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‘Da, I built a multibillion-pound empire to spite Galina. You found me out.’
‘No, I think you built your business the same way Mr Voronov found a picture in a book and decided he wanted to live in it. To make you safe.’
Nik shook his head, as if she was being ridiculous. ‘I don’t fear monsters in the cupboard, Sybella.’
‘No, because you’ve had one living in your head. Nik, can’t you see? You’ll never get rid of her if you don’t let it go.’
‘Rid of who?’
Sybella sank onto the bed. ‘I blamed myself for years after my parents abandoned me. Because they were my parents, the only ones I knew. Then I met Simon and his wonderful family, and they showed me how the people who love you treat you, and that’s when I was able to let my parents go.’
Nik’s features softened at the mention of her parents; at least he was listening to her, although he didn’t look particularly convinced.
‘Your grandfather came to Edbury because he’s grieving your grandmother and you facilitated that by buying him the Hall, and then when things started happening that you didn’t authorise, that you couldn’t control, you started making a loud noise and threatening people. You were scary when you came down, Nik. You made all of us uneasy.’
‘I was protecting my grandfather.’
‘Understood, but there was no threat. It was all you.’
‘I seem to remember finding strangers outside my grandfather’s home and the house open to the public.’
But Sybella refused to be sidetracked. ‘Something you would have known about if you’d talked to your grandfather. Is that what I can look forward to? Are you going to put me in a house, fence me in with staff and make sure I’m snug between the covers of that storybook you think I want to live in?’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous.’
‘Am I? What are you protecting me from? That thing your stepmother is still managing to twist you into? What you’ve just told me paints you as a cold, amoral man seeking vengeance.’
‘Da, and that is what I am.’
His eyes were hard as slate. Harder than those diamonds he drilled for. Making her feel real fear for the first time. Because she couldn’t be with this man. She didn’t know who he was.
She tried one last time. ‘You’re acting as if you have absolute power over these people. If you ruin Marla Mendez’s label, you’ll be bringing down stress and hardship on a lot more people than Galina. All she loses is money that wasn’t hers to begin with.’
Nik felt something hot shoot through the centre of his brain and in its wake he could feel all the doubts he’d had himself, and ruthlessly crushed one by one as he’d walked this path.
But it was a different thing crushing Sybella’s words. He looked at her and remembered the first time he’d seen her in full light. He’d thought she was a Christmas Angel.
He didn’t even celebrate Christmas last year.
Sybella lived in a different world where people observed all the family and community gatherings, embraced the tenets of ‘what you do affects your neighbour’ and because of that you strove to do the right thing.
He even understood, given her past, why these things mattered to her.
He couldn’t convince her he was right, and a big part of him didn’t want to.
He was starting to wonder why he was even here. He zipped up his holdall.
‘The moment Marla’s label tanks and she moves on, so do I,’ he said flatly. ‘I want to hear no more of this, Sybella. It’s not your concern. It’s business.’
She gave him a stricken look. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I get the impression you don’t want me here tonight, and, after three weeks in a mining camp in the Urals, I’ve had enough of cold, hard beds.’
* * *
The next day, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep Sybella took two tour groups through the west wing of the Hall.
After lunch she went down to the gatehouse, where builders were putting in the new exit door and a ramp for the disabled to bring the tourist centre in line with fire and safety regulations. She chatted with a few of the volunteers, trying to soak up some of their excitement and then headed home in the late afternoon just as the skies opened up.
