Czytaj książkę: «Claimed For The Greek's Child»

CHAPTER ONE
Present day

Dear Dimitri,

Today you found me.

DIMITRI GUIDED THE car down roads he’d travelled only once before. Headlights pierced the night, picking out slanting sheets of rain and wet shrubs lining the road. His mind’s eye, however, ran through images of his now very much ex-assistant’s horrified face as words like ‘Sorry’, ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘It was for the best...for the Kyriakou Bank’ stuttered from the man’s lips.

Fury pounded through Dimitri’s veins. How had this happened? How?

In the nineteen months since his release from that godforsaken American prison, he’d sweated blood and tears to try and find the culprit responsible for setting him up to take the fall for one of the most notorious banking frauds of the last decade. Not only that, but also to bring his—his father’s—family-owned bank back to its former glory.

And finally, one month ago, after the arrest of his half-brother, Manos, he’d thought all his troubles had ended. He’d thought he could put everything behind him and focus on the future. He thought he’d be finally able to breathe.

Until he’d received notification of unusual activity on a small personal account he’d not looked at in years. He’d set up the alerts the moment he’d resumed his position on the board of governors and had hoped that he’d never receive one.

But two days ago he had.

And he’d been horrified to discover that, unbeknownst to him, his assistant had arranged payment to a woman who had claimed Dimitri had a daughter. It had happened before, false accusations seeking to capitalise on his sudden unwelcome and erroneous notoriety after his arrest, demands for impossible amounts of money from scam artists. But this time...

Was it some perverse twist of fate that this discovery had coincided with the second leg of the Hanley Cup? That he should be drawn back to Dublin not only for the Winners’ Circle, but also because his assistant had transferred the ridiculous sum of fifty thousand euros to a money-grabbing gold-digger who had—

The sound of his phone ringing cut through his thoughts like a knife.

‘Kyriakou,’ he said into the speaker set in the car.

‘Sir, I have the information you...for...’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s...rush... So I cannot guarantee...disclosure.’

‘You’re breaking up, Michael. The signal out here is terrible,’ Dimitri growled, his frustration with this whole mess increasing. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, sir... Just about.’

‘Look, you can email me the file and I’ll look at it later, but for now, just top-line thoughts will do.’

‘Mary Moore...years old... One daughter—Anna, no father on the...certificate. Arrests for drunk and disorderly...disturbing the peace.’

Dimitri let out a curse. He couldn’t believe it. The woman who had come apart in his arms was a drunk? Had a criminal record? Dammit.

‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Get me your invoice and I’ll ensure the payment is—’

‘Wait, sir, there’s...you need...’

‘The signal’s breaking up now. I’ll read the full file when I can access emails.’

With that, Dimitri ended the call, not taking his eyes from the road once. If he thought he’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to the fury now burning through his veins. He glanced at the man sitting silently in the passenger seat of the car—the only man outside of the Winners’ Circle he trusted. David Owen had been his lawyer for over eighteen years.

‘Legally, at this moment, there’s actually very little you can do,’ David said without making eye contact. ‘All you have is the request for fifty thousand euros and a grainy black and white photo of a little girl.’

And it had been enough. Enough for Dimitri to recognise that the little girl was his. He’d looked exactly the same at her age—thick, dark, curly hair, and something indescribably haunted about her large brown eyes. Dimitri acknowledged that that might have been fanciful on his part. But surely, with an alcoholic criminal as a mother, that was a given.

‘You have no actual proof that the child is yours.’

‘I don’t need it. I know it. Know that she is my blood. The timing fits, and, Theos, David, you read the email, you saw that picture too.’

David nodded his head reluctantly. ‘We could engage Social Services, but that would cause publicity and scandal.’

‘No. I will not have any more scandal attached to the Kyriakou name. Besides, it would take too long. The reason you’re here is to help me get what I want without any of that. I can’t afford for the press to find out about this yet. The mother is clearly only in it for the money. A little legal jargon will help grease the wheels, so to speak.’

The satnav on his phone told him to take the next left. How on earth Dimitri had found his way to that little bed and breakfast three years before, he had no idea.

‘Are you sure you want to do this? As I said, legally your position is not the strongest.’

‘She lost her right to any legal standing when she tried to blackmail me,’ Dimitri bit out.

How could he have been so deceived? Again? How could he have let that happen?

Throughout his wrongful imprisonment, fourteen months incarcerated and locked behind bars like an animal, he’d held up the memory of that one night, of her, as a shining beacon in the darkness. A moment completely for him, known only to them. He’d lived off the sounds of her pleasure, the cries of ecstasy and that first, single moment—the moment when he’d been shocked, and ever so secretly pleased, to find that she had been a virgin—he’d drawn it deep within him, hugged it to him and allowed it to get him through the worst of the time he’d spent in prison.

Had he been deceived by her innocence? Had she really been a virgin? But even he had to acknowledge that thought as inherently wrong. It may have been the only true thing about Mary Moore. But the rest? She’d lied. She’d kept a secret from him. And she’d live to regret it for the rest of her life. Because nothing would prevent him from claiming his child.

* * *

Anna gasped as the rain pelted down even harder. It snuck beneath the neck of the waterproof jacket she’d slung around her shoulders the moment she got the phone call. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring an umbrella though. She dug her hand into the pocket and pulled out the only protection she had with her against the elements. And the irony of that was enough to poke and prod at the miserable situation she was in.

She pulled the large, thin envelope from her pocket and held it over her head as the paper ate up the rain in seconds, and water dripped down her jacket sleeve and arm, to eagerly soak the cotton of her T-shirt.

It didn’t matter if the letter got wet. She knew it word for word by now.

We regret to inform you...owing to late payments...as per the mortgage terms...right to repossess...

She was about to lose the small bed and breakfast she’d inherited from her grandmother, the place where both she and her mother had been born and had grown up. It might never have been the future that she had imagined for herself, but it was the only one she could cling to in order to support her child. How had her mother managed to keep this from her? Mary Moore was barely functioning as it was. But—Anna supposed—that was the beauty of being an alcoholic. Even in her worst state, her mother managed to hide, conceal, lie.

Through the pounding of the rain, Anna could hear the raucous sounds of music and shouts coming from the only building with signs of life on the road. Light bled out from the frosted windows, barely illuminating the wet benches in the courtyard. Anna braced herself for what was guaranteed to be a pretty bloody sight.

She pushed open the door to the pub, and the men at the bar stopped talking and turned to stare. They always stared. The colour of her skin—the only thing her Vietnamese father had left her with after abandoning them before her birth—had always marked her as an outsider, as a reminder of her mother’s shame. She shook out the letter, put the sodden paper back into her pocket and ran a hand through her hair to release the clusters of raindrops still clinging to the fine strands. The smell of warm beer and stale cigarettes defiantly smoked even after the ban hung heavy on the air.

She locked eyes with the owner, who stared back almost insolently.

‘Why did you serve her?’ Anna demanded.

The owner shrugged. ‘She had the money.’ As if in consolation, Eamon nodded in the direction of the snug.

She could hear sniggers coming from the men who had turned their backs to her and anger pooled low in her stomach. It was a hot, fiery thing that moved like a snake and bit like one too.

‘What, you’ve never seen a drunk woman before?’ she demanded of the room.

‘She’s not a woman, she’s a—’

‘Say that word and I’ll—’

‘That’s enough,’ Eamon interrupted, though whether for Anna’s sake or for his peace and quiet, she couldn’t tell.

She stepped through to the snug. Her mother was sitting alone in the empty room, surrounded by round wooden tables. She looked impossibly small, and in front of her, next to a newspaper, was a short glass filled with clear liquid—probably vodka. Anna hoped for vodka; gin always made it harder. She took a seat next to her and pushed down her mounting frustration. Anger never helped this situation.

Mary looked worse than the last time she’d seen her. From the day Amalia was born, Anna knew she couldn’t allow Mary to continue to live with them. She wouldn’t take the risk that her drunken outbursts could harm her daughter. She’d arranged for her mother to live with one of the only family friends Mary Moore had left. And their exchanges ever since had been loaded and painful.

‘What happened, Ma? Where did the money come from?’ Anna hated the sadness in her voice.

‘I thought I’d be able to pay off some of the mortgage... I thought...just one drink... I thought...’

‘Thought what, Ma?’ Anna couldn’t imagine what her mother was talking about, but she was used to the circulatory nature of conversations when she was in this state. The small flame of hope she’d nursed in the last few weeks as her mother had stayed sober and even talked of rehab spluttered out and died on a gasp.

‘Even when he got out of prison, I thought he was guilty...but when they arrested his brother...’

Oh, God. She was talking about Dimitri.

Her mother nudged at the newspaper. Beside the main article was coverage of the forthcoming Dublin Horse Race, with a black and white picture of three men celebrating a win in Buenos Aires. Her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn straight to one man: Dimitri Kyriakou.

‘And he has all that money...so...’ Mary Moore’s words were beginning to slur a little around the edges. ‘So I did what you never had the courage to do.’

‘What did you do, Ma?’

‘A father should provide for his child.’

A million thoughts shouted in her mind. She, more than anyone, knew the truth of her mother’s statement. But she had tried to garner his support...she had tried to tell him once about his daughter: nineteen months ago, on the day she, along with the rest of the world, discovered his innocence. She’d called his office and had been met with a response that proved to her that the man she’d spent one reckless night with, the man to whom she had given so much of herself, her true self, had been a figment of her fevered imagination.

‘Ma?’

‘At least you picked one with money...he was willing to pay fifty thousand euros in exchange for our silence.’

Sickness rose in Anna’s stomach. Pure, unadulterated nausea.

‘Jesus, Ma—’

The slap came out of nowhere.

Hard, more than stinging. Anna’s head rang and the buzzing in her ears momentarily drowned out the shock.

‘Do not take His name in vain, Anna Moore.’

In that one strike, years and years of loneliness, anger and frustration rose within Anna. She locked eyes with her mother and watched the righteous indignation turn to guilt and misery.

‘Oh, Anna, I’m so—’

‘Stop.’

‘Anna—’

‘No.’ Anna put her hand up, knowing what her ma would say, knowing the cycle of begging, pleading and justification that would follow. But she couldn’t let it happen this time.

Had Dimitri really paid a sum of money to reject their daughter? A hurt so deep it felt endless opened up in her heart. The ache was much stronger than the throbbing in her cheek.

Anna rubbed her chest with the palm of her hand, trying to soothe the pain that she knew she would feel for days, possibly even years. This was what she’d wanted to avoid for her daughter—the sting of rejection, the feeling of being unwanted...unloved. She wouldn’t let her daughter suffer that pain. She just wouldn’t.

Anna looked at her mother, seeming even smaller now that she was hunched in on herself. The sounds of familiar tears coming from her shaking body.

Eamon poked his head around the entrance to the snug. There was pity in his eyes, and she hated him for it. She hated this whole damn village.

‘I’ll make sure she’s okay for the night.’

‘Do that,’ Anna said as she walked out of the pub with her head held high. She wouldn’t let them see her cry. She never had.

Anna didn’t notice that the rain had stopped as she made her way back to the small family business she had barely managed to hold on to through the years. All she could think of was her little daughter, Amalia. Her gorgeous dark brown eyes, and thick curly hair. Sounds of her laughter, her tears and the first cries she’d made on this earth echoed in her mind. And the miraculous moment that, after being placed in her arms for the first time, Amalia opened her eyes and Anna had felt...love. Pure, unconditional, heart-stopping love. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her daughter.

The day she’d discovered that she was pregnant with Dimitri’s child was the day that his sentence had been handed to him by the American judge. She’d almost felt the gavel fall onto the bench, as if it had tolled against her own heart. She’d never wanted to believe him guilty of the accusations levelled at him, the theft of millions of dollars from the American clients of the Kyriakou Bank, but what had she known of him then? Only that he was a man who liked whisky, had driven her to the highest of imaginable pleasures and left her bed the following morning without a word.

Hating to think that her child would bear the stigma of such a parent, she’d determined to keep the identity of Amalia’s father to herself. But when she’d heard of his innocence? And tried to get in touch with him? Only to hear that she was just one of several women making the same ‘claim’? She practically growled at the memory. Her daughter wasn’t a claim. Amalia had been eight months old, and from that day she’d promised to be both mother and father to her child. She’d promised to ensure that Amalia would be happy, secure and know above all that she was loved. She wanted to give her daughter the one thing she had never had growing up after her own father had abandoned his pregnant wife.

As she walked up the path towards the front of the bed and breakfast she could see a small minibus in the driveway. The three customers who had checked in earlier that day were stowing their bags in the back.

Mr Carter and his wife saw her first.

‘This is absolutely unacceptable. I’ll be adding this to my review.’

‘What’s going on?’ she demanded, her interruption momentarily stopping Mr Carter’s tirade.

‘We booked with you in good faith, Ms Moore. I suppose the only good thing is that we’re upgrading to the hotel in town. But really. To be kicked out with no explanation at ten thirty at night... Not good, Ms Moore. Not good.’

Before Anna could do anything further, her customers disappeared onto the bus. She jumped out of the way as it backed out of the drive, leaving only one man standing in front of the door to her home.

Dimitri Kyriakou. Looking just as furious as she felt.

* * *

Dimitri had been pacing the small bar where he’d first met Mary Moore. Somewhere in the back of the building a member of Mary’s staff was holding his daughter in her arms and looking at him as if he were the devil.