The thumping of her pulse intensified and she went hot with apprehension. He was shedding his detachment. He’d decided to put his trust in her. This was the kind of emotional intimacy she’d always striven to avoid. She couldn’t get involved. Yet she already was, she had to acknowledge. She had been from the moment she’d started pushing him to open up and answer her questions. And for him to even think about asking for her insight—although what made him think she’d have any she had no idea—must have cost him greatly.
How could she possibly refuse him? Maybe she could help him. Maybe, however unwise it might turn out to be, she even wanted to. ‘I’ll fetch more wine.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NO AMOUNT OF alcohol was going to make this easier, thought Rico, his heart beating a thunderous tattoo at the realisation that there was no going back from this. But at least it was dark.
‘I’m not entirely sure where to start,’ he said thickly, once Carla had filled their glasses and set the bottle down on the table.
‘Why don’t you tell me about your parents?’
Shifting on his seat to ease the discomfort, he forced his mind back to the people he barely remembered. ‘My mother was a dentist, my father was an estate agent. From what I can recall, which isn’t a lot, we were a small, normal, middle class family.’
‘Were you loved?’
He allowed a tiny seam of memory to open up, a hazy blur of hugs and kisses, and felt a ribbon of warmth wind through him. ‘Yes.’
‘You said they died in a car crash. What happened?’
‘I was at school,’ he muttered, rubbing his chest as if that might erase the sharp stab of pain. ‘A car overtaking on a bend went straight into them. They were killed instantly.’
‘And the driver?’
‘Him too.’
‘So you didn’t even get justice.’
Her statement lodged deep and then detonated. ‘No,’ he said, realising with a start that he’d never thought about in that way even though it was an obvious explanation for the intense anger he’d felt at the time. ‘I got no closure at all. I had no time to process the shock or the grief before I was taken into care. It was like I’d been hurled off a moving ship and into a heaving, churning sea.’
‘I can’t begin to imagine,’ she said softly, her voice catching.
‘I was so lost and so alone. I’d been ripped apart from everything I’d ever known and tossed into a whole new world. A new school, new faces, a new home. Except none of the places I lived in were home. There was nothing wrong with them, it was just that I quickly learned that wherever I was sent was only ever going to be temporary and so to make attachments would be pointless. I realised I belonged nowhere and I ran away to find something better.’ He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. ‘If only I’d known... Dio, the fear...the hunger...’
‘So the g
ang became your family.’
‘That was what I’d hoped,’ he said, for a moment losing himself in the sympathy he could see in her gaze and feeling the ribbon of warmth begin to unfurl and spread. ‘I was so excited about it. I genuinely thought I’d found a place to belong, but I was swiftly disabused of that too.’
‘In what way?’
‘There was no loyalty,’ he said, his chest tightening as the memory of the shock, bewilderment and finally devastation flashed into his head. ‘No code of honour. I was just useful and light-fingered and suited their purposes. And then when I was arrested and therefore no longer of any use they were nowhere to be seen, which is why I took the job.’
‘That must have been devastating to discover,’ she said softly, her eyes clouding in the candlelight.
‘It was. I put my trust in the wrong people and I allowed myself to be exploited. But by the time I realised what was going on I was in too deep to get out.’
‘You said you were responsible for the accounting,’ she said, her eyes fixed to his.
‘I was good with figures. They didn’t care that I was only fifteen. They put me in charge of cleaning the money and collecting the debts. I was handy with my fists and big for my age. One time I nearly put a man in hospital. I carry the shame and guilt of every dirty, terrible thing I did to this day.’
‘You were so young.’
‘But old enough to know right from wrong.’
‘None of it was your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it?’