‘I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you. You don’t deserve it, Eva. You’re not to blame for my bad handling of the past, or for my colourful history. In fact, you’re probably my salvation, Eva Skavanga.’
‘You’re apologising?’ she said, lifting her head. ‘You do know I’m the most awkward person I know. It’s me who should be apologizing.’ She waited. ‘You’re supposed to be reassuring me now,’ she pointed out.
Roman looked at her with amusement. ‘We’re quite a pair, you and I. You stop me looking back, and I keep you more or less calm. But you should trust me enough by now to tell me what’s riding you, Eva.’
‘I don’t need counselling.’ She turned her face away again.
‘But you do need to let the poison out. Your sisters don’t have a problem, so I have to ask myself, what happened to Eva that didn’t happen to them? What did you see that they didn’t? What did you experience?’
‘Stop it,’ she flashed. ‘You want to know about the scar. Why don’t you come right out and say it? I know you’ve felt it.’
‘I wasn’t going to make an issue out of it. It doesn’t matter to me, but it obviously matters to you. I’m guessing it must have happened when you were still at home and Britt had left for university and your sister Leila was out of the house—’
‘Oh, you’re very smart.’
‘You have to stop with the compliments. Truly, my head is big enough.’
‘You can joke about this?’
‘It’s better than hiding it away and allowing it to fester all these years. So?’ he pressed.
‘You’re still interrogating me?’
‘Yes, I am. And I won’t let up. Not now.’
She remained silent for a long time and then it all came pouring out. ‘My father began to drink when the mine started failing. He’d come home and beat my mother,’ she said without any emotion in her voice. ‘You were right in guessing that Britt was away at university, and Leila always seemed to be at some friend or other’s after school. He chose his times carefully. I was a bit of a loner and used to stay at school late, reading in the library, but one day I came home early and caught him hitting my mother with his belt. She was on her hands and knees in front of him, cowering. I went for him. I didn’t stop to think, I just...went for him. He knocked me away and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. His hat was on the table—harmless enough—but in his fury at being interrupted, at being found out, I suppose, his hand landed on the coffee pot instead. Don’t look at me like that. He didn’t mean to throw the coffee at me. And I don’t want your pity, Roman. I don’t want anyone’s pity. I came out of it okay.’
‘Did you?’
‘My mother looked after me. We made a pact that I wouldn’t go to hospital, so long as my father never touched her again.’
‘And he kept his word?’
‘Yes, he did. That was the end of it. So it was all worth it in the end.’
Roman said nothing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘PLEASE DON’T LOOK at me like that. I’ve already told you I don’t want your pity.’ Eva stared at him fiercely. ‘And while we’re on the subject of secrets and lies, what’s so wonderful about your life, Roman? I’m sure you have secrets.’
‘My life?’ His lips curved in thought as he took himself back to a life that had been built on one set of foundations, only to have those foundations kicked away when he was fourteen. The next twenty years had been spent creating his own set of principles based on anything other than loving, because he’d seen where that led. But now he felt free for the first time in his life—free from guilt, and free from bitterness, because he could see where the future could lead, and that was to a small town in the Arctic Circle and a mining company he would care for as he cared for all his industries. Skavanga Mining had given him a new goal and a new purpose, and, most importantly, it had brought him a girl called Eva.
‘The son of a mafia don has certain responsibilities,’ he explained. ‘When I discovered the truth about my birth I thought I could just shake all those responsibilities off and let my cousin Matteo take over. The island and the village were nothing to do with me any more. I left in a furious rage and that energy helped me to make my first fortune, but the island called me back. The people called me back. I’d never really left them,’ he realised as he thought back. ‘The bad days of guns and violence were long over by then and Matteo’s business had been legitimate for some time. We started working together and I made my second fortune.’