“You came back to see us... Oh, God... When, how?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “That first year, I ran away three times and almost reached London. But Stavros just kept getting better and better at stopping me. Finally, Giannis made a deal with me. If I met every challenge he had for me, he would bring me himself to see Andrew. And I did. I worked round the clock. I begged Stavros to teach me everything he knew. I began to control my temper... And the little money I made in those first couple of years, which was truly nothing, I gave to Andrew.”
She didn’t care if it might have been nothing. He had been given a new lease on life, a life none of them had ever dreamed of, and he still had come back for them.
“You gave him money...” She slid onto the bench at the foot of the bed soundlessly, the whole picture emerging in front of her. Her gut turned so painfully that she thought she might be sick. “For how long?”
“Years.”
Shock shattered her, bringing shards of pain with it.
“When I realized what he’d been doing, when his words didn’t add up anymore, I cut him off instantly. But his addiction to gambling was already in his bones. I should have realized he would somehow find the money, that the burden would fall to you. He had already turned you against me, and after he was gone...there was no point in telling you the truth.”
He had protected Andrew even then. And her from the ugly truth. For a man who said he had done everything only to alleviate guilt, Dmitri had done so much for them.
More than their own mother.
“The last time he came to see me, I begged him to tell me where you were. And he said he would if I gave him money.” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “It was the hardest thing to see him like that...”
“He made me hate you.” God, Andrew had not only squandered what Dmitri gave him but borrowed more from Noah... “I’m so sorry...for all the things I said to you. For what he did.”
Dmitri crouched in front of her, his long fingers stroking over her bare arms. She shivered, and pressed her forehead in his shoulder. Shame and grief vied for space within her. “Don’t, Jas. You’ve carried his burden long enough.”
His hands moved over her shoulders and soon she was in his embrace.
Jasmine wished she could cry and let it all out. But fury had turned into a hard knot and settled deep in her chest. She felt like ice.
Andrew had cheated both her and Dmitri to the very end.
That addiction was in their genes, their blood. And she was just as prone to it as they had been. Did hers come in the form of this man? Was it already too late?
But Jasmine found she couldn’t care. She didn’t care.
Her brother’s betrayal cut too deep. All those years of slaving herself over a debt he had made, of defending him in her own mind, of putting her barely clothed body on display every night—all of it had been for nothing. The grief that she hadn’t somehow been enough to get him through it... The crushing weight lifted.
She had paid the price for their weaknesses, their addictions. She would pay no more, not in shame, not in grief, and not by making their weaknesses her own.
The ice cracked just like that, the white-hot flame of her fury, her powerlessness found target in the man in front of her.
She jerked away from him. “Why did you tell me all this today? Why not that first night? Why now?”
Something desperate flashed in his eyes when he spoke. “You wish I hadn’t told you?”
“No, I want to know what changed today.”
Suddenly, she understood the second layer to his reaction when Gaspard had touched her.
She remembered the carnal promise in that blinding, incinerating moment on the flight when he had devoured her mouth, as if he was drowning. Finally, she understood what Dmitri had been hiding since the first night beneath his lacerating contempt for her...
An avalanche of want and need ripped open inside her as she looked at him with new eyes... He had wanted her all along... Then, why had he pushed her away so efficiently?
“Tell me, Dmitri,” she commanded now, fully aware of what she was asking. No longer confused about her own want for him, no longer guilty or ashamed about it.
She’d never been an innocent, except in the most technical sense anyway.
Still, he had given her a choice.
She wanted him; she had known that from the beginning. But tonight, there was no shame or weakness that came with that want. Tonight there was nothing but the two of them.
“Because I realized the inevitability of this thing between us.” His soft voice only amplified the spiraling tension in the room. “If not today, tomorrow. If not tomorrow... It’s going to consume us both.