lips.
These people weren’t his family. They may have given him blood, paid for his education, but that didn’t make them family. To think that he had actually believed his father, hoping for a fresh start, hoping for the connection he’d wanted almost his entire life. No. The only people he could rely on were himself and his true brothers, Antonio and Danyl. He had called them last night, explaining everything. They
had offered him whatever he needed. But they couldn’t help him with this. No. He was alone.
A small, Anna-sounding voice echoed in his mind. What about me?
And he shoved it away with all the force he could muster.
Dimitri pushed his way into his father’s office, closing the door behind him. He took in his father, a man who had grown to almost monstrous proportions in the last few days. So it was with surprise that he took in the wizened features of the man who had given his blood to him. Looking at him now, Dimitri saw a small old man who deserved neither kindness nor forgiveness.
‘Did we have an appointment? You know I have a meeting with the shareholders to prepare for.’
His father was yet to look at him. Did he know? Did he know why Dimitri had come here today?
‘It can’t wait.’
With a frown, Agapetos Kyriakou lifted his head to finally look at his son.
‘What is it?’
‘I went to see Manos last week.’ His father should have played poker. Nothing in his face betrayed fear, not even a twitch at the mention of his sons sharing a conversation. No. He was too good for that. Dimitri pressed on. ‘I went because I wanted to find some kind of resolution with my brother. The same kind I had thought I’d found with you. I wanted to see if there was something, anything there of a relationship I could salvage. Imagine my surprise at what Manos revealed to me.’
Agapetos’s eyes narrowed, suspicion clearly painted across his features. Dimitri needed his confession, not just to reveal his crime that it was he, not Manos, who had laid evidence leading to Dimitri, but because he needed to hear it from his father.
‘I just want to know why.’
‘Why what?’
‘Why you did it.’
‘Did what? Dimitri, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You seem a little unsettled. Perhaps you should go back to Anna.’
‘That’s the last time you ever say her name.’ Dimitri’s fury was ice-cold. It raised goosebumps on his own skin and he clenched his hands into fists, balled at his sides. ‘Do not ever speak of her or my child again. Because you’ll never see them. You’ll never get to infect them with your lies or your bitterness.’
Instead of seeing his fury reflected in Agapetos’s eyes, Dimitri was cut short by the sight of tears. As if all the fight, the power, the vitriol had fled from his father’s body.
‘So he told you.’
‘Yes, he told me. I thought you had done absolutely everything you could possibly do to me. I thought that nothing you could do would surprise me any more—but I was wrong. And what really gets to me is that I should have known. Of course my brother wasn’t capable of laying down a paper trail that led to me. He was barely capable of getting up in the morning.’
Dimitri didn’t know how, but he was now standing right in front of the desk, towering over his father, who was shrinking back in his chair and almost shaking.
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said, tremors racking his voice. ‘My son is weak,’ he continued helplessly. ‘He could never have survived a prison sentence—I don’t think he will even now. But you?’ he said, looking up at Dimitri. ‘You are your mother’s son. Strong, fierce and capable. The only way I could save one son was to sacrifice the other. I had to cover up Manos’s theft, I had to lead them to you because no one else had access to the top-tier accounts. I tried, Dimitri. I just couldn’t allow that soft, weak boy to languish in prison.’
‘But why offer your olive branch at the party?’ Dimitri demanded, giving vent to his deepest pain, the greatest betrayal. ‘How could you even stomach to do it, knowing what you had done? Was it because you wanted to make up for your actions, or because you were afraid that I would keep digging, that I would uncover your involvement?’
Agapetos was almost sobbing. Tears ran down creases in his cheeks; red eyes, the irises bright blue, peered up at him. Seeking what—forgiveness?
‘You want me to believe that you did this out of some kind of familial love? That you were trying to protect him? That it was some form of altruism?’
‘Yes.’ The need, the desperation in his father’s tone could have swayed him. It could have saved his relationship with his father, his brother... It could have but for one ultimate truth. And that truth nearly undid Dimitri.
‘But you loved neither of us enough to sacrifice yourself.’
The hitch in his father’s breath was enough for Dimitri to know how right he’d been, the glint of selfishness in the man’s watery eyes all the confirmation he’d ever need.
Dimitri had thought he’d feel powerful, he thought he’d feel as if he’d righted some incredible wrong. But instead, all he felt was empty, exhausted and devastatingly betrayed. So much more so having let himself hope...hope for a future, a relationship with his father, the kind he’d always wanted, no matter how badly treated or ignored. This was the death knell on that hope, and it made him feel like the vulnerable seven-year-old he’d never wanted to be again.