Playing the Billionaire's Game

‘Decided by who?’ He hadn’t missed either the pause or the clipped tone to her voice, but couldn’t help but ask.

‘Everyone.’

‘Including you?’ he asked, incredulous, thinking if he could have just one minute, thirty seconds, ten, five even with his mother again he’d sell his soul for them. He’d come to a stop while she’d continued walking and she was now ahead of him. Even so, he didn’t miss the sound of breath puffed between her lips.

‘Yes. Mum is a complicated person.’

‘But—’

She turned on him then, spinning round as if all the pent-up frustration and hurt that he’d missed in her tone was finally escaping.

‘I get my hair from her,’ Sia practically spat, hating the bitterness in her own voice but unable to stop. ‘I got my name from my dad, but my hair from her. I don’t look like her in any other way. Nose, eyes, face shape...’ she gestured to herself ‘...that’s the Keating side. But the hair?’ She huffed out a bitter half laugh. ‘She always said that she gave me the one thing that made me stand out.’ As Sia spoke the words a childhood hurt rose up within her. That horrible scarring feeling that she wasn’t enough on her own, in her own right, that everything she had was dependent on and because of her mother. She couldn’t see past the memories and thoughts to find Sebastian. She was lost to it now. ‘I tried to dye it once. Brown. It didn’t work that well,’ she said flippantly of one of the most excruciating moments of her teenage years. ‘It turned into this kind of sludgy, streaked mess. I thought Mum would lose her mind. But she didn’t even notice.

‘There was quite a lot my mother didn’t notice when I lived with them,’ she pressed on, unable to stop now. ‘Bedtime, I could stay up as long as I liked. Mealtimes, whenever and whatever I wanted, as long as I could get it for myself. School was an if and when thing,’ she said, shrugging, ‘which for my mother was very little of the “when.” I learned my trade at my father’s feet. Even at the age of seven I did a mean Pollock,’ she said honestly and bitterly.

‘And Mum had one focus in life—Dad. She loved him. She loved him more than anything else in this world. She saw only him. And when he didn’t see her, when he would spend weeks lost in front of his canvases, locked in the studio day and night... It hurt her. Broke her. Initially she would rage. Throw anything she could get her hands on—glasses, plates... There was a particularly close call with a kitchen knife once,’ she said with a wobbly laugh as if it had been humorous rather than terrifying. ‘Oh, the things she would scream at him.’

You’re a photocopier! Good for nothing but copying.

You’re not even an artist. Piss artist, more like.

Sia shivered at the memory, the shrieking South London accent cutting through the beautiful warmth of the Caribbean and reminding her where she came from. She felt the sheen of tears in her eyes covering a pain so close to the surface, like the shimmer on an over-inflated balloon, and she vaguely wondered if it was about to burst. Perhaps it already had and she just hadn’t noticed.

‘The neighbours called the police one too many times and she spent a few weeks in prison. Dad barely noticed, but he was there to pick her up. After that, she tried a different tack. She thought she could make John Keating jealous,’ Sia scoffed. ‘There was this party, very bohemian. Mum had draped silks over cheap lamps, candles everywhere. It was a miracle the place didn’t burn down. She was all over the shop, flirting desperately with men, trying to provoke some kind—any kind—of reaction from my dad. And the most painful thing about it all was that I could see, everyone could see, that he just didn’t care. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t get angry. He may as well have just told the men that they could have her,’ she said, pressing her lips together against the hurt cry of her childhood wanting to get out.

‘You asked me who stole my passion?’ she said, finally turning to Sebastian, seeing him in the present and not hidden by the past. ‘She did. My mother. She taught me that passion was selfish, cruel, mean and hysterical and, in the end, utterly pointless. So forgive me if I don’t live like you. Love like you. It’s because even if I took the risk to, the fact that I could end up even remotely like her? Not worth it. Ever.’

She turned round and would have stalked off had Sebastian not slipped his arm around her waist and held her against him to prevent her from leaving.

‘That wasn’t passion, Sia. What your mother felt, what motivated her actions...it wasn’t passion,’ he said gently, as if trying to soothe her, unconsciously evoking the very thing they were talking about and the last thing she wanted.

‘Please...’ she begged, hoping that he would stop, wanting him to continue, to say something that would lessen the pain of her heart breaking—for the past and the present.

She heard him sigh as if he’d lost some internal battle. Felt his head bend, as if in defeat, to rest on her shoulder, leaning ever so slightly into the crook of her neck.

‘The Latin origin of passion...it means to suffer. To endure. Passion is a suffering that you take on yourself for what you want. It has nothing to do with inflicting that suffering on another.’

And then he let her go.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SEBASTIAN PUSHED OFF the wooden post with his foot, sending the hammock gently swaying beneath a spangled night sky, and cursed himself. He wasn’t quite sure what for, only that he knew he deserved it.

The full moon was so large and so bright it could have passed for that hour just before dawn, but at the last check of his watch it was barely one-thirty. With everything half lit, it felt half real... A time for fairies and magic, his mother would have whispered in his ear and he smiled sadly at the memory.

With one arm behind his head and the other hanging lazily down to where the ice-cold bottle of beer he’d retrieved from the outside fridge sat gathering condensation from the heat of the night, his eyes watched the sky, his mind skipping over the possibilities and infinities of the world. His lips curved into a half smile as he saw the bright burn and tail of a shooting star slash across the darkness as his unconscious mind made a wish he was barely aware of. Shaking off the abstract thought of Sia as more of a want than a wish, impossible either way, he pushed off against the post again.

He should never have extended this offer of fourteen days. He should never have allowed himself to get so distracted. He didn’t care about himself but the others, they had so much more to lose and he would never put them in danger like that. Yes, they’d all agreed, but still. It had been his plan, his idea...and he’d been the one to push it. Sia was a threat to all of that. He thought of Sia’s question earlier about what he saw when he looked at the painting. And then Sia’s answer when he’d asked who’d stolen her passion. He shook his head. Strange that they had both fought the same demons for incredibly different reasons.

He was about to snag hold of his beer when a creak on the decking stopped the movement. Every inch of him surged, the hairs on his arms lifted, he swore he could hear the thud of his heart, the rush of blood in his veins.

‘Go to bed.’

The command was gravelly and low even to his own ears. His eyes firmly on the horizon at sea, he knew, knew, that if he turned, if he caught sight of her there would be no going back.

‘No.’