Free In Christofides' Keeping by Abby Green

monitor. Straining her ears, she’d just been able to make out that Rico must have gone in to look down on Lola. Her heart had lurched treacherously at realising that. There was silence for a long moment. She’d heard his breath, and then something indistinct that sounded like Spanish.
    With a shiver, Gypsy realised that even if his initial acceptance of his own flesh and blood wasn’t mirroring her father’s cold rejection of her the outcome would be the same. Rico was staking his claim, vowing not to let his daughter be taken away from him. Vowing to make Gypsy pay…just as her father had done to her mother—albeit for different reasons.
    In Gypsy’s case, once Social Services had been involved, and her father had had no choice but to acknowledge her, he’d made sure that Gypsy had never seen her mother again. It had only been in later years that she’d discovered that her mother had died alone in a mental hospital just a few years after that awful day.
    Gypsy had always suspected that nothing much had been wrong with her mother other than a tendency to depression, which could have been exacerbated by her birth and their tough circumstances. She’d been a mournful woman, prone to pessimism, and not very strong. But nothing that a little support mightn’t have helped.
    Her father had cut Mary out of Gypsy’s life ruthlessly, and even though he’d had information as to her whereabouts he’d refused to help her at all. He’d let her be sucked into the labyrinthine mental health-care system, eventually to die. After her father’s death Gypsy had found heartbreaking letters from her mother, beggingfor his help, begging for a chance to see Gypsy again. It had been almost too much to bear…
    Gypsy sighed deeply and tried her best not to think of that now. Tried not to think of how it had killed her inside to realise the night she’d met Rico that she had found it so easy to gravitate towards a man of her father’s ilk. Was there something within her that resonated with powerful and ruthless men, despite what her father had done to her and her mother?
    She sighed again, and turned over to face where Lola slept so peacefully. Her father was gone. And, while she might be in this untenable situation with Rico now, she was not like her mother. She would not be so easily separated from her daughter. She was infinitely stronger and more resourceful. They would get through this, and she would not let him consume them utterly just because he craved control.
    The following morning, early, Rico sat at the breakfast bar in the state-of-the-art kitchen. The Financial Times couldn’t hold his interest. He looked around and grimaced, seeing for the first time exactly what Gypsy had seen yesterday evening. The place was a potential minefield for an innocent toddler. Watching how Lola had gleefully run around last night, having to be plucked from danger every two seconds, had made him sweat. He’d never had to account for a small child before.
    His heart clenched at recalling her vibrant energy, and how right it had felt to have her here—how quickly he’d felt that if anyone so much as looked at her the wrong way he’d want to flatten them.
    She was beautiful—more beautiful than anything he could have imagined. She was bright, sharp, inquisitive. And, he had to concede grudgingly, all theevidence pointed to the fact that Gypsy was indeed a good mother.
    Finding Gypsy in the kitchen making hot chocolate last night had made him feel unaccountably off-centre. Because she’d looked right in that domestic milieu. It had been almost as if he couldn’t remember a time when this penthouse had just been his London pied-à-terre , a place where he invited his mistresses for transitory pleasures. The sense of triumph had disturbed him, making him sound more caustic than he’d intended when he’d outlined his plans for the week.
    When he’d gone to look in on Lola as she’d slept, a wave of emotion he’d never felt before had