Power Games (19 page)

Melinda began to shriek, prompting Gary to slam a hand across her mouth, which she bit and gasped against, thrashing out her pleas for him to ride her faster, deeper, harder. She clutched the rim of the basin, watching the bathroom door and almost praying Mitch would open it; that he would witness her like this, with Gary, naked and wanton and still all woman! What would he do? What would he say?

The thought of it made her come. ‘I’m there!’ she garbled, smothered by her lover’s hand. In an explosion she fell against the wall. Gary climaxed in tandem, pulsing through her, his shuddering chest hot and sticky as it sank against her back.

It was an efficient exchange. Gary pulled up his pants. Melinda corrected her nightie and fastened her robe. She smoothed her hair.

Gary went to reopen the patio doors. In a moment, she would follow. For now it gave her pleasure to stand in Mandy’s bathroom, surveying her enemy’s anti-ageing face products and miniature bottle of prescription Xanax. Melinda consulted herself in the mirror. She appeared flushed and healthy, easily ten years younger. Her kind of anti-ageing was a different cream altogether. He waved her through.

A brief kiss and she prowled back to the mansion.

26

Venice

C
eleste Cavalieri received her envelope a week later. She was surprised that anyone should have obtained the Venice address, since she kept it private. She was returning from the
mercato
when accosted by the elderly lady who lived downstairs.

‘
Per voi, senora
,’ said the woman, holding out a letter.

‘
Grazie. Mi scusi.
’ Celeste thanked her and hurried upstairs.

Inside the apartment, Carl was waiting. Celeste’s heart plummeted. Her boyfriend was short, his skin pockmarked from a youthful bout of acne. His cropped hair was slick. Annoyance glowed in his eyes like the embers of a dying fire. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘To the market.’

He consulted his watch. ‘For an hour?’

‘It’s raining. I got held up.’

For a second she thought he was going to hit her, but at the last moment he reached behind her and locked the apartment door. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

She gripped the black and gold envelope. ‘Nothing.’

‘Let me see.’

‘It’s addressed to me.’

‘I said let me see.’

She passed it over. Carl’s thumb tore the seal and a card slid out. He read it.

‘What does it say?’ she asked, as he folded the card out of sight.

‘Property agents.’ He was lying.

‘Can I look?’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Of course I do.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s just I want to look.’

‘We don’t always get what we want, Celeste.’

She shouldn’t push it. All the warning signs were there. The way Carl’s voice jumped a couple of notes; the muscle that twitched in his neck. He didn’t try to be cruel; it was that she made him be cruel. He didn’t mean it when he lost his temper.

He went to the trash can, opened the lid and tore the letter into quarters.

Celeste charged towards him. He caught her wrists. His aftershave was strong, catching the back of her throat, and a fleck of spittle flew in her eye.

‘When are you going to listen to what I say?’ he breathed, grabbing a clump of hair and pulling hard so she screamed in pain. He pushed her head down to the stove.
Click-click-click
and the ignition lit. Blue flames sprang up close to her face. ‘Let go!’ she managed. ‘Please! Let me go.’

‘You know I have to teach you these lessons, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know you give me no choice.’

‘Yes.’

‘You know you have to learn, and this is for your own good.’

‘I know.’

He released her. She stumbled back from the flames, hands to her eyes, and the tears rushed quick and strong, but she held them in with all her might.

‘I’m glad that’s settled,’ said Carl. He flicked on the kettle. ‘Aren’t you?’

He went to bed. Their altercations drained him, he said.

Celeste peeled off cold clothes and towelled her hair. She dragged on an over-sized wool sweater and curled up at the window to watch the deluge.

From here she could glimpse the Rialto Bridge, its stone passage mottled and dank. How she loved Venice: it was her refuge, a maze of concealed spaces, attics and cellars, shadows and shuttered rooms and places to hide, the city its own island, cut adrift from the world. Today, it was awash with rain. When the weather turned, it became a labyrinth submerged, the canals running high, the cobbled streets seething with tourists and the café awnings battered by the downpour. Rushing across the Piazza San Marco had been like skating on a liquid rink. Pigeons scattered from the silver ground and the dimmed glitter of the basilica shone molten in the pools.

This was the closest thing she had to home. Growing up, her parents had been eternal nomads, her French mother an artist, her Italian father a dealer, and neither contented with staying in one place. Friends were left behind and schools abandoned.

She had met Carl almost six years ago now, when he moved into her building. Whenever she returned from a trip she would find flowers waiting, a bottle of wine or a box of pralines—and then, on one occasion, an invitation to dinner. Carl had taken her to the Riva degli Schiavoni where they had eaten mussels and drank champagne.

Celeste hadn’t felt the electricity other women talked about, but after years of believing she deserved to be alone, Carl’s attention paid an unexpected dividend. Besides, love, proper love, seemed a risk too great and precarious; to adore someone utterly when, in a heartbeat, they could be snatched away. She should know.

At first, Carl treated her like a queen. But, as the weeks passed, his behaviour changed. He lost his job, was evicted from his apartment and slowly tightened his hold. He would explode at her for leaving a glass out. If she failed to arrange the cupboards in the way he liked, he would yell at her until her ears rang. Then came the first time he hit her: when she kicked off a pair of heels by the door and he tripped on them, spraining his ankle. After that, things got worse. Carl slapped her for the tiniest thing. He called her a stupid bitch, an ugly thief—and she regretted telling him her secrets because when things got bad he called her a murderer. Celeste could handle everything he threw at her, but not that.

Celeste stood. She eyed the trash can, listening for Carl. A footstep at a time, she approached and lifted the lid. She had to scramble for the last quarter, but finally she found it. Piecing it together, she read.
Tawny Lascelles … Mitch Corrigan …

Salimanta. Indonesia. The crisis.

The invitation cited she had been summoned as ‘an asset’.

Celeste flipped back through the years. Yes, she had visited this place before. She had valued an item for the Salimantan vice president at one of his homes.

Cane Enterprises.
Dimly she recognised the name, a door in her memory creaking open on rusty hinges. Where from? How did she know it?
Cane
…

And how had they discovered where she lived?

Celeste held the card to her chest, concentrating. Rain
lashed fast and feverish against the windowpanes. Somewhere far off, a girl shrieked.

On impulse, she scribbled down the return email.

The group would leave on June 29. Three weeks, it promised, on the other side of the world. She wouldn’t have to tell Carl, she could just board the flight without breathing a word.

Three weeks away from him, no email, no phone, no contact.

Celeste twisted the stolen bracelet on her wrist.

She felt the skin beneath, naked and vulnerable.

There was a storm coming.

27

Boston

T
he sky was slate and dense with rain. A dull wind blew through the trees. Donald Silvers’ mourners were shadows against a bank of brooding churchyard firs.

Angela stood by her mother at the grave. Isabella’s shoulders were stiff against the cold, her head bowed to hide her stricken face. Thunder growled.

‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God …’

Donald’s coffin was lowered. Words were said, empty shapes that swam over Angela like fog on a still lake. They could never achieve what she needed them to.

‘You OK, baby?’ Dino murmured, fumbling to take her hand.

She slipped from her fiancé’s touch. The question was inane. Of course she wasn’t OK—whose funeral was he at? It pissed her off that he had even come in the first place.

Last night he had tried to comfort her. She had been shocked at his arrival at the house, and at how greasy his attempts to slide into her family’s grief. Instead of having the eve of the funeral to lament the loss of the man who had raised her, she had been forced to spend it fending off the one she had psychotically agreed to marry.

She had to be strong. She had done the right thing: for her father, for her family, for her. Through all this, that was the rope she clung to. It gave her comfort to know she was keeping their kingdom afloat, but, for all her life applying herself to this end, nothing could sweeten its bizarre reality. She quashed misgivings that it had all been a mistake: losing Noah, signing her life to Vegas, taking Dino’s hand, a man she scarcely knew and who wanted more than she was prepared to give …

But now there was no turning back.

The Silvers’ fortune had already been channelled into the Zenetti Group. It would remain under Carmine Zenetti’s charge until the wedding day. Once the ring was safely on Angela’s finger, their combined assets would be freshly divided under the terms of the contract. Angela was a walking, talking insurance policy. Until she made it down the aisle and accepted Dino as her husband, her family had nothing.

‘The righteous, though they die early, will be at rest …’

Across the congregation, Luca’s red-rimmed eyes were hard on the ground. Her brother deserved his guilt. The night Donald passed, they had tried repeatedly to contact him, but Luca couldn’t be found: he was out partying, like he was every other night of the damn week. Things were going to have to change if they had any chance of extricating themselves from the Zenettis. For that was what Angela planned—and that was what she would spend every waking hour battling to achieve. If she could grow, she could buy her way out of Dino—but she needed her brothers’ help.

The congregation joined in a response, that joyless vibration particular to funerals, and though Angela had been raised a Catholic she found religion, expressly in death, hard to reconcile. ‘
If I should walk in the valley of darkness, no evil would I fear, for you are with me
…’ She didn’t like the idea
that she should be cast upon the mercy of another, judged against a set of rules that seemed to allow for no shades of grey. Take her marriage to Dino: it spelled dishonesty in the worst way, a sacred bond used for financial ends, and yet hadn’t she been martyred by the deed?

Who decided what was right? Who cast judgement on her soul?

If she had sinned, what would be served as her punishment?

‘Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces …’

She hoped that someone, somewhere, was looking out for them.

Back at the house, Isabella retired to her bedroom. She wasn’t able to read the messages of condolence and so Angela set about filing them away. Flipping through the cards, one alone stood out. Noah Lawson had sent lilies, along with the note:

I’m sorry.

The sight of his name plucked a fragile string. It was the first correspondence that had gone between them since the theatre. Angela had replayed that painful encounter myriad times, rewriting it in her mind, wishing she had said everything differently, wishing she had kissed him again, wishing for another outcome, wishing she had held on tight and never let go.

She had to let go. It was survival.

Noah was her past. Dino was her future. She had committed to this contract and she was a woman of her word. Her heart would always bleed for the life that might have been, but it must do so quietly and invisibly, and never give itself away.

I’m sorry.

The card was not addressed to any one name. Who was Noah sorry for? Her mother? Them all? Was he sorry for Donald’s death, or for the way it had ended between them, the words that were said, the mistakes they had made?

Angela put the flowers in a vase. She wanted to run. She wanted to escape. Vegas, Carmine, Dino—the trio stood at her shoulder, frightening and oppressive. Wherever she chose, wherever she went to, she knew that they would follow.

Except …

She turned. On the mantelpiece, the mysterious invitation remained: she hadn’t imagined it. It had come through that morning. All other deliveries had been visions in pink and white, cream and blue, yellow ribbons and peach paper—and yet here it was, bold and undeniable, a black and gold envelope addressed solely to her.

Go,
it urged.
Get as far away from here as you can.

As soon as Angela had read it, she knew she would say yes.

It was the distance she needed. It wasn’t here, or in Vegas, or with Dino.

When she returned from this trip, she would be over Noah Lawson. She would put him from her mind and train her ambition and her energies on what lay ahead.

She would be ready to embrace the life and career she had always longed for.

Three weeks. Six companions. A charitable cause …

What was the worst that could happen?

28

Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary

I
t was the first time in months that Voldan Cane had ventured outside.

Janika wheeled him onto the castle terrace. Ahead, the dark, dense forest was a smudged wall of green. Milky daylight strained through the mists that hung like a veil on the horizon. Szolsvár’s gardens stretched for half a mile, the once disciplined and cared-for plots now overgrown and wild with neglect. Weeds throttled the soil.