Free Captive in His Castle by Chantelle Shaw Page B

work.’
    Drago sipped his unsweetened black coffee, relishing the hit of caffeine, and gave her a speculative look. ‘I understand that your decorating business was facing bankruptcy until a few months ago?’
    ‘How do you know that?’ Her startled expression turned to anger. ‘I suppose the investigator you hired to spy on me told you?’
    He did not deny it. ‘I know you paid twenty thousand pounds into the company account to clear its debts and overdraft. I can’t help thinking how remarkably convenient it was that you suddenly acquired a large sum of money just in time to save the business from financial meltdown.’
    As his meaning became clear, Jess felt sick. ‘If you think I got the money from Angelo, you’re wrong.’
    ‘So where
did
it come from? And perhaps you can also explain how you live in a luxury apartment with a rental value far higher than you could afford on a decorator’s wage.’
    Jess was stunned at how much he knew about her personal life, and felt violated by the intrusion.
    ‘I don’t have to explain anything to you,’ she said angrily. ‘But as a matter of fact the money I used to bail out T&J Decorators was left to me.’
    Drago looked disbelieving. ‘You’re saying you received an inheritance? Who from? You told me your alcoholic father spent all his money on drink.’
    ‘Yeah,
he
certainly never gave me anything—noteven affection,’ Jess said bitterly. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be the only child in the class not to be dressed in clean clothes? Or the only one not to go on a school trip because your dad was too drunk to sign the permission form?’ She clamped her lips together, startled by her outburst. Her childhood was something she
never
spoke about. ‘Of course you don’t know. You were born into a wealthy, loving family.’
    She swallowed. ‘I didn’t know what it felt like to be part of a family until I was seventeen, when I went to stay with a wonderful couple who had experience of helping troubled teenagers. Ted and Margaret changed my life in so many ways. Sadly they are both dead now, and six months ago I learned that I was a beneficiary in Margaret’s will.’
    The raw emotion in Jess’s voice tugged on Drago’s insides. He was shocked by her revelations about her childhood and felt uncomfortable that his questioning of her had forced her to talk about a subject she clearly found painful. She could be making up a sob story to gain his sympathy, his mind pointed out. But the haunted expression in her eyes was too real to be an act.
    ‘As for how I afford to live in an expensive property,’ she continued, ‘I have an arrangement with a property developer who allows me to live in properties he owns rent-free. In return I carry out renovation work and decorate them to a high standard. As soon as the work is finished on the flat I’m currently living in I’ll move out, and the developer will lease it to paying tenants.’
    Jess glared at Drago. ‘You are wrong about me,’ she said fiercely. ‘And when Angelo wakes up and tells you where his money is I’ll expect an apology from you.’
    His coldly arrogant expression did not soften. ‘I’m not wrong about your criminal record. It is an undeniablefact that you were convicted of fraud, and in light of that I think my suspicion that you know what has happened to my cousin’s inheritance is understandable.’
    ‘I was seventeen, for God’s sake, and very naïve.’ Jess bit her lip. ‘I was set up and I didn’t understand that I was committing a crime.’
    ‘Set up by whom?’
    The rank disbelief in Drago’s tone made Jess’s heart sink. She had no chance of convincing him of her innocence when she had been found guilty by a jury, she acknowledged bleakly. The injustice of what had happened still burned inside her. But at the same time as the court case seven years ago, she had had to make a monumental decision that had left her feeling numb and strangely distanced from other events