At almost a year, they still shared a cot, screaming if she tried to separate them. Even if their cribs were pushed together their protests would not abate. Now he would force them into separate rooms.
And she would hear their screams all night as her husband used her body, and Roula could not take it any more.
Would not.
Her father would surely help if he knew. Alexandros did not like her to go out so she had seen her father only a couple of times since her marriage—he had wanted her to marry as the little money he got for his paintings could not support them both. He had been a little eccentric since her mother’s death; he preferred to be alone. But he would surely not want this life for his daughter and grandsons.
‘Now,’ she told herself. ‘You must do it now.’ She had maybe five or six hours before Alexandros returned. She ran down the hallway, pulled out a case and filled it with the few clothes she had for her babies, and then she ran into the kitchen to a jar she had hidden, filled with money she had been secretly hoarding for months now.
‘This is how you repay me?’ Roula froze when she heard his voice, and then simply detached herself as he beat her, as he told her she was a thief to take from the man who put a roof over her head. ‘You want to leave, then get out!’ How her heart soared for a brief moment, but then Alexandros dealt his most brutal blow. ‘You get half …’ He hauled her to the bedroom where her babies lay screaming, woken by the terrible sounds. ‘Which one is the firstborn?’ He did not recognise his own sons. ‘Which one is Alexandros?’
When she answered he picked up the other babe and thrust Nico at her.
‘Take him, and get out.’
She ran to her father’s, clutching Nico. She was terrified for Alexandros left alone with him, sure that her father would help her sort it out. Along the streets she ran till finally home was in view, except it was boarded up. Her father was now dead, the disgusted neighbours told her, for she had neglected him in his final days and had not bothered to attend his funeral. The worst was finding out that her husband had been informed, had known, and not thought to tell her.
‘We will get your brother back,’ she said to a screaming Nico. The local policeman drank regularly with Alexandros so he would be no help, but she would go to the main town of Xanos, which was on the north of the island, to the lawyer that was there.
She took a ride on a truck and had to pay the driver in the vilest of ways, but she did it for her son, and she
did it many times again when she found that the rich young lawyer wanted money up front before helping her.
A little cheap ouzo from the lid meant Nico slept at night and she could earn more money. The rest of the bottle got her through.
And she tried.
Till one day, sitting holding her baby in an alleyway, she heard a man’s voice.
‘How much?’
Roula looked up and she was about to name her paltry fee, but there was a woman standing next to him, and that was one thing Roula would not do.
‘I’m not interested.’
Except he did not want her body. ‘How much for him?’
He told her they were childless, that they were on holiday from the mainland to get over their grief. He told her about the money and education they could give her beautiful boy, that they would move to the neighboring island of Lathira and would raise him as their own. She thought of Alexandros, who was still with that monster, and somehow she had to save him. She thought of the ouzo and the clients she would service tonight and all the terrible things she had done. Surely Nico deserved better.
He wailed in protest as the stranger’s wife lifted him. Just as he had those first awful nights when he had missed little Alexandros so badly. But he would settle, Roula told herself as finally she sat in the lawyer’s waiting
room and signed over one son in the hope of saving the other.
Nico would settle, Roula told herself again as the couple left with her baby. Soon Nico would forget.
She, on the other hand, would spend the rest of her life trying to.
‘ZANDER …’
As soon as she had phone reception, she called Zander, though she should have called Nico first.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get there in time … I’m on my way now.’
‘Are you okay?’ She heard his immediate concern. ‘You sound as if you have been crying.’ Only in the taxi had she broken down, but she tried to disguise it from Zander, for surely it was not her place to weep about this to him.
‘I’m okay. I should be there in an hour.’
The reception was terrible and Zander commented on it. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in the hills.’
‘The hills? I thought you were meeting me.’
‘I’m in a taxi and I’m on my way. Nico asked me …’ She faltered, for the mention of Nico’s name seemed to light a flare. ‘I had something to do for Nico.’
‘Something so important that you leave me waiting. You have my signature already, which was what he wanted.’
She looked to her watch. It was long after eight and though she must tell Nico first, it was Zander she loved. ‘Nico had a lead on your mother that he asked me to follow up. Zander, I’ve found her. I’ve just come from speaking with your mother.’
And all she heard was the click of the phone and for a moment thought he had lost the signal, but when she rang again and he didn’t answer, when she tried once more and it just rang, she knew he was leaving, knew that in his eyes it had happened again—that she had chosen against him.
She must ring Nico, must remember where her duty lay. ‘I’ve found her,’ she said when Constantine answered the phone. Unlike Zander, Constantine immediately asked how Roula was. ‘She’s fragile,’ Charlotte said, and told her a little of the story, arranging to meet with them tomorrow, to explain better face to face. ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand, though …’ Charlotte frowned as she spoke with Constantine, for there was one thing she wanted to sort out before she spoke with Zander. ‘Roula had the money when she sold Nico so why didn’t she go back to the lawyer? Why didn’t she use the money to try and get to Zander?’
‘Because the lawyer kept upping his fees. Because the lawyer did not want to work for Roula and have her exposing all that he had done.’
‘How do you know that?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Because that lawyer was my father.’
There was pain all around, Charlotte realised. A pain that ran so deep, perhaps too deep for healing, but surely if Nico and Constantine could work through it, then she and Zander stood a chance. She spent the rest of the journey pleading with the driver to please go faster and flew out of the taxi before it had even come fully to a halt. Dashing into the foyer, she saw luxurious cases on the gold trolley and almost wept with relief that Zander was still there.
‘Zander, please …’ She ran up to him as he walked out to the waiting car. ‘I’m