She had to know. She had to ask. And his answer to this would mean so very much. It would mean all the world.
‘Were you really going to shred these?’
Her answer was there in his eyes, in the expression on his stunning face. She didn’t need any more but he gave it to her.
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice strong and firm this time, with no room for doubt in his tone. ‘Yes, I was going to shred them—and burn them. And then—’
But Becca stopped him there, pressing a finger to his lips to keep back the rest of what he had been about to say.
‘Later,’ she whispered, looking deep into his eyes and willing him to believe there would be a ‘later’. A much better, easier—please God—a happier time, when whatever he had been about to say could be spoken with no hesitation, no doubts.
‘Let me tell you about my sister. The sister I should have told you about.’
She’d hurt him with that, Becca knew now. It had really stung that she hadn’t trusted him enough. That she’d been so afraid of losing her one blood relative that she had kept Macy’s existence even from him. If they’d stayed together longer she would have told him.
And now she could tell him. There were none of the restrictions Macy had placed on her when they had first met. All the need for secrecy had gone now. So she could be as open as she wanted—as she needed to be.
So she launched into the story of how she had tried to find her birth mother, only to find that she had died just six months before. But there was a daughter, Becca’s half-sister.
‘Macy was barely nineteen then—and she was making a real mess of her life. She’d got in with a bad crowd, been in trouble with the law—she had a drug habit. I was so conscious of how good my life had been with my adoptive parents—how different from hers—so I begged her to let me help her. She promised me that if I’d stick by her—help her out—then she’d try to go straight. But to do that, she had to get away from everyone she knew. She made me promise not to tell anyone who she was or where she was. If I did, then she would just disappear and I’d never see her again. There was one man in particular—a man she owed money to. Lots of money.’
She paused, searching for the strength to go on, to bring that name into the conversation. But she didn’t need to. Andreas was there before her.
‘Roy Stanton.’
‘Yes. They’d had a relationship—she was crazy about him, would do anything he asked. He’d got her hooked on drugs, and when she couldn’t pay for more he loaned her the money she needed—but at a ruinous rate of interest. The debt had just mounted up and up, until there was no way at all that she could pay it.’
‘So you paid it. Using the money I gave you.’
Becca nodded slowly.
‘I’m sorry…’ she began but Andreas stopped her urgent words with a gentle shake of his head.
‘Don’t be—it was the only thing that you could do. I understand. But oh, Becca, agape mou, did you never think what might happen? Rats like Roy Stanton are never satisfied, even when you’ve paid them off. They always want more. And if one source dries up, then they’ll find another way to get the cash they want.’
Sorting through the photographs, he found another sheet of paper and held it out to her. Becca stared numbly at the photocopy of the cheque she had written to pay off Macy’s debts.
‘He told you—but you said…’
‘I said I had you investigated and I did.’ Andreas’ tone was sombre, his eyes shadowed. ‘I wanted to clear you for your own sake—so that there was never any need for doubt. But it wasn’t the money that concerned me—you could have had all of that and more, and I wouldn’t have given a damn. What I did care about was the rest…’
‘The rest…’ Becca echoed, her heart seeming to stop still in dread. Now they were coming to it and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to know what was coming. ‘What did he say, Andreas? Tell me!’
But even as she spoke she was hearing in her thoughts the words he’d said just a few moments earlier.
For believing you could be capable of marrying me for what you could get when really you were…
‘He told you that we were lovers.’
She could see it all now. It was exactly the sort of thing that Roy Stanton was capable of. When she had paid off Macy’s debts with the money Andreas had given her, he must have thought he was on to a good thing and moved from dealing drugs into a little—he believed—highly profitable blackmail. And it must have been Macy who had told him about Andreas.