His Penniless Beauty

‘I want to know,’ he spelt out, ‘exactly what has happened since I walked out on you, Sophie, four years ago.’

She eyed him blankly. Her face was closed. ‘Why?’ The indifference was there still, but there was hostility beneath the surface now. He could tell.

He ignored the challenge. ‘Just tell me.’ He paused. ‘You’re going nowhere till we’ve had this conversation, so you’d better get on with it. What happened after I walked out on you four years ago?’

Her face was blank. Jaw set. OK, he would start jabbing. ‘When did your father have his first heart attack?’

He’d got to her, he could see. She hadn’t expected that. ‘Who told you he’d had one?’ she countered instantly, voice bristling.

‘The nurse at the clinic. He had two before his stroke. So when was the first one?’

He could see the cords of her neck tauten. Then her head twisted back to him. ‘It’s not your damn business!’

Nikos ignored her outburst. ‘When did he have his first heart attack, Sophie?’

‘You want to know? OK, I’ll tell you!’ Her eyes were full of venom. ‘He had his first heart attack the morning he flew back from Edinburgh, without a rescue package, when his PA told him you’d phoned to say there was no possibility of a Kazandros deal, either, and you’d flown back to Athens already.’

Nikos stilled. ‘That morning?’

‘You want to see his hospital records?’ she jibed sarcastically.

But Nikos’s mind was racing. Thee mou, the very next day after he’d thrown her from him like a soiled rag!

‘How—how bad was he?’

‘He pulled through,’ she said tightly. ‘The doctors warned me he might not, that he might have another attack, but he didn’t. He was in hospital for months, and had to have surgery. That’s why I dropped out of music college—to look after him. By then Granton had folded, and I was worried about university costing too much. The house in Holland Park had to go, too, and we moved to a much cheaper apartment.’

‘I’m—sorry,’ said Nikos. It seemed an inadequate thing to say.

She gave a half-shrug. ‘Why? It wasn’t anything to do with you. Not really. You weren’t responsible—why should you have been?’

‘Nevertheless,’ he said stiffly. Emotion had started to slice inside him again, but he had to keep pushing. ‘And the second attack?’

‘A year later. That one was worse. He was a lot weaker. There was a lot more stress.’

‘Stress?’ Nikos pounced on the word.

She looked away again. ‘Money things. He’d tried to start up Granton again. It stressed him. And then…’ She paused a moment, then continued, in the same tight, terse manner. ‘It was a drain on him financially, losing him even more money, and he had to pull the plug. That’s what triggered the second heart attack.’

He nodded slowly. There was another question he had to ask to make the ugly, bleak jigsaw come together. ‘You told me he’d got caught by a boiler-room scam. When did that happen?’

Had Edward Granton been so weakened by illness that he’d actually been stupid enough to fall for such a well-known fraud?

Sophie’s eyes flared with emotion. He could not tell which one, but he knew it was one that caused pain. ‘While he was back in hospital. I—I had power of attorney—he wasn’t expected to pull through a second time—and I…I wanted to give Dad some good news, because he’d been so worried about money. So I… So I…’

Nikos felt icy cold go through him as realisation hollowed out in him.

‘They targeted you, not your father.’

His mind reeled at the very thought of it. Sophie—sheltered by her father from every financial reality in life, insulated from all necessity, focussing only on her music, her studies, her carefree, happy life—lured into the bloodsucking grip of leeches in a boiler room. It would have been like throwing a puppy to wolves.

To be torn to pieces.

Rage speared in him. Rage that anyone should have done that to her!

She was sitting very still, her hands knotted together in her lap. She looked at Nikos. Her skin was stretched across her cheekbones. Her eyes empty now.

‘I invested nearly everything he had left. It wasn’t much by then—only a couple of hundred thousand out of everything he’d once had. I was desperate to recoup his losses, so I could go to him and tell him everything was all right again! Instead—’ She fell silent again, but guilt and self-condemnation lacerated her face. ‘I lost him everything—everything he’d managed to salvage when his company went bust,’ she whispered. ‘Everything. I was so incredibly, incredibly stupid. Gullible. I tried to hide it from Dad, but when he finally came out of hospital he found out and…and…’ She took a razored breath. ‘That’s when he had his stroke.’