'What trouble?' Ashley interrupted blankly.
Arnold groaned. 'He was up before the magistrates in the spring for disorderly conduct and criminal damage after getting into a fight.'
Ashley closed her stricken eyes. 'Does nobody tell me anything?'
'To be fair, he got in with the wrong crowd.' Arnold sighed. 'And after that nightclub business he did realise that he'd been handpicked as the fall guy. The club had no intention of pursuing a Cavalieri to court.'
'So this wasn't Tim's first offence,' Ashley registered in horror.
'The friendship with Pietro cooled after that, but last month Tim attended a party at Pietro's home,' Arnold continued with visible reluctance. 'Someone there identified him as your brother. The two boys had already been involved in some silly rivalry over a girl. Pietro jumped on the bandwagon, made certain offensive remarks concerning-er-your past-er-relationship with his uncle, and there was a fight.'
Ashley's knees gave. She felt her passage down into the nearest seat, her stomach knotting up with nauseous cramps. Arnold managed to avoid her anguished stare.
'Tim thumped hell out of the little swine and he was thrown out,' he said grimly. 'But unfortunately, Pietro wasn't prepared to take his come-uppance lying down. He and his friends, having found Tim's weak spot, continued to bait him at school. And last month, four of them cornered him and beat him up.'
An inarticulate gasp of distress escaped her bloodless lips. She remembered how uncommunicative Tim had been about that episode. She had got nowhere when she tried to find out what had lain behind that attack. Tim had stared at the wall. He had almost stormed out when she'd persisted. In the end, she had minded her own business. She had been the black sheep of her family for over four years and her only recently renewed link with Tim had been too tenuous and too precious to risk.
She bent her head sickly. 'Go on.'
'Susan and I were extremely disturbed when he refused to tell us what had provoked that attack. We did think about approaching the school but I felt that Tim would find that humiliating. I expected it all to blow over. Believe me, I regret that decision now.'
'But why didn't he tell us what was happening? Ashley moved her head in a numb motion, too shaken to think straight..
'You have to view this situation and the players involved without rose-tinted specs,' Arnold said flatly. 'I'm afraid I've never had much time for your father's determination to exclude you from the family circle. It has caused enormous stress to everyone concerned, particularly to your mother and Tim…',..
The carpet blurred beneath Ashley s swimming eyes. 'Tim's very attached to you and very loyal. He didn't trust us enough to tell us what was happening.' He hesitated. 'And, much as I love my wife, I find it incredulous that after twelve years of marriage Susan is still so desperate to win her father' s approval that she is willing to cut her only sister out of her life just because he demands that she do so.'
It was coals of fire on Ashley's head. Susan had scars from their childhood as well. She simply dealt with them differently. Ashley tasted blood in her mouth. Involuntarily she had bitten her tongue. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered.
'You have nothing to apologise for. Tim went out to level a personal score,' Arnold asserted. 'He broke into the grounds of the Cavalieri home, started the car, couldn't control it and left a trail of destruction behind him. He ran off before he could be caught but he had been seen.'
Ashley was feeling physically ill. Her past had obtruded painfully into Tim's present. In her name, he had been provoked, humiliated and driven into an attempt to strike back. 'Has he been charged?'
'Of course. The Cavalieri’s own one of the biggest banking concerns in Europe. Tim won't talk his way out of this little lot. But he's brought it on himself.' 'How can you say that?' Shaking briefly free of her shock, Ashley leapt upright. 'He defended me and now he's paying for it!' Tears streaked her cheeks. 'Vandalising someone else's property is hardly in line with a gallant defence of one's sister.'
'How else could he hit back?' Ashley gasped. 'I know he's acted like a great overgrown child but Vito's family are so filthy-rich and powerful, he couldn't have touched them in any other way!'
A dismayed furrow divided Arnold's brows. He didn't like the direction the dialogue was taking. 'We'll get him the best legal representation we can afford,' he replied stiffly. 'But it ought to be your father in the dock. Tim should have been disciplined long ago.'
'I'll go up and see him.' Ashley had no time for his fastidious platitudes. They were not going to help Tim now.
Tim was sitting at the foot of the bed, his hands clasped white-knuckled between his thighs, his untidy auburn head bent. He didn't look up. 'I didn't know you were here until I heard your voice downstairs.'
'Arnold's told me everything.' She leaned back weakly against the door. 'Why, Tim? Why? Vito never did anything to you.'
His head flew up. 'Oh, no? What about you?' he demanded bitterly. 'He wrecked your life. You had to drop out of uni. You're not allowed in your own home. You live in a lousy bedsit; work in a lousy, demeaning job because of him!'
Her brother's bitterness pierced her flesh like so many knives.
'And that foul-mouthed little creep Pietro sneers about you like his uncle did something to be proud of!' 'You don't know what happened between Vito and me,' she said haltingly.
'You were nineteen and he was twenty-eight,' Tim flared. 'That tells me all I need to know.'
'Our relationship just didn't work out, Tim.'
'He dumped you when you were pregnant and married someone else,' Tim snapped back rawly.
She was drenched in pain by the blunt reminder of the child she had eventually lost. Grey-faced, she whispered tightly, 'It wasn't like that, Tim. He didn't know I was pregnant. In fact, at the time we broke up, neither did I and I never told him. There wasn't much point once he was married.'
Her brother stared at her incredulously. 'Don’t lie about it! I'm not a kid any more.'
'But that's how it happened.'
His complexion had a sickly hue now. 'I don't believe you. He let you down. He left you in the lurch. He used you! He must have known about the baby! He must have…'
'Does Pietro?' 'Well, no, but-'
'Vito didn't know.' Her nails had bitten sharp crescents into her palms. Too late now to wish she had told him the whole story. But how could she have told him so that he would have understood? Some things you didn’t want to talk about. Some things you couldn't explain to a teenage boy, who was determined to see his much maligned sister in the guise of an innocent victim, seduced and abandoned. In one sense, it had been that brutal, but in another sense she had chosen her own fate. And Tim's response to her questions had confirmed her every suspicion. What had driven Tim over the edge was her situation, not his own.
'Try not to worry too much,' she murmured. 'It may…it may just come all right.'
'I'm not a baby, Ash,' he muttered jerkily. 'I fouled up. In the pub, it was all just spinning round and round my head. What they'd done to you. What they'd done to me. I just couldn't take any more. I just… I just saw red, you know?'
Yes, she knew exactly. In temperament, she and Tim were very alike. They had their father's quick, seething temper and it was a curse. A curse and a weakness she abhorred.
Arnold was waiting downstairs for her. 'I'll drive you home.'
'No, really… there's no need.'
He draped her jacket round her slumped shoulders. 'Come on. I need some fresh air.'
She had to give him directions. Apart from one enquiry as to how she was getting on with the Open University degree she was studying for, there was no further conversation. Both of them were buried in their own thoughts. But Ashley felt that she had the advantage.
After all, she knew what she had to do. She had to see Vito. He had at least to give her a hearing. And if she had to crawl, well, she would do it. If that was what it would take, so be it. Ashley and her pride were an inseparable duo but, where Tim's freedom and her mother's peace of mind were concerned, no sacrifice would be too great. It would be her penance for what Tim had had to suffer in her name.
As she slid tiredly into bed, the paralysis of shock was seeping away. The full horror of the night's revelations was sinking in. Oh, dear heaven, why had this had to happen? How many times did she have to pay for one mistake, a mistake that, given her background, should have been easily avoidable? The mistake had been falling blindly,
