Viveka could only cover her mouth, holding back a cry of protest.
“By the time I was reunited with him, my son was twisted beyond repair. I was warped, too. The law? How could I have regard for it? What I did then, bribes, theft, smuggling... None of that sits on my conscience with any great weight. But what my son turned into...”
He cleared his throat and set the photo frame back in its place. His hands shook and he took a long time to speak again.
“My son lost his humanity. The things he did... I couldn’t make him stop, couldn’t bring him back from that. It was no surprise to me that he was killed so violently. It was the way he lived. When he died I mourned him, but I also mourned what should have been. I was forced to face my many mistakes. The things I had done caused me to outlive my children. I hated the man I had become.”
His pain was tangible. Viveka ached for him.
“Into this came a ransom demand. A street rat was claiming to be my grandson. Some of my son’s rivals had him.”
Her heart clenched. She was listening intently, but was certain she wouldn’t be able to bear hearing this.
“You want to know what Mikolas was like as a child? So do I. He came to me as an empty shell. Eyes this big.” He made a circle with his finger and thumb. “Thin. Brittle. His hand was crushed, some of his fingernails gone. Three of his teeth gone. He was broken.” He paused, lined face working to control deep pain, then he admitted, “I think he hoped I would kill him.”
She bit her lip, eyes hot and wet, a burn of anguish like a pike spreading from her throat to the pit of her stomach.
“He said that if the blood test hadn’t been positive, you wouldn’t have helped him.” She couldn’t keep the accusation, the blame, out of her voice.
“I honestly can’t say what I would have done,” Erebus admitted, eyes rheumy. “Looking back from the end of my life, I want to believe my conscience would have demanded I help him regardless, but I wasn’t much of a man at the time. They showed me a picture and he looked a little like my son, but...”
His head hung heavy with regret.
“He begged me to believe he was telling the truth, to accept him. I took too long.” He took a healthy sip of his ouzo.
She’d forgotten she was holding one herself. She sipped, thinking how forsaken Mikolas must have felt. No wonder he was so impermeable.
“He thinks I want him to redeem the Petrides name, but I need redemption. To some extent I have it,” Erebus allowed with deep emotion. “I’m proud of all he’s accomplished. He’s a good man. He told me why he brought you here. He did the right thing.”
She suppressed a snort. Mikolas’s reasons for keeping her and her reasons for staying were so fraught and complex, she didn’t see any way to call them wholly right or wrong.
“He has never recovered his heart, though. All the things he has done? It hasn’t been for me. He has built this fortress around himself for good reason. He trusts no one, relies on no one.”
“Cares about no one,” she murmured despondently.
“Is that what puts that hopeless expression on your face, poulaki mou?”
She knocked back her drink, giving a little shiver as the sweet heat spread from her tongue to the tips of her limbs. Shaking back her hair, she braced herself and said, “He’ll never love me, will he?”
Erebus didn’t bother to hide the sadness in his eyes. Because they didn’t lie to each other.
Slowly the glow of hope inside her guttered and doused.
“We should go back to our game,” he said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MIKOLAS GLANCED UP as Viveka came out of the elevator. She never used it unless she was coming from the gym, but today she was dressed in the clothes she’d worn to lunch.
She staggered and he shot to his feet, stepping around his desk to hurry toward her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She set a hand on the wall, holding up the other to forestall him. “I just forgot that ouzo sneaks up on you like this.”
“You’ve been drinking?”
“With your grandfather. Don’t get mad. It was his idea, but I’m going to need a nap before dinner. That’s what he was doing when I left him.”