The Man Behind the Scars

“I raised you all on my own, Angel,” Chantelle said without turning back around. Her voice was wistful. Something like nostalgic. And was, Angel knew, no matter how much she wished otherwise, entirely fake. “I was only eighteen when I had you, and it wasn’t easy.”

She wished, for only a moment, that her mother was someone, anyone, else. Someone who might say the things Chantelle did and mean them. Even once.

“Does it count as ‘on your own’ when there was a parade of men in and out of the door at all times?” Angel asked musingly. “Some were simply your lovers, I suppose, but others were honest to goodness sugar daddies. Which I suspect is just another way of saying married, isn’t it? Just like my father?”

“Some daughters in your position would be a little bit more grateful,” Chantelle continued, only the hardening of her voice any indication that she’d heard Angel at all. “I made the best choices I could for you, when I was barely more than a child myself.”

“Chantelle, please.” Angel laughed, entirely without humor. “You were never a child.”

“Because I had no choice,” she retorted. “I had to make do, didn’t I? How else would you have been fed?”

Chantelle twisted around then, and Angel met her mother’s gaze. So blue, so bright, and so endlessly conniving.

“Why are you here?” she asked quietly. “I know you’re not going to pay me back. I even know you’re not going to apologize. So what can you possibly want?”

“Can’t a mother drop in to see her own daughter?” Chantelle asked, her blue gaze guileless. Which meant she could be up to anything at all. Anything and everything. “Especially when you haven’t answered your mobile in days?”

“I know how this goes,” Angel said, too weary even for bitterness. Too numb, she thought, and was grateful for it. It made everything easier. What hurt the most was when she actually believed that Chantelle could change—that she even wanted to try. How many times would she fall for that? After all these years? “You’ll keep at it until you say something that makes me feel guilty. Then you’ll work that until I end up making you feel better for what you’ve done. Until I’ve apologized for what you did to me.” She shook her head. “You do it every time. It’s like clockwork.”

“Such airs you put on,” Chantelle said, her gaze as hard as her voice. “You might as well be a flipping countess already. Don’t forget, I know the truth about you, Angel.” She nodded toward the newspaper on the table. “We’re no different, you and me. I’m just a little bit more honest about it.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word honest,” Angel snapped. “You’ve never even brushed up against honesty in passing.”

Chantelle sniffed. “I can see you’re determined to make this hard,” she said loftily, as if she was rising above Angel’s childish behavior through sheer goodness, great martyr that she was. “I want you to remember this, Angel. You take such pleasure in making me the villain, but I’m the one who came round this time to sort things out, aren’t I? And you won’t even give me the time of day.”

“I gave you fifty thousand quid, Mum,” Angel retorted. “Without even knowing it. Without you even asking. I’m all out of things to give you, and I mean that literally. I have nothing left.”

She wasn’t surprised when Chantelle slammed out of the flat, but she was surprised that she didn’t find herself nearly as destroyed by one of her mother’s always upsetting and depressing little visits as she usually was. She pulled the newspaper toward her again, and stared down at that lie of a photo.

What wasn’t a lie was that Rafe was so solid, so surprisingly tough, and it was visible even in newsprint. That soldier’s way of holding himself, strong and unbendable, perhaps. She had the feeling that he was the kind of man—notably unlike her stepfather, Bobby, and most of the population of London, including some of her own early boyfriends back when she’d been foolish enough to bring them into Chantelle’s lascivious orbit—who would see a woman like Chantelle coming from miles off and be singularly unimpressed. It made her feel warm again, imagining his complete imperviousness to a woman like Chantelle.

It would be like Chantelle didn’t even exist.

He wasn’t promising her happiness. He was promising her financial security. And it dawned on Angel as she sat there, the smell of Chantelle’s cigarette smoke still heavy in the air, that the only kind of happiness she was likely to get in this life would involve protecting herself from Chantelle and her games. And the only thing that could guarantee her that kind of protection was money. Pots of it, as her mother had said. If she was really, truly rich, it wouldn’t matter what Chantelle did. She could protect herself, and pay it off without blinking if somehow that protection failed. Chantelle would never again be in a position to ruin her life—she wouldn’t even have access to it.