‘Why the city?’
‘Better protection, fewer gangs.’
‘You must have been terrified.’
He fixed her with a steely gaze, but she felt everything he was trying to conceal behind a mask of strength. ‘It wasn’t as though life with my mother was a peach.’
‘No?’ she whispered, but she didn’t need him to elaborate. She could imagine.
‘She was treated like dirt. I saw. I heard. I knew.’
His hand had formed a fist at his side; she reached down, curving hers over it, wishing there were some way she could erase that trauma for him. ‘You must have hated it.’
He didn’t respond. She ached for him, and for his mother. ‘Is that how she died?’
His lips tightened. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said after a beat. ‘I couldn’t save her. I tried.’
Pain ripped through Sienna. She lifted her other hand to his chest, placing it over his heart. She heard his guilt, the failure, the regret. She wanted to obliterate those emotions and memories from his mind. ‘I am so sorry you had to live through that.’
He shrugged with assumed nonchalance. ‘Others had it worse.’
Perhaps, but not by much.
He caught her hand again, guiding her through the ancient laneways. She shivered involuntarily. What had, at first, seemed like a rabbit warren of streets—ancient and fascinating, albeit rundown—was now subsumed by darkness for Sienna. She could feel only his pain, imagine him as an adolescent, alone and terrified, and she wanted to hug him close and reassure him that he’d never know that pain again.
A chasm seemed to form in her chest, a hole right near her heart. She squeezed his hand, struggling to find any words. They walked past the bike, a little further down the street, to a small green park with a statue of Mary and Jesus in the centre. ‘She used to come and pray here, to ask God to deliver her to a better life. I would hear her words and wonder when He would answer.’
Tears slid down Sienna’s cheeks; she angled her face towards the street and wiped them away surreptitiously. ‘When I bought my first company, and I had more money than I knew what to do with, I made it my mission to answer my mother’s prayers. It was too late for her, but not for all the women out there living as she did, who wanted help, who were brave enough to ask for it.’
Now she looked up at him, uncaring that he would see the moisture in her eyes. ‘How?’
‘In a very similar way to how you plan to help, actually.’
She didn’t immediately understand.
‘I own hundreds of apartments across Spain. I work with a charity to rent them to women who are in need. Single mothers, predominantly. The rent is affordable, or free, depending on circumstance. It is a small thing, to help them get on their feet, to escape lives in which they might otherwise be trapped.’
Her throat was too thick to allow speech. Her heart was overflowing. It was such a quiet, pragmatic, unassuming way to help. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Why would you?’
‘I work in the charity sector, and I read a few articles about you before I came here. I’m surprised it’s not mentioned.’
‘I don’t make it publicly known. The ownership of the apartments is at arm’s length to me. I don’t need to advertise what I’m doing.’
It was, if anything, the icing on the cake. To help for the sake of helping, rather than for plaudits and praise. ‘Your mother would be very proud of you.’
‘I wish there’d been someone who could have helped her.’
‘You wish you could have helped her,’ she said gently, lifting her hand and cupping his cheek.
‘Of course. But I was a child. The one time I tried, it only made it worse.’
Her heart splintered apart for him.
‘After that, she begged me not to get involved. She gave me headphones and a Discman, made me sit in the lounge room and listen to music.’
‘But you didn’t.’