Victoria Fox Praise for her novels

‘Always a fun read!’ —Jackie Collins

‘Quite simply the best “bonkbuster” you’ll read all year.’

—Daily Express

‘Must Read’

—Real People

‘Oozes glamour and revenge. The ultimate beach read’

—All About Soap

‘A proper guilty pleasure’

—Now

‘Fans of glamorous bonkbusters will enjoy’

—Heat

‘Victoria Fox’s glossy chick-lit novel gives Jackie Collins a run for her money.’

—Irish Tatler

‘It’s the best bonkbuster.’ —The Sun

‘Even we were shocked at the scale of scandal in this juicy tale! It’s 600 pages of sin!’

—Now

‘This debut novel is full of sex, glamour and divas!’ 4 stars

—Star

‘For a trip to ultimate escapism, take the Jackie Collins freeway, turn left at Sexy Street, right at Scandal Boulevard. Your destination is Victoria Fox’s Hollywood.’

—dailyrecord.co.uk

For Madeleine Milburn

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Maddy, my agent and my friend, for more with every book.

To my brilliant editor, Sally Williamson, for drawing the best out of this novel, for her fabulous ideas, and for always pushing me to potential; and to the superb team at Harlequin UK: Mandy Ferguson, Tim Cooper, Nick Bates, Alison Lindsay, Donna Hillyer, Jenny Hutton, Ali Wilkinson, Elise Windmill and Helen Findlay.

To Cara Lee Simpson for her excellent notes on Power Games, and to Oliver Rhodes for his publishing prowess. To the guys at Cherish PR, especially Rebecca Oatley, Sam Allen and Shane Herrington: you make my dreams come true!

To Jo and Jeff Croot for helping straighten the plot; to Kim Young for Kevin and the Little Chasers; to Louis Boroditsky for his fantastic support; to Toria and Mark for going Bear Grylls; and to Rosie Walsh, Jenny Hayes, Vanessa Neuling and Kate Wilde for their friendship and writerly advice.

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PROLOGUE

PART ONE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

PART TWO

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

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EPILOGUE

Endpage

Copyright

PROLOGUE I

Koloku Island, Southeast Asia, the Palaccas Archipelago

July 1, 2014

The jungle comes alive at night.

In the darkness strange shapes creep and fold. Liquid shadows are black as ink and the undergrowth moves. Things shift unseen, slipping beneath leaf-silk. The air quivers, hot and clenched. It smells of the colour green, fragrant and private; and the purple sky, glimpsed in diamonds through a trembling canopy, is bursting with stars.

There is no safe way to arrive on these shores. The water is shark-infested, the land crawls and seethes. It is a forbidden paradise set apart from the world, and it does not welcome visitors. Peril lurks in swamps. Cat snakes drip from trees. Leopards prowl with silent intent, eyes gleaming gold at the scent of the kill. On a far-off branch, the panicked screech of a proboscis monkey rips through the pregnant heat, high and taut and violent. Fruit bats clap leathery wings.

It is impossible to see in the depths of the rainforest. Dense threads thick as rope are damp and fat and scented like rot. Enquiringly they finger the skin, coiling around wrist, knee or ankle, tethering any who trespass into the sucking, clinging earth. This is no place for humans. The wilderness took over a long time ago.

Beyond a wall of jade, the beach is torn into view. Cliff shards soar, rugged and sheer, their lofty peaks silhouetted against star-crust, prehistoric and bone-sharp. Rivers thread vein-like into the slithering jungle and grottos are sliced out of the rock, interiors caked in salt. Palm trees rise like swords against the sky, a hundred feet up, maybe more. The indigo lagoon shimmers like silk, kissing the pink crust of the reef, beyond which spreads the wide, dark Aralanda Sea. Water whispers onto sand, sighing as satin over pale shoulders. It brings secrets from the far-off Pacific, drifting them onto the shore like shells, for nobody to hear and nobody to pick up.

Everything is still.

The jet appears at first like a silver comet. It is small, a moving star, but to blink will draw it into focus, its clean, light contours and the tipping line of its wings. It falls closer, glinting against the lilac clouds. Too quick it is eating up distance, eerily noiseless as it falls and falls over glittering black, reaching for the moonlit bay.

Smoke trails from the rear, dissolving into the indifferent dark. There is a flash of hot orange, close to the tail. The sky begins to growl.

With a crash the body plummets through the canopy. Profuse thickets resist its mighty onslaught, breaking the descent. Thunder blasts as the fuselage guillotines through trees. The forest shrieks. There is an explosion of birds’ wings.

The captain has a second to think before the windshield bursts and a jagged shaft breaks through, neat as a splinter, impaling him through his chest. His lungs are demolished; his breath is crushed. He is surprised. He wasn’t meant to die today. The last person he thinks of is the woman who sold him his coffee that morning in Jakarta, her light, smiling eyes and the sweetness of the liquid on his tongue. Blood spills from his mouth and he slumps forward, chin on chest, and stops living.

It is a peculiar quirk of fortune that prevents the jet from slamming into hard ground: later, those on board will realise that the forest saved their lives—and curse it for it. Instead, the stricken plane shudders through foliage, hell-bent on its manic detour, battered by rocks and the thump of knotted branch. Parts fall away. The mammoth trunk of a chengal tree severs one wing, flipping the missile. It breaks up, an eagle in the skies but down here little but haphazard pieces of fractured metal. In the cockpit the overhead panel collapses, knocking the first officer cold.

What is left carves a giant wound through the undergrowth. Despite the broken plunge, the impact is severe. The aircraft groans to an uncertain, injured rest, slashed with mud and green. The moon bathes it in light, like a pearl.

Of the seven passengers who boarded that morning, three are men and four are women. It is unclear who is left.

One is smeared with red, her face and neck sticky with salt and iron, though she cannot decipher through her terror if it is her blood or another’s.

One is trapped beneath something solid. He doesn’t know if he is alive or dead. He must be dead, he thinks, because everything is dark.

One is the first to move. She gropes into the black and detects the outline of her hand, tentative and ghostly, and knows in that moment she has made it.

Half a mile behind, the remainder of the cabin is suspended in a tree seventy metres from the ground. It hangs between moss-covered creepers and is tilted on one side, caught in a nest of fronds. The ribbons strain: they cannot hold it.

Inside, a woman opens her eyes. She can hear her breathing, fast and short, and the furious blood in her veins.

There is a final, desperate moment before somebody screams. The animal cry flies into the jungle like spitting fire, a red warning: there are survivors.

II

Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary

The same day

Nine thousand miles away, in an ancient fortress buried deep in the woodland, the telephone rings. Its chime echoes through sprawling gothic caverns, lonely and stark.

Billionaire Voldan Cane receives it.

Anticipation climbs in his throat. ‘Is it done?’ he rasps.

The voice makes him wait. Eventually, it comes.

‘Yes. It is done.’

Voldan exhales. A wheezing moan escapes where the skin between his top lip and his nose has ruptured. His bruised heart burns.

It is done.

The call is terminated. Voldan tries to smile but it is hard. The movement tugs at his ruined features, his sallow skin pitted as fruit peel. Normally he avoids his tortured image—mirrors have long been banished from these rooms—but here, in the high, arched windows of Szolsvár’s Great Hall, he catches a flash of the man he used to be: handsome, wealthy, coveted … happy.

One out of four isn’t bad.

The panes are faded and cobwebbed with age. Only Voldan’s eyes betray the depths of his satisfaction. It is done.

He backs away from his reflection and the shadows swallow him whole.

PART ONE

Six months earlier

1

New York

Angela Silvers was being fucked from here to infinity.

At least, that was how it looked. In the mirrored dressing room of Fit for NYC, the bijou latest addition to her chain of sought-after fashion boutiques, her image was fractured and repeated, chasing replicas of her naked body to vanishing point. Angela was flung against the sweat-slicked glass, her arms wide and her blood racing.

The man between her thighs was forbidden.

Noah Lawson.

Movie star, heart-throb, teenage crush—the man she wasn’t allowed to have.

Noah’s tongue circled with exquisite precision, tracing around, between and beneath, everywhere but the place she knew would ignite her like dynamite.

She grabbed his hair, tilting her hips, and gasped as fireflies swarmed in her belly, rising and rising until the world and everything in it diminished to the pure, clear pleasure of her approaching climax. Oh, how she had tried to forget him. Noah was her lover, her best friend and her constant: he was the magic in her heart.

She couldn’t help the rebellion. It had been in her since she was fifteen.

‘Keep going!’ she begged. ‘Don’t stop!’

Drawing her to him, Noah plunged deep, finally giving her what she wanted where she wanted it, and in a delicious, delirious flash she was there, slave to the surge, electric ripples tearing her apart. He kissed her lips, her neck, her collarbone, and whispered in her ear those three sweet words he saved just for her.

If only she believed them.

‘Ms Silvers?’ There was a knock at the door: a female voice, summoning her for the launch. ‘They’re ready for you. Is everything all right?’

Angela closed her eyes, throwing her head back to gasp her admission: ‘I’m coming!’

Fit for NYC was a walk-in wow-fest of everything retail could and should be.

The gallery was spectacular. Silhouetted mannequins were draped in lace and crepe. Champagne glittered on diamond plinths, embossed with the golden FNYC logo. The air was spritzed with an aroma of privacy, of secrecy, even of conspiracy. Couches sat plump as raspberries, their Milanese fabrics shimmering with hand-gilded leaf, and goblets of fizz drifted along with zingy morsels of antipasto: juicy baby figs, Parma ham as light as silk, salty pepperoncini and fleshy artichoke. The pieces were one-offs, painstakingly selected from the fiercest new collections; if not by Angela then by her trusted clique of buyers. Personal assistants were on hand to advise. Designers were commissioned for bespoke tailoring. Caskets housed the chicest of gems. Fit for NYC was set to become the shopping mecca of the super-rich.

Heads turned as Angela moved across the floor. Hers was a potent sensuality that combined feisty Italian beauty with the self-assurance and class of an elite Bostonian heritage. In a tailored trouser suit with deep V neckline and heels that put her at a fraction under six feet, Angela Silvers was bracingly attractive.

She smoothed her curls. Sex hair. Her cheeks were still flushed, her knees weak.

Already she ached for Noah, her skin dancing from his touch and his kiss still alive on her lips. Why did they have to hide? Why couldn’t he be here, at her side?

Some days Angela convinced herself to throw it all to hell and stand in defiance of her father; others, it was career suicide. Donald Silvers was a powerful, domineering man, and he would not be moved when it came to his precious only daughter: if he found out she and Noah were together, he would take from Angela the one thing she had always craved—that one day, the family business would be hers.

Her heart or her ambition … Why did she have to choose?

According to her father, despite Noah’s fame and riches, he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t from her stock. Girls in Angela’s position were expected to see and be seen with the right sort of man, to date wisely, to marry correctly.

She ignored the sliver of doubt that told her that wasn’t the only reason. Doubt that looped through a hole in her heart; a hole Noah himself had made years before.

The thing was, no one else matched up. No one looked at her in the way Noah did. No one listened, and cared, and made her laugh. No one held her hand and kissed her like it was the last kiss on earth. No one made love to her like he did.

‘I’ll call you,’ she had told him, as he’d slipped through the doors and into the night. His strong arms around her, his voice in her ear: ‘Not if I call you first …’

‘Where’ve you been?’

Orlando, the elder of her two brothers, swiped a chalice of Louis Roederer and drank lustily from it. At thirty Orlando was a polished, complacent kind of handsome, as if his looks and status were assets he had won on merit, not by chance.

‘Shouldn’t you slow down?’ Angela commented. Unable to resist stoking the fire of sibling rivalry, she added wickedly: ‘Anyone would think you were jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ He snorted. ‘Hardly.’

But she didn’t believe it. Orlando and Luca existed on the soft plush pillow of their father’s wealth like cats in the sun, safe in the assurance that they had to do very little to merit his attention. Angela, on the other hand, had had a fight on her hands since day one—and it had forced her to succeed. As the only girl and third in line to the Silvers throne, she was long accustomed to a role in the shadows. Why should a world-famous heiress to immeasurable fortune be getting involved in the tough stuff when there were more frivolous things to be doing, like getting her nails done, or partying, or visiting their private Hawaiian retreat for a week of sun and spa?

Angela didn’t give a shit about any of that. She had the balls and the brains of any man—bigger, better—and had demonstrated she could easily trounce her brothers when it came to business. Setting up Fit for NYC by herself was testament to that.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said, switching seamlessly to a smile for their guest of honour, supermodel of the moment Tawny Lascelles. Tawny was blonde, wide-eyed and sultry. She was four years younger than Angela but the gap felt wider—the way Tawny behaved in the press was naïve to say the least, snorting coke, flashing her knickers (or lack of them), creeping into cabs with married men … It hadn’t stopped her snagging contracts with Burberry, Mulberry and Chanel—and her attendance tonight was surely to make certain that Angela’s brainchild was next.

‘Tawny, how great to see you, thank you for coming …’

The model delivered a tight air-kiss, sniffed the air and moved on.

Orlando smirked. ‘Why are models always baked?’

‘Yeah, well, at least one of us is on top of our game.’

‘Which is why you’ve been AWOL for the past half hour?’

Angela conceded that her pre-party dalliance with Noah hadn’t exactly been the height of professionalism. She couldn’t help it. Snatched moments, hidden trysts, each second savoured to carry them to the next encounter, always an eternity away. Both public figures, a glimpse would be splashed across the web in a nanosecond—already rumours simmered dangerously. Noah had implored her, but still she said no.

Damn! She could not live beneath her father’s jurisdiction for ever.

‘Well?’ Orlando pressed. ‘Gonna let me in on your vanishing act?’

‘It’s none of your damn business.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Want me to tell Dad?’

‘Tell him what?’

‘You know what.’

‘I know you can fuck off.’

‘You’re a shitty liar, Angela.’

She wanted to hit him. ‘And what makes you such a saint?’

Orlando shrugged. ‘Nothing. Guess I’m better at hiding it than you.’

It had been too much to hope for her brother’s support. Only Noah had believed she could do this. Only he’d had faith. Despite the way her family had treated him in the past, Noah had been adamant that victory was in her blood—and if the men could do it, why couldn’t she? Ever since her great-grandfather had founded a modest Boston department store, through the decades growing it from strength to strength, winning had been the name of the game. On the crest of success her father had expanded into wider markets still: hotels, casinos, fashion labels; on to the Middle East, Tokyo and Singapore …

Today the Silvers brand was a worldwide lifestyle force. Angela was dead-set on running the ship one day. In the meantime, if her father wouldn’t stake her a role, she would simply go up against him. She had to prove herself one way or another.

Gianluca joined them. Together, the Silvers brothers reeked so strongly of a Harvard Business degree it settled like fog.

‘Dad’s got an announcement,’ said Luca, with his irritating I-know-something-you-don’t-know pout. Luca’s wide, thick-lashed eyes and high brushstroke cheekbones were trademarks of the family. Women went crazy for him.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Orlando took another drink. ‘He’s retiring—and you know what that means. Silvers is coming straight to me, baby.’

Luca arranged his jacket. ‘Yeah?’

‘I’m the eldest.’ He swigged. ‘But hey, don’t worry, I won’t fire you.’

Luca smirked. Then he said: ‘May the best man win.’

‘Or woman.’

‘Forget it,’ Luca dismissed, waving a hand about, ‘haven’t you already got this … sideline?’

‘Which is a damn sight more than you’ve got,’ Angela shot back.

A tinkling glass put paid to the dispute. Angela seized the platform, welcomed the sea of guests and press and recounted her journey, from a teenage summer in Paris that had ignited her passion for couture, to the first flame of her Fit for NYC idea; from the funding she’d secured—independently from her father—to the glory of this opening night. She imagined Noah next to her, encouraging her and urging her on.

When the applause died down, echoes of light still dancing from the raft of cameras, she invited her father, as arranged, to offer his congratulations.

As Donald Silvers approached, she fixed her determined gaze on his.

In spite of it all, Angela knew that he believed in her. She had never been the daughter he’d anticipated—she’d been more.

He shook her hand, equal to equal.

Now was her chance to prove it.

2

Los Angeles

Kevin Chase was watching his manager’s mouth. He noticed for the first time that it was a small mouth, the teeth crowded, and the jowly cheeks bolstering it brought to mind a yapping dog wedged between two cushions. The mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. In the years since becoming America’s biggest solo artist—scratch that, the world’s—and the definitive pin-up for a squillion screeching tweenies (when was his fan base going to grow?), Kevin had honed the art of appearing to concentrate while actually not listening to a single word.

‘Kevin, are you paying attention? C’mon, buddy, this is serious.’

‘Yeh.’

‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself?’

Kevin slumped further into the squishy leather couch in Sketch Falkner’s downtown office and grudgingly lifted his shoulders.

‘Dunno,’ he grumbled. ‘One of those things, I guess.’

Sketch contained his exasperation and came to the front of the desk. He had been in this game thirty years. He had seen it all. As the industry’s top talent spotter and head of the board here at Cut N Dry Records, he knew how to handle his clients.

‘What in hell were you thinking?’ he encouraged.

Kevin folded his arms, stared ahead and refused to reply. His gold FNYC cap was wedged on sideways. His slouch jeans were massive, gangsta style despite his suburban upbringing, and strapped partway down his ass. He wore a white vest adorned by hefty chains, and on his feet were his cherished purple SUPRAs, one of which was jiggling up and down as if he needed the bathroom. Several tattoos were splashed self-consciously across his upper arms, the biggest depicting his ex-girlfriend, pop princess Sandi—and, as if having Sandi’s image branded onto his skin for all eternity wasn’t bad enough, the artist had given her some weird-ass dangly skirt that made it look like Kevin had a thing for chicks with dicks. His frame was slight despite rigorous gym sessions, and the wisps around his chin refused to mature beyond fuzz. The overall impression was one of a junior who had raided his big brother’s closet, or else a snowman that had melted in the sun, leaving only a jumble of clothes behind.

Eventually he said: ‘I want another Coke.’

‘Please,’ put in his mother Joan, seated at his shoulder like a parrot.

‘Please,’ Kevin grunted.

The truth was that a kid in Kevin’s position didn’t need to pay attention. Not really. Kevin Chase had three platinum albums to his name. He was the most talked about performer of his generation. He had scooped a raft of awards: Best Artist, Best Male, Best Single, Best Pop Act, Best Dance Act, Best Video, even Best Hair, which was only right because he took fucking good care of his hair, damn it. He was the ultimate twenty-first-century poster boy. He had close to sixty million followers on Twitter. His adoring fans, referred to as the Little Chasers, treated him like the Second Coming of Jesus. He blew up the media. He played sell-out gigs across the globe. He had his own fashion line, his own fragrance and produced his own movies. He had waxworks of his image in five major cities. He owned a chopper and a mega-yacht and so many properties that half the time he didn’t even know what countries they were in. He was a phenomenon, a philosopher (who could forget the profound opener to ‘Touch My Kiss’? Girl, this life can get so serious) and a poet (You make me so delirious; I’m on this like mysterious). He owned a dachshund named Trey.

At nineteen, Kevin Chase was the biggest superstar on the planet. He couldn’t go for a dump without Security producing the toilet roll.

The Coke was brought over. ‘Thank you …’ prompted Joan.

‘Whatever.’

Sketch nodded towards the paused plasma screen mounted above his desk. On it, Kevin’s image was frozen onstage at the Chicago United Center, mic to his lips, hips strutting, his metallic suit and dark shades part of the Raunchy Robot theme. In the front ranks, a sea of eager Little Chasers grasped for their hero.

‘Joanie,’ tried Sketch, who knew that bringing in Kevin’s mom usually achieved the desired result, ‘what do you think?’

‘Well, I—’

‘I can answer for myself, can’t I?’ Kevin scowled. ‘It’s a fucking hand gesture, what’s the big fucking deal anyhow?’

‘Kevin!’ admonished Joan. ‘Language!’

‘You have to understand that this isn’t what the fans expect.’ Sketch laid it out. ‘Kevin Chase is boyfriend material, OK? He’s about puppy dogs and first dates. He’s about Valentine’s cards. He’s about cookies. He’s about … abstinence.’

Kevin gulped. Recently, he had run an interview with a British tabloid, in which he had happily blasted sex before marriage. Ha! That was some laugh. At this rate he wouldn’t be getting sex until … well that was the fucking funny bit because he couldn’t even think of when. Christ! It wasn’t as if he was short of offers. He was Kevin Chase, for God’s sake; by rights he should be nailing any girl he wanted.

Except he couldn’t … Physically.

That was why Sandi had called it off. The label had tried to salvage it, but Sandi had a fire in her knickers and Kevin’s hose was officially out of order.

Kevin started picking the skin around his thumb. Loneliness swept over him in a silent tsunami. His management had control over every other aspect of his life, so he sure wasn’t about to hit Sketch with a confessional on his sexual problems.

Sexual problems! Him! It was enough to make him throw up.

‘What Kevin Chase isn’t about is this.’ Sketch gestured once more at the still. ‘Pelvic thrusting. Cursing. Rubbing his crotch like a … I don’t know, like a dog with his balls in a knot. Telling girls he wants to,’ Sketch consulted his iPad and inhaled sharply, ‘grind you up against the wall where your mom and dad can’t see.’

‘That was part of the song.’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘It should’ve been. It’s not my fault I’ve got to sing like a pussy. I told them I wanted the lyrics to reflect my personality.’

Sketch put down his pad. He assumed his I’m listening face, tempered by a twinge of fatherly concern. When all was said and done, he was the closest thing Kevin had to a father—hell, maybe that was where it had gone so wrong.

Abandonment issues: oldest fuck-up in the book.

Of course the record company was doing little to alleviate it.

Forget it. It’s for the kid’s own good.

Sketch contained a gruesome shiver. You just keep telling yourself that.

He straightened. ‘What would reflect your personality, Kevin? Tell me.’

But Kevin didn’t know, or else he couldn’t articulate it. He didn’t even know if he had a personality, outside of what everyone else told him it was. Lately he had started gazing in the mirror and not recognising the person looking back, half expecting the other Kevin to do something he hadn’t asked it to, like stick its tongue out, or burst out laughing at the punchline his life had become. He might laugh too, if he could remember the joke. Instead, every day was a circus of grabbing bankrollers, snatching and pawing at his fame like rabid dogs. He had no real friends.

He scratched at a mark on the knee of his jeans and tried not to cry.

‘Listen to Sketch, honey,’ Joan crooned, leaning forward in her chair. She wore ill-fitting Prada and too much make-up. ‘He knows what he’s talking about.’

‘Yeah right,’ mumbled Kevin. Sometimes he wanted to throttle his mom. She was happy to tag along for the ride but she didn’t appreciate how much work he had to put in, what this job took out of you, how much stress he was under. She should try being Kevin Chase for a day and see how she liked it!

‘Not good enough.’ Sketch ran a hand through his hair. ‘If this was an isolated incident, buddy, then maybe I’d buy it, but the fact is it’s not. You want me to lay it out for you? Turning up three hours late to the Seattle concert. Telling an audience of schoolkids that if they didn’t like it, they could bite me. Flicking the bird to that pap outside your crib. Rocking up drunk to that book signing and breathing vodka fumes in a nine-year-old’s face—it was a treat to see that splashed across USay the next morning, let me tell you. Trying to get that pregnant ape at the California Zoo Convention to drink a can of Kool beer. Forgetting what song you’re meant to be singing. Messing up your routines. Speeding. Swearing. Trashing hotel rooms … and don’t get me started on taking a leak in that plant pot at Il Cielo—’

‘All right, all right, I get it,’ Kevin supplied bitterly.

‘And what’s with the attitude? That dance troupe you worked with on the last video said you gave them hell. Cursing at reporters, telling press where to go, slamming out at that photographer in Berlin. I mean Jesus H., Kevin—’

‘I never trashed any hotel room. I told you. The sound system exploded.’

Sketch took a breath.

‘And I needed a leak! What do you want me to do, pee in my fucking pants?’

‘You could visit the toilet like everyone else.’

‘I’m not everyone else, though, am I?’

‘Think about it,’ Sketch said. ‘You’ve got a reputation to uphold.’

‘I’m sick of having a reputation.’

Joan put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Honey …’

He shrugged her off.

‘I’ve cancelled your commitments this afternoon,’ offered Sketch. ‘Go home, rest up, get looked after; watch some cartoons—’

‘Cartoons?’ Kevin flared. ‘What am I, five?’

‘Relax.’ Sketch put his hands out. ‘You’ve been under a lot of strain and it’s starting to show. My job is to look after you, and this is what I’m prescribing.’

Along with the rest.

Sketch swallowed his conscience like a bad oyster.

‘I’ll call you in the morning. Sound good, bud?’

Kevin allowed himself to be ushered through the door. Joan was fussing over him, picking threads from his back. ‘Ugh, Mom, piss off, will you?’

They took the elevator in silence. Kevin knew he was being an asshole. He wanted to say sorry but he didn’t know how. He just couldn’t help how angry he felt the whole time. That was the only word. He felt like a bomb about to blow off. The slightest word sent him plummeting into a rage. A throwaway comment made him fly off the handle. Right now he hated everyone and everything and he didn’t, for the life of him, know why. All he knew was that he couldn’t sustain it much longer.

Kevin was going to snap, and it was going to be soon. He couldn’t say what would happen when he did, but one thing was certain: it was going to be bad.

3

London

Regardless of how many celebrities she interviewed, Eve Harley would always be amazed at the scale of their egos. Supermodels were the worst.

‘I guess I kinda always knew I was beautiful,’ Tawny Lascelles was saying from her position in the make-up girl’s chair, angling her face as the blusher brush swept across a pair of immaculate cheekbones. Tawny had a lilting, Texan drawl, and a flush of softness to her voice that betrayed what Eve was beginning to suspect was a core of gritty ambition. She was the magazine favourite of the moment, sweet as candy but sharp enough to be interesting, with a well-publicised streak of rebellion.

‘Can you remember your first shoot?’ Eve asked, adjusting her position on the uncomfortable stool alongside Tawny’s cushioned throne. In the portrait awarded by the bulb-lined mirror she accepted the uncrossable distance between prettiness and beauty. Eve was attractive enough, with her neatly cut shoulder-length brown hair, green almond eyes and petite, bright features, but next to Tawny’s Cara Delevingne vibe anyone was going to look like a sack of potatoes.

‘Oh, yes,’ Tawny’s blue eyes widened, ‘a girl never forgets.’ She pouted to permit a rose-pink liner to caress the contours of her perfect, bee-stung lips. Ravishing wasn’t nearly enough for tonight’s parade: she had to be flawless. ‘I was so nervous. I mean, I’m actually totally uncomfortable with this whole “look at me” thing.’

I bet you are, thought Eve, tapping keynotes into her tablet.

‘So, lucky for me,’ Tawny went on, ‘it was on this paradise beach … and d’you know what the really weird thing was? Like, totally surreal?’

Eve took the question as rhetorical, but when Tawny’s sapphire eyes at last deigned to meet hers in their joint reflection, she shook her head.

‘I’d been there before! On vacation.’ The make-up girl tilted Tawny’s chin, lifting it like a petal so she could add a hint of gloss. ‘And as soon as I walked out on that sand,’ Tawny managed to keep her mouth totally still while she spoke, ‘I was, like, Whoa, this is cosmic, y’know? Like it was meant to happen that way. I was meant to do this. I was meant to be a model—and no one was going to stop me!’

Eve highlighted the section on her pad. She had it all on Dictaphone but, when it came to revisiting a piece, she liked to know which bits had jumped out at the time. This was one of them. Tawny’s tone had slipped. An edge of bitterness had crept in, of having earned her place in the celebrity tree through more than a few strokes of luck.

‘So you believe this is your calling?’

Tawny’s eyes were closed against the delicate application of mascara. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ she said. ‘I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’

‘Don’t you think it’s an empty sort of profession?’

There was a pause. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Well, good as you might be at it, it’s not really changing the world.’

‘It depends which way you look at it.’

‘Which way do you look at it?’

‘I’m helping people feel better about themselves.’

‘How?’

‘Modelling gives regular people something to aim for.’

‘Even if it’s not attainable?’

Tawny’s eyes opened a fraction, snake-like. ‘What?’

‘The impossible dream, for most women: size 6 and wearing Karl Lagerfeld.’

Tawny batted the make-up girl off. ‘So I should leave them to stew in their fat, sad little lives watching re-runs of America’s Got Talent and stuffing potato chips in their pie-holes?’ Catching herself, she clarified somewhat more demurely, ‘What I mean is, I’m giving them something to aspire to. Beauty … Well, it inspires.’

‘Are you an inspiration?’

‘Yes. In a way.’

‘What way?’

‘Girls want to grow up to be just like me.’

‘Even if they can’t?’

‘Why can’t they?’

Eve thought it was a joke, but Tawny appeared serious.

‘Beauty is a construct,’ she pointed out, ‘right? It’s subjective, prone to change, evolution? In twenty years’ time, will girls want to look like someone else?’

Tawny’s expression was blank.

‘Do you see modelling as philanthropic?’

‘I’m sorry,’ answered Tawny, ‘I don’t know what that means.’

But Eve suspected she did. ‘To enhance the world, to make it a better place.’

‘Then, yes, I suppose I do.’

‘Why?’

Tawny’s eyes opened, flashing danger. The make-up girl’s brush stumbled. ‘Where exactly is this going?’ she demanded. ‘Why, why, why? How, how, how?’

‘It’s an interview.’

‘Well, it sucks.’ Tawny gestured for her assistant. ‘Jean-Paul! Here!’

‘You’ll admit not much is known about how you arrived on the circuit,’ Eve threw out. ‘Maybe something from your childhood made you feel this way?’

‘What, like making the world a better place?’

‘Allegedly you’ve said of your family that—’

‘I’ll stop you there,’ Jean-Paul intervened, ‘I think that’s time. Did you get everything you need?’ But he turned away, not bothering to hang around for an answer. Tawny’s hair crew were next to descend, rattling bottles of spray and cooing over their darling’s fragrant mane as if it were the last head of hair on earth.

‘Get me my grapes,’ came a bad-tempered bark from somewhere inside the melee. ‘I need sugar, JP. I’m dizzy.’

Jean-Paul scurried off to obey.

Eve Harley was frozen out. The interview was over.

The evening was a showcase of upcoming designers, each teamed with an established name in a kind of haute-glitz mentorship programme. Opposite Eve in the ranks sat a prim arrangement of fashionistas, editors, rock musicians and royalty, anyone whose image was regularly splashed across the London society pages—a colourful tableau of elaborate hairstyles, sharp suits and sleekly crossed legs, all with that slightly self-conscious way of sitting, as if these VIPs’ entire lives had become a public display and a lurking photographer could be about to jump out at any moment.

A new collection spilled onto the runway. Tawny Lascelles strutted down the walk, glossily gorgeous and all too aware of that fact, in a Japanese-flavoured drape dress courtesy of a breakthrough artist. But for someone who was all too happy to disclose the finer points of her colonic irrigation regime, or how many egg whites she consumed for breakfast, Tawny was ferociously private about her past.

Eve would get the story, no matter what it took. She always did. She would hunt down the facts and she would hunt them her way. She didn’t do failure and she didn’t do backing out. Her column in the UK’s biggest tabloid relied on it.

The show over, she made a swift exit. January in London was bracing and chill, shining red buses sliding past, their windows clouded with condensation. The River Thames glittered beneath a chain of bridges, snaking down to the golden crust of Westminster, whose peaks were obscured by shifting mist.

Eve checked her phone. It was the usual address, the one he used whenever he visited town. Hailing a taxi, she climbed in. The city rushed past, a blur of lights and sounds, and she spritzed perfume onto her wrists and between her legs.

She couldn’t suppress the wave of butterflies that came with the inevitability of their meeting. It wasn’t as if there were feelings involved—just sex, always sex—and the cold, efficient transaction of it somehow made it more of a thrill.

The cab dropped her at Marble Arch and she walked the rest of the way. Down a moon-frosted lane, away from the crowds, she arrived at his townhouse.

Tapping in the security code, the gates parted, a fairytale twist of black iron.

Orlando Silvers was already on the porch. The door was open, spilling yellow light.

They didn’t say a word. He drew her into the warm and pushed her against the kitchen counter. She went to speak and he crushed her with a kiss, hooking her knee and flipping her round, strong thumbs tearing down her knickers. She felt them rip and he spread her wide and in a second he was inside, hot and deep and thick, her face pressed against the cool steel surface as he pounded, his hand snaking beneath her blouse and freeing her tits.

Eve let him drive against her, her skirt up over her back, one shoe kicked off, her hair pulled and grabbed and her lipstick smudged, until the calm, composed journalist of thirty minutes ago was all but obliterated. Only when Orlando was ready to come did she ease off and draw him to the floor. He was flat on his back, his dick straining beneath the crisp white fabric of his shirt. Slowly she mounted him, unbuttoning her top with tantalising leisure, and he groaned and reached for her as she backed away, peeling off her bra and watching his eyes feast. Making him wait, she finally sank onto him, feeling him fill her up, easing him in and out, right to his tip and down to his base, wetter and wetter each time as his cock became stiffer.

She rode him hard. Only through sex could Eve feel this way—like all the anger and hurt was set free, existing in some separate universe, and all she had here, now, was the intensity and blaze of their combat.

She collapsed against him, their explosions colliding.

Afterwards, Orlando lit a cigarette. They spilled onto the couch, naked and spent. Eve leaned on his chest, running her fingers across his torso, the skin olive-brown and scattered with dark hair. Orlando was the opposite of what she normally went for, serious-faced journos who smoked roll-ups and read satire. He was a cocky Wall Street boy, a glossy Starbucks American—not to mention one of the richest men on the planet. She felt him inhale, heard the crackle of cigarette paper.

‘Is it true your father’s retiring?’ she asked.

Orlando laughed. ‘That was a record.’

‘What?’

‘Fifteen seconds before you went for the story.’

Playfully, she smacked him. He grabbed her, kissed her again.

He was right, though. Eve had worked in this business ten years, yet she never tired of the buzz; what it was to chase a scandal. Today, millions across the globe read her work. Her biting appraisals were infamous. She took no prisoners, she refused to sugarcoat and her allegiance couldn’t be bought—she wrote what she thought and she was faithful to her instinct, whether her subject liked it or not. Over the years she had gained a fearsome reputation. Eve wasn’t out to hurt these celebrities, or to sabotage them, but she believed that if you were going to put yourself up for scrutiny, to use the media to your own ends, then you had to be prepared for it to use you back. Stars who crowed on about privacy didn’t seem to mind so much when they were summoning paparazzi to the opening of their new perfume, or when they had a hot date on their arm or a radical new look to unveil.

Teen superstar Kevin Chase was a prime example. His success was so closely entwined with his courtship of the press that it was impossible to separate the two, yet when Eve had challenged him on the issue of sex (Kevin’s stance had, until recently, been emphatically chaste), he had fumbled his way through a confused, tetchy, half-baked response before barking at her to fuck off because it was none of her business.

None of her business … It was a red rag to a bull. Eve intended to make it her business, whatever it was, and she would stop at nothing until she got there.

‘So?’ she tried again.

Orlando ground out his smoke.

‘Don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘give me something.’

‘I’m forever giving you something.’

‘And I’m not?’ She raised herself up on one elbow. ‘What about that exclusive I kept back on the Mitzlar Brothers—?’

‘You were planning to hold fire anyway.’

‘I wasn’t. My editor would kill me if she knew—sex dens, strippers, a world-class banking family …’

‘We needed their sponsorship. This story would have ruined them.’

‘Exactly.’ Eve trailed her fingers down his stomach, felt him harden once more. ‘So what do I get in return? I did it because you asked me …’

‘You don’t do anything you’re asked.’

‘That depends who’s asking.’

He threw her off the scent. ‘Tawny Lascelles just signed for my sister’s label.’

Eve leaned over, reached into her bag and pulled out her pad. ‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘D’you know Tawny?’

‘She was at the launch a couple of weeks back.’

‘Yeah, I figured that part out. Who was she with?’

‘No one, I don’t think.’

‘Does Angela run checks on models before she employs them?’

‘Why?’ he scoffed.

‘Tawny’s press people are like Rottweilers, she’s giving nothing away—but I know, I just know there’s something there, if I could just …’

Orlando touched the end of her nose. ‘You never let up, do you?’

‘I came from the gala,’ she explained. ‘Tawny and I chatted.’

‘Why didn’t you ask her?’

‘Don’t be facetious.’

‘Don’t use long words.’

She stuck up her finger. ‘That short enough for you?’

‘Cute.’

Eve got up. She fixed herself a drink, raised the carafe in question. He nodded.

‘Come on,’ she said, leaning back against the mahogany dresser, ‘I already had it in the bag about Tawny and Fit for NYC. What else?’

Orlando narrowed his eyes. ‘What if I just wanted to see you?’

‘Crap. I know you see other women.’

‘Do you see other men?’

‘What’s it to you?’ But she didn’t see other men. She didn’t have time.

And I don’t want to.

He pulled her back to the couch.

‘For chasing other people’s secrets, Harley,’ he murmured, ‘you’ve sure got some mysteries of your own.’

Orlando held her down, his tongue tracing its practised route down her neck and across her breasts. She didn’t answer, but then he didn’t require it.

Suffice to say, there was a good reason why Eve did this job, and she wasn’t about to compromise for anyone. Not even for him.

4

Tawny Lascelles took the red-eye back to LA. She was tired and crabby, pissed off at that bitch reporter for sticking her fat beak in where it wasn’t wanted and then later at some piglet-faced model she had never worked with telling her she’d gone too fast down the catwalk. The nerve! Tawny wanted to slap her. The last thing she felt like doing now was getting stuck on an airplane for hours, but such was her schedule these days that she seemed to spend half her life zooming back and forth over the Atlantic.

Everything in the supermodel’s first-class cabin was as requested, which helped soften the blow. Tawny’s rider went everywhere with her—road, sea or air, she was never without her essentials: chamomile and echinacea tea, a cashmere blanket (silver, never grey), three bouquets of lightly scented peonies, a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle, her music station (Gaga for when she needed to hype up, Taylor for when she needed to wind down), and the only food she ate with any frequency, or indeed with any relish, a jumbo-sized bag of Haribo Sours.

Two thousand miles across the Atlantic, she stuck her arm above the parapet.

Immediately a glass of water was brought—carbonated but with just the right amount of fizz: Tawny hated to get burpy. She sipped carefully to avoid bloating, then without saying thank you settled back in her recliner booth and flipped open a magazine. A stinging flick brought the page open on a column by Eve Harley.

Prying tramp!

It was all Tawny could do not to rip the paper to shreds. She scowled at the reporter’s name and at what unsuspecting prey had been targeted this time.

Kevin Chase.

The article accompanied a picture on stage during his latest World Tour.

My opinion? Kevin Chase is an out-of-control teenage brat. So he’s young, so people make mistakes, so we should cut him some slack—but the fact is there are countless young kids out there with nothing, no money, no job, no support, no future, and still we’re supposed to feel sorry for this guy? A nineteen year old who set fire to a stack of hundred-dollar bills last week as a PR stunt? Give me a break …

It was a shame about Kevin, Tawny thought, assessing the superstar’s dwarfed yet rippling torso—it was like all the ingredients were there, like he had the potential to be hot, only everything about him was so … well, small. It was as if he had gone through a photocopier and been reduced by forty per cent.

Give him a few years, she decided. The handsome part wasn’t nearly as important anyway, since there was only room for one truly beautiful person in any relationship and Tawny would always win that crown. She had no interest in competing, even if there was competition to be had (which there wasn’t).

Tawny was the worshipped, never the worshipper. And oh! Imagine how Kevin would worship her. She was tempted to bag him, just for the fun. Tawny loved it when a man fell under her spell—there were at least six out there right now who would take a bullet for her if she flashed them her tits and offered a BJ. Ha!

She folded the mag, trying not to think about the lashing no doubt hurtling her way courtesy of that British cow. It wasn’t Tawny’s fault women got jealous. She was everything they wanted to be and they simply couldn’t handle it.

Eve Harley would never get the truth, anyhow. Tawny had buried her history so deep that she wasn’t even sure she knew where to find it. No way was she going back there, not ever, and she would happily top herself before anyone else did.

Her manager called.

‘Everything all right, my diamond girl?’ he crooned.

‘Fine.’

‘I’m in the mood to spoil my favourite client. Breakfast at Clementine’s?’

‘I’d sooner die. I’ve got a date with a spa, a hot masseur and my bed.’ Tawny paused, allowing herself a smirk. ‘Maybe his.’

‘Lunch, then.’

Tawny cringed. Food after sex always seemed a grim proposition. The idea of filling herself up on cock and then cramming in Eggs Benedict on top was disgusting.

‘I’ll call you later,’ she said.

‘Oh, and babe? Remember your slot on The Bianca Show tomorrow night.’

‘Ugh, hell, I forgot about that.’

She hung up.

There was never any reprieve, but in her heart Tawny loved the attention. Wasn’t this what she had prayed for, ever since she was a girl? To be admired, to be revered—above all, to be adored! She had been granted her wish.

Tawny smiled. Tucked into her Silvers tote was the other item she could never leave home without: the inscribed hair straighteners gifted to her by a legendary Italian designer at the beginning of her career, when she had been an upcoming starlet and named as his muse. The lemon-yellow tongs were her lucky charms: she insisted on using them for every shoot and every show, and they were emblazoned with the immortal line: ‘TO THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL, WITH LOVE & ADMIRATION’.

Tawny Lascelles really was the fairest of them all. She always would be.

She would rather die than have that crown taken.

Satisfied in that knowledge, she fell fast into a deep and dreamless sleep.

5

Boston

Angela Silvers hated to fly. She had always possessed an irrational fear of airplanes. She hated the roaring take-off, the jumps of turbulence and the way that every sound and shudder convinced her they were about to fall out of the sky.

She closed the blind, shutting out the sprawling blue and floozy clouds.

‘Excuse me?’ She smiled at a passing attendant.

‘Yes, Ms Silvers?’

‘Would I be able to get a drink, please? A martini?’

‘Coming right up.’

Noah would tease her. Angela had a fleet of jets at her beck and call—why not make the trip in luxury? But there was something ugly about jumping on a plane for one as easily as if you were hailing a cab. Besides, her father’s aircraft were way too light for her liking: at least on a 737 it felt as if there were something between her and the ground. Her drink arrived and she threw it back in one.

She hoped the liquor might knock her out, but while it took the edge off it wasn’t enough to relax her completely. The knack was to focus on something else, anything to detract from the fact they were 35,000 feet up in the air in a rattling tin can. Normally the promise of landing was enough to pull her through—thoughts of arriving at her hotel, taking a long soak in the tub, ordering room service, slipping into bed and Skyping Noah—but today, the flight was just the beginning.

Angela was heading to company HQ, the house in Boston where she had grown up. She intended to thrash it out with her father once and for all.

‘I’m taking this moment to announce my retirement,’ Donald had proclaimed at the FNYC launch. ‘As of tonight I plan to step back from the front line and apportion duty between my two gifted sons, Orlando and Gianluca …’

Two weeks after the event Angela still couldn’t believe it.

Never mind the fact that her father had stolen her thunder—this had been her night, her project, her triumph, and instead of crediting her as he should have done he had snatched the attention right back onto the boys—his words had shaken her to her core. The injustice was breathtaking.

My two gifted sons? It had to be a joke. But as Orlando and Luca had paced proudly up to claim the prize, the grim reality had become clear.

All the while Angela had worn a rigid smile of congratulations, bitten her way through countless toasts and declarations of, ‘Yes, they will be wonderful, won’t they?’ and crushed wave after wave of hot, irrepressible anger.

In the days that followed, Angela had turned Donald’s decision over in her mind. Forget about it being unfair, it was simply illogical to give the reins to her brothers. She had stepped up time and time again to work alongside her father, drawing up proposals, putting forward solutions, re-organising budgets, but none of it came to any use: she was, and always would be, at a disadvantage because of her sex.

She would stand for it no longer—and her father wouldn’t know what hit him.

The pilot’s voice came on the PA system. They had begun their descent.

She braced herself for impact.

Logan International was packed. Angela was escorted through Arrivals, her head bowed against the burst of attention her appearance sparked, and was relieved when they emerged into fresh air. Paparazzi surged as she approached the BMW. In black Ray-Bans, skinny jeans and a coral blazer, her spike heels punching the tarmac, it was clear this was no pleasure trip. Angela Silvers had landed on business.

Eternally the paps fished for a bout of reckless behaviour that would give them the money shot and cement her role as spoiled heiress—a bad attitude, a crabby pooch or, best of all, a wardrobe malfunction, anything to prove she had succumbed to type. But with Angela it never came. She understood her position and carried it with grace, stopping to sign autographs for fans, which she delivered with a flourish and a smile. If the press weren’t so desperate to capture the first fall—for surely at some point it would come, it did for the best of them—they would have given up long ago.

As her car joined the Mass Pike, she tried calling Noah. He was on location, shooting a romantic comedy whose script they had giggled over in bed.

‘Hey,’ he’d kissed her tenderly, ‘so when are you gonna be my leading lady?’

She wished it were that simple. Noah was Hollywood royalty, the industry’s most sought-after bachelor. Every project he took he was ambushed by female co-stars, and while it wasn’t Angela’s style to be jealous it couldn’t help but sting.

‘I only want you,’ he told her every time, and while she wanted to trust him, she was no idiot. Noah had been a player from the moment they’d met.

She was scared of getting hurt again. Giving herself to him totally, risking it all. At the same time, he wouldn’t wait for ever.

After her father’s revelation, she wondered why she bothered concealing it from him at all. Donald had no intention of empowering his daughter with muscle in the business, now or ever. What difference did it make who she dated?

But the itch remained : Tell him this and it’s over for good.

Donald hated Noah. He hated everything Noah stood for. He hated Noah’s past. He hated Noah’s family, where he had come from and where he had wound up. Countless times Angela had promised her father that the friendship was at an end.

To confess the betrayal would be kamikaze.

Noah’s cell went to his machine. She listened, just to hear him; her heart lifted at his voice but she decided against leaving a message. In any case, he’d advised her against the Boston trip—he himself never returned to their childhood ground, the place owed him nothing and the memories were raw—and would be frustrated that she’d come. Donald needed time, he had promised, to realise the mistake he’d made. Angela was amazed at Noah’s reluctance to take sides, at his fairness. After all Donald had thrown against him, still he didn’t resort to cheap shots.

‘I love you, and you love your father,’ he said. ‘That’s all there is to it.’

She ended the call as they pulled onto Bourton Avenue. Hers was a majestic neighbourhood, lined with giant Victorian brownstones, grand porticos and gated driveways. Sunshine glinted on the Charles River. There was the Amity Street Church where Angela had spent reluctant Sunday mornings as a child, the Preston Historical Institute where many a school trip had wound up, and the Clemency College of Dance, where she had made out once on the steps with Henry Lambert. So much was unchanged, yet Angela didn’t feel the same. Boston was her heritage, but now its magnificence seemed outlandish and silly. Coming in past the flagship Silvers Hotel, its peaks like turrets on a castle and its doormen tipping their caps, and the inaugural store her great-grandfather had founded, here, at least, they were royalty.

Commonwealth House was the most splendid on the street. The car eased through and Angela stepped out, thanking her chauffeur and breathing the old air.

She was home.

‘Hello?’

Inside, the hall was vast. Her enquiry echoed, bouncing off the marble chequered floor. A staircase that wouldn’t have been out of place in the world’s most celebrated museum divided beneath a portrait of her great-grandfather, stern in his suit, his black walking cane in one hand. Cabinets housed relics from their schooldays—sporting trophies, certificates and photographs. In one portrait, a teenage Orlando and Luca were suited for their aunt’s wedding. Angela stood between them, scowling because Orlando had told her she couldn’t come camping at the weekend. Another was a still from Angela’s tenth birthday party—she’d been a pain in the ass in those days. All the guests were in pink frilly frocks apart from the birthday girl, who wore a Back to the Future T-shirt and denim shorts, and was sticking her tongue out.

‘In here!’ Her mother’s voice drifted through from the kitchen.

Angela emerged into a bright, richly scented space. The kitchen faced out onto rolling lawn, at the foot of which shone a serene lake, a rowing boat tethered in the reeds. It smelled of warm bread and rosemary and the spice of a cooking oven. Isabella was prepping salads, joined at the counter by Angela’s nonna, and on the veranda a bunch of her extended family were drinking wine and mingling.

Angela kissed the women. ‘You know I’m not staying for dinner?’

‘Of course you are,’ said Isabella.

‘My return flight’s booked—it leaves at nine.’

‘And your father isn’t home until this evening, so you’ll have to cancel.’ Isabella slapped her hand away from the just-baked ciabatta. ‘Eh, smettila, Angela!’

‘Is Orlando here? Luca?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

Isabella clicked her tongue. ‘I wish you three would not fight all the time.’

‘I wish for a lot of things, Mom.’

‘Life is too short to argue. Respect your father’s decision.’

‘I do respect him. If only he’d extend me the same courtesy.’

‘He loves you very much.’

‘That isn’t the same thing.’

Angela bit her tongue. Isabella didn’t understand her wish to take the spotlight. As far back as she could remember, whatever her fathers and brothers were doing had been infinitely more exhilarating—the closed doors, the hushed voices, the secret conversations, the covert business trips. Angela didn’t care about baking and flower-arranging and the correct way to iron a suit shirt, and while she adored her mother, as women they couldn’t be less alike.

Home wasn’t enough.

Angela wanted more.

She preferred the south steps to taking the main stairs. ‘Why?’ her girlfriends used to pout, as they flounced prettily down the banisters like Cinderellas at the ball. ‘It makes me feel like a princess!’ Which, Angela saw now, was precisely why.

Her old room was on the second floor. The bed, immaculately made with peach sheets and silky fat pillows, was against the window. A stack of plump, fresh towels was arranged at its foot. Angela pressed one to her face and inhaled.

She settled on the linen, listening to the delicate tick-tick of a carriage clock and the occasional flutter of birdsong. In her bedside drawer were a collection of journals (ANGELA’S DIARY: KEEP OUT!), trinkets, postcards and jewellery.

Inside one of the diaries was a photograph. Her fingers traced its familiar edges. Slowly, she drew it out. Noah.

Her favourite picture of him, on that first summer they spent together.

Scruffy blond hair, bronzed skin, mischievous blue eyes …

He’d been the neighbourhood bad boy: bad family, bad schooling, bad all over. They had come from different ends of the earth.

But Angela hadn’t cared. Not even then.

Everyone else had treated her like a queen—but not Noah. Noah had treated her like a friend. They had both been outsiders, in their way. He had been ostracised by the rich for failing to meet their standards, while Angela, wealthy beyond reason, harboured her own kind of leprosy: ordinary people were too afraid to touch.

She leaned on the windowsill, her chin resting in the heel of her hand, and looked out at leafy Bourton Avenue. She remembered waiting here on sultry nights, waiting for Noah to arrive on the steps so that they could exchange dreams with each other long into the dark. Outlawed by her father, they had held the secret of their friendship, and Angela had longed to be able to reach down and take his hand. Noah had written her poems, thrown the words up to the open window like whispered confetti.

She touched the silver band she wore on her first finger.

She knew what she had to do. She had to set the past to rest.

Noah, I’m yours. She would tell her father tonight.

Donald Silvers’ library was rich with leather and the scent of wood. Behind him, through the arched portico, Italianate lawns were aglow in the glare of the outdoor lamps, the fountains on, spraying the grass with diamond dewdrops. Their empire stretched as far as the eye could see: her father’s, Orlando’s, Luca’s … but not hers.

‘Skip the bullshit.’ Angela cut to the chase. ‘Why not me?’

‘The boys are ready.’ Donald eased back in his chair and steepled his fingers. ‘It’s time they stepped up to the plate.’

‘It’s time you credited me. I know why you did it. It’s because I’m a girl.’

‘It’s because you’re the youngest.’

‘Orlando, fine—but Luca? You saw what a mess he made of the hotels—’

‘Luca requires discipline. Management will give him that.’

‘So Luca fucks up and you reward him, is that how it works?’

‘I’m not discussing strategy with you, Angela.’

‘Maybe I should require discipline too; then I’d get a break. Or else it would give you an excuse to get rid of me altogether—’

‘Calm down.’

Nothing fucked her off more than being told to calm down. She met the wall of her father’s inscrutable glare and every frustration she’d ever had against him boiled over. ‘I’m through,’ she lashed. ‘I’ve done everything to earn my place. I’ve achieved twenty times what they have and if you’re too blind to see it, if you still make this decision, it isn’t my issue. I’m done.’

‘Good.’

‘That’s it? Good? After letting me lose sight of what’s important—my friendships, my relationships? Because there’s something you should know—’

‘Yes,’ Donald cut in, ‘you are through, Angela. And you are done.’

She fought to get her words in a line. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘You are ready. I’ve known it for a while.’

‘Then why—?’

‘What I want you to do for me is vital. It’s more important than anything Orlando or Luca could offer.’ He spoke slowly, each word measured. ‘They’re not capable of this, Angela. Only you are. You and I have serious business to share.’

She waited, sceptical and excited. Her father watched her, curiously, gently, and, in his eyes, she saw something that was new to her: a need, nascent and afraid.

‘I want you to listen very carefully,’ said Donald Silvers, ‘for if you choose to accept, our empire is yours. Everything. You take over. But be ready, Angela: because what I am about to propose will change your life for ever.’

6

In a hotel suite across town, Kevin Chase woke suddenly, his skin dripping with sweat and his heart hammering wildly. The room was pitch black. He had no idea where he was. His breath rasped dry and painful, as if he had swallowed razor blades. Groping in the dark, he fumbled towards a switch. When the room flooded with light, it was painfully bright. Images from the nightmare were still scorched on his mind: the red flames engulfing the jet, and the descent … the horrifying, inevitable descent towards death.

Briskly he patted around to make sure he hadn’t wet the sheets. Mortifyingly, it had happened in the past. Joan had even gone through a phase of laying diapers on top of the mattress, until one day Kevin had lost it, yelling at her so loud and for so long that she had whined about tinnitus for a week—and Joan knew how to whine.

Apart from a patch of hot perspiration, it was dry.

Trembling, he closed his eyes. It seemed important to pick out the details.

The nightmare had been real—real enough to touch, as if he had been there, as if it had happened! They said you couldn’t dream your own death; you woke before it ended that way—and Kevin was certain, certain, he had been about to die. Dark sky all around, thick black dark, and the ground rearing up to meet them—or rather the sand, for it had been a beach, yes, a beach, the contrast stark even in moonlight between the thick water and the alabaster shore. Kevin grasped at the people he had been with, for he had not been alone, but their outlines were dissolving, leaving only ghosts. All that was left were the screams of panic ringing between his ears.

Fear swamped him.

He was never setting foot on an airplane ever again.

But even as Kevin thought it, he knew it was an absurd notion. International commitments meant he got thrown about the globe like a coin in a pinball machine.

What choice did he have? What choice did he have about anything?

The phone rang. It was Sketch.

‘Ride’s outside, buddy.’ His manager’s voice was drizzled thinly over a nub of hysteria. ‘You’re behind time. Again.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Everything OK?’

Shit. Kevin checked the time. Double shit. He had a show at the TD Garden in an hour. These days his power naps were turning into induced fucking comas.

‘Be right down,’ he snapped, hanging up.

A freezing cold shower slapped him to his senses. Afterwards, in the foggy mirror, Kevin grimaced at his reflection.

Come on. Why did he look so goddamn young?

Miserably he plucked at a single chest hair straining from his diaphragm. It was like a blade of grass in the middle of a barren desert. What the fuck? Where was his chest rug? Couldn’t he sprout just a few more?

He was nineteen, for crissakes, and yet he had the torso of a ten year old.

The grimace deepened. That wasn’t even the worst part.

Glancing down, Kevin loosened the towel around his waist. He assessed the feathery covering of pubic hair scarcely concealing his miniature prick, and howled.

It was a worm dangling between two berries. Shrivelled berries. The whole thing was shrivelled. Why wouldn’t it fucking well grow?

Was he balding? But how could he be balding if he’d never had hair there in the first place? Kevin howled some more, and the phone resumed its grisly summons.

Despite turning up ninety minutes late to the arena and enduring a cacophony of boos, the gig went down OK. Kevin knew how to charm his Little Chasers. Normally he refused to venture into the crowd—he didn’t want their sticky fingers pawing all over his designer outfits—but to appease the irate parents, and on Sketch’s counsel, tonight he made an exception. At one point, during a rendition of ‘Fast Girl’, he thought he was about to get torn limb from limb, his white suit strained into a crucifix by a pie-faced chick pulling him one way and a blubbing pre-teen the other.

The noise was thunderous—’Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!’—and the venue alight with the glitter of camera phones. When he crooned his mega hit ‘Adore You’, the sparkle swayed back and forth, arms in the air, kids at the front crying into their Kevin Chase T-shirts and gripping, white-knuckled, crudely assembled banners that bore confessions of their undying affection: KEVIN CHASE PLEASE BE MINE; SARA & KEVIN 4 EVER; I LOVE YOU KEVIN; I’M YOUR NO. 1 LITTLE CHASER …

After a hundred-minute set and two encores, he was beat.

Backstage, Sketch congratulated him with the unwelcome announcement that they were expected at a children’s charity gala downtown—there was a galaxy of names attending and it was a wise gig at which to be seen. Kevin wanted badly to creep into bed and had to suppress the familiar flare of upset at this fresh injustice.

He wished he had someone he could call, a buddy, a friend, anyone who’d listen and tell him it was OK, just to keep at it, all this was bullshit anyway and it didn’t really matter. He wished someone out there thought that he mattered—not his records or his hairstyle or the new mansion he was bought to live in like a fucking Ken Doll—just him, the real Kevin, the regular kid. But Kevin saw now that he would never be a regular kid, and he’d never have regular friends. What even was a regular friend? He’d watched movies about them, read about them as if they were exotic, elusive creatures prowling a distant landscape, but he’d never had one of his own. Kevin had the starring role in the movie of his life, and everyone was an actor.

In the beginning, it had been fun. Signing the contract in Sketch’s old office on Santa Monica, then in the weeks that followed, a storm of crazy parties, premieres and photo shoots—but nobody had told him then what was being sacrificed. No one had said, OK, Kevin, it’s this or it’s this: which life do you want?

He didn’t want this one.

‘They’re loving you on Twitter,’ reassured Sketch as Kevin changed out of his clothes. Sketch omitted to mention the burst of hostility that had accompanied the star’s fifth late arrival this season, trending worldwide as #KevinsLosingIt. Not ideal.

Outside, bodyguard Rusty was waiting with a yapping, wet-nosed Trey, cradling him because Kevin didn’t like Trey to have to sit on the ground. The dachshund was clad in a blazer, baseball cap and sneakers to match his owner’s—they’d had a whole wardrobe tailored bespoke. Snatching the pooch, Kevin was swallowed up by the car’s interior. He felt like a vampire, if not confined to the night then confined to the inside, skulking around behind closed blinds, hiding beyond a tinted window or crawling about in the endless dark. He held Trey’s fur to his mouth and quietly kissed his neck. You’re the only one who understands.

Kevin demanded to drive the Audi R8 and Sketch hadn’t the strength to refuse—after all, the kid had his licence, even if he did kangaroo-hop the vehicle into gear, the exhaust exploding behind them.

‘You take your vitamins today?’ asked Sketch as they whizzed through the city. He caught Rusty’s eye in the rearview mirror.

‘For fuck’s sake, course I did,’ Kevin lashed. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

They approached a red light and the brakes shrieked.

‘Sure I do, kiddo.’

‘I want a lion,’ said Kevin, out of nowhere.

‘What?’

‘Like that one we saw at the zoo. Get me one.’

Sketch chuckled. ‘It ain’t that easy, pal …’

‘I’m Kevin Chase, course it’s that fucking easy.’

‘Why a lion?’

‘Why not? They’re cool, aren’t they?’

‘They’re dangerous.’

‘Yeah, but they’re cool.’

‘You won’t be able to go anywhere near it.’

Kevin swigged from a can of energy drink. ‘Sure I will, if it’s tame.’

Sketch bit his tongue. What on earth was his client talking about?

‘Rusty,’ Kevin nodded into the back, ‘what do you think?’

‘Whatever you want, boss.’

The Audi took a corner at speed. ‘It’s king of the jungle, y’know?’ said Kevin. ‘Manly. Like, the ultimate manly animal. And hairy. Really hairy.’

‘You want a hairy animal I’ll get you a guinea pig.’

‘Now you’re taking the fucking piss.’

‘I’m trying to be practical.’

‘Well, don’t. There’s no point doing what I do unless I get what I want, got it? You’re supposed to be my manager—so manage stuff, dickwad.’

Sketch gritted his teeth. There was no point arguing. It was Joan’s fault. Anything Kevin wanted, Kevin got. Anything Kevin demanded was produced. Any word Kevin spoke was law. By the time Sketch had discovered him, at the tender age of twelve, Kevin had already been nurturing an impressive Napoleon Complex.

You haven’t helped. You’ve made him into the monster he is.

It was a relief when Kevin brought the car to a screeching halt outside the Guild Theatre. The entrance was a quarry of press. Stars drifted down the carpet, stopping to chat to camera, smiling and posing as they went. Hollywood king Noah Lawson, a coup for the event, was signing merch amid an adoring mass of women.

A band of Little Chasers had been tipped off about Kevin’s arrival and, as the teen heartthrob emerged, their squeals reached blistering crescendo.

‘ Kevin! OhmygodKevin! Kevin, I love you! Keviiiiiiiin! ’

Kevin waved, flashing his pristine teeth and criminally cute dimples. Sketch had to admit that despite Kevin’s disastrous moods and fatal tendency to strop, when it came to putting on a game face he was up there with the best. The kid was a pro.

Kevin, meanwhile, was hitting his stride.

It was a dream, he reassured himself as a sea of hands reached out to skim just a fibre on his blazer, only a dream. Nothing like that was ever going to happen. Plane crashes were the fate of old people, poor people, people who travelled on low-cost airlines in dirty foreign countries. No, a more likely end to Kevin Chase was total burnout, nervous breakdown: a meltdown to end all meltdowns …

Imagine if he did it now! Just stripped naked and barrelled up to the gleaming gala entrance, blathering and drooling, maybe he could even deliver a steaming turd to the carpet to make absolutely sure? Instead he twirled for the crowd, performing one of his hallmark 360-degree dance moves, a splash of MJ mixed with Ne-Yo polished off with Usher, shooting one arm in the air as he sprung up on his ankles and released a high-pitched cry. Across the gangway he met Sketch’s approving gaze.

Good little monkey, Kevin thought bitterly. Monkey did good.

At the end of the carpet, billionaire entrepreneur Jacob Lyle, one of the cooler guys on the scene, was draped around a gorgeous six-foot brunette.

What did it take to bag a woman like that? Kevin wondered sadly, absorbing her hip-hugging floor-length gown and the tight swathe of pastel-pink that barely covered her tits and ass. He imagined burying his head in those tits, plunging into her, making her moan, hearing he was the best she’d ever had, and having her admire the broad, muscled shoulders he yearned for so badly, working till he puked at the gym.

As if that was going to happen. What was wrong with him?

Every time Kevin got to second base his cock fizzled and died. No wonder Sandi had run for the hills: she was probably screwing her way across LA this very minute, spreading her damning word as fast as she spread her legs. Kevin’s erections lasted mere seconds before they flaked, and even when his dick did get hard it barely amounted to more than a pickled gherkin. When he thought about screwing Jacob Lyle’s Amazonian angel, the only image that sprang to mind was one of a naked child scrambling over a climbing frame. Even jerking off was like flogging a paper bag.

Jacob Lyle, on the other hand, had it down.

Jacob was a pussy magnet. Whatever it was, Jacob had it in spades.

Kevin wanted it too.

As he was ushered inside, his PR fending off the last of the requests, he resolved that a meeting with the entrepreneur was drastically in order. Maybe if he started affiliating with guys like Jacob, his luck might start to change.

Something had to—fast.

7

Los Angeles

In the back seat of a limo cruising down Sunset Boulevard, Jacob Lyle grabbed his girlfriend’s hips and pulled her down onto his throbbing cock.

She was wet as fuck for him.

‘Jake, oh, screw me, Jake, you feel so good!’

He knew he did. All the girls said it.

Jacob flipped her round so her palms struck the partition glass, soundproofed but who cared if they were heard; it only added to the thrill. In the tinted reflection it occurred to him how easily one hot cunt could be traded for another hot cunt. Creamy ass riding his dick like a jockey, swathe of glossy hair cascading down her back (he supposed the colour was a variant), the moans of ecstasy he could pretty much script by the book … ‘Make me come,’ she gasped, ‘don’t you dare stop till I’ve come …’

Once more, Jacob lifted her waist, supporting her so her drenched pussy was teasing the tip of his cock. He was making her wait, resisting her as she fought to plunge onto his length. Expertly he reached round and located her clit, deciding she was so wet she could put out a burning building, and proceeded to polish the silky bud like a button. Wetter and wetter she became, her moans reaching a mad cry as she bucked and thrashed on the head of his penis. Before he allowed her release, he reclaimed his finger and sucked it, tasting her, salty and sweet. She was wide on top of him now, open to his will, senseless in her desire, and with a growled, ‘You ready, baby?’ he pushed his finger hard into her asshole at the same time as leaning her forward and allowing the entirety of his cock to be consumed by her warmth.

Instantly she pulsed and shuddered on top of him, screaming like an animal. On and on she came, and again when he brought both hands up to clasp her tits, pulling the nipples sharply and whispering in her ear what a dirty sexy bitch she was.

It was the nipples that got him: he fucking loved girls’ nipples. In a blinding burst Jacob ejaculated, slicing through her while he stretched the nipples flat, distending them to the point at which she shrieked in delighted pain, toying the hard plugs between his fingers as he crested the mount and the last waves ebbed into calm.

‘Oh, my God.’ Lilly-Sue, a wide-eyed wannabe actress he had been dating a month, dismounted. She was shaking. ‘You just blew my mind.’

Jacob smirked. He was darkly sexual: dark hair, dark eyes, with the suggestion that he harboured dark intentions. Machiavellian in his appearance, he possessed pale, severe cheekbones and a cruel, yet handsome, line to his mouth. Women found him irresistible. He was the bastard they had been told to avoid.

‘Your turn then,’ he answered. ‘Wanna blow my cock?’

Jacob Lyle was widely regarded as the savviest businessman of his generation. He had embarked on his first transaction aged twelve, when he had uncovered the clever knack of emptying his father’s Lucky Strike filters and re-rolling the tobacco in cheap cigarette papers, bought for a dollar and sold on in the schoolyard for several times that amount. His dad never missed a pack or two, and one Strike stretched up to three smokes if he was careful—most of his buyers didn’t know the difference anyhow. He remembered looking at the Strikes and thinking: I could shift these at mark-up as they are, or I could make more by trebling my profit. So Jacob did more, and the more Jacob pocketed, the more Jacob sold. At a young age he grasped that the world turned on the clean and straightforward principle that money, when channelled to effect, could make a shitload more money. It was simple when you looked at it right.

It was ever since his involvement with a world-changing social network site that his personal profile had rocketed. A young entrepreneur by the name of Leith Friedman had pitched his idea for an online hub whereby friends and followers could travel-share. It was smart, clean and most importantly green: a security-screened, 100% legitimised, twenty-first-century hitchhiking. Jacob had known how to make it fly: money and balls—and since Leith was lacking in both departments (especially the latter, but then he was a computer programmer), he had pushed for a sixty–forty split. OK, so he’d be getting more than half the business, but there wouldn’t be a business without him, just some fat kid sitting in his bedroom jerking off into his babysitter’s panties.

MoveFriends had been born—Join the Ride, ran the strapline—and both Jacob and Leith, in the space of eighteen months, had become billionaires. Since then Jacob had been invited onto every talk show, to attend every party, to speak on every panel, and last month had been summoned to the White House to meet the president. He had addressed a group of post-grad entrepreneurs in a scheme set up by the Republican senator Mitch Corrigan. After the show Jacob had nailed two blondes in the cleaning closet, both of whom had certainly known what to do with his rich investment.

‘You totally messed me up,’ Lilly-Sue purred as they arrived at Hollywood’s Rieux Lounge, patting the back of her head and throwing him a naughty smile.

They exited the car and were hit by a barrage of sound.

‘Jacob! Lilly! Give us a smile!’

Lilly-Sue primed and posed for the cameras, holding his hand and nuzzling his neck. Jacob decided he would dump her. She was a decent screw but way too clingy.

Kiss my cock and tell it you love it. Just don’t tell me.

He dragged her through the doors. The Rieux was LA’s number-one spotlight. Everyone who was anyone got photographed. Many a wasted selfie got tweeted in the small hours, only to be rapidly deleted by management next morning. Heavy beats thrummed. Bodies wound. VIP spaces were roped off, flanked by security.

Without warning Lilly-Sue pulled him into a toilet cubicle and gave him his second blowie of the evening. As Jacob watched her tongue attending to his hard-on, he leaned back against the marble and felt faintly bored. Truth was, he could only operate on half a tank unless there was a camera in the room. Shit, he knew it was wrong but he was a sucker for the buzz. He was as addicted to this as he was to the kick of investment. The one thing that turned Jacob Lyle on more than horny girls was watching horny girls fuck—more specifically, watching horny girls fuck him. As a result he had his personal cars, and several classified suites across town, rigged. He kept a record of every encounter. From Amy through Zara, the library grew and grew.

Was it legal? He wasn’t sure, but Jacob showed them a fine enough time to not feel totally bad about it—always they left with dreamy-eyed avowals that they had never spent a night (or morning, or afternoon, or any time of the day, really) like it.

The girls wouldn’t find out. Nobody would.

After all, he was Jacob Lyle—and Jacob Lyle was invincible.

Lilly-Sue stood, wiped her mouth and kissed his face off, which was kind of gross because she tasted of his come. They emerged from the bathroom and she spotted a friend, from here just a squealing flap of arms, and sprang off to join her.

Jacob headed for his booth, thinking the Rieux was at least a fresher vibe than that stodgy Boston gala. It had been worth it to get the Boy Scout points, but the whole thing had been a ball-ache. Pop embryo Kevin Chase had been up in his grill all night, and now it transpired Kevin’s people wanted to set up a meeting. Was the kid gay? No big wow if so. Jacob affected both sexes. As it went he had dabbled with men, the odd hand job, the odd coked-up grope. One guy at Frat College had even sucked him off—he could still recall the sweat smell in the men’s locker room, the sticky bench, the graze of stubble against his nut sac and the man’s hot, strained breath, and, if he were honest, it still kind of turned him on. End of the day, though, he preferred pussy.

‘Watch where you’re going, asshole!’

Jacob held his hands up. The woman had appeared from nowhere, stepping straight into his path. Her hair smelled like coconut. Her blue eyes were scowling.

Whoa.

Instantly his cock stiffened. Who was that?

But, of course, Jacob already knew. Who didn’t?

Tawny Lascelles. He had thought she was fine, but up close the supermodel was unlawfully gorgeous. He had to have her. There was no question.

Long tanned legs in a pair of cute, butt-clinging shorts, killer black heels and a mane of blonde hair that tumbled round her shoulders. Her eyes were enormous.

Her blouse was loose and he could tell that she wore no bra. He wondered what her nipples were like, and imagined them to be pink and satiny, the sort of nipple that took up most of a small breast, until he tasted one in his mouth and licked till it hardened, shrinking and puckering between his teeth …

‘Sorry,’ he flashed a wicked smile, ‘didn’t see you.’

‘Obviously not.’

She had thick, dark eyebrows and he wanted to know if she had a thick, dark bush to match, and if he asked her whether she’d slap him or let him eat it.

‘I’m Jacob.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘Likewise. Wanna get out of here?’

He yearned to film her. Watch it again and again. Get her from every angle.

The scowl hardened. ‘You think I’m easy?’

‘Are you?’

‘Bite me.’

‘Love to.’ He blocked her path. ‘Come on,’ he chanced, ‘let me take you back to mine and I’ll make you come so many times you pass out.’

‘Thanks, I already have a date.’

‘Lose him.’

‘So you can continue charming me out of my knickers?’

‘I don’t think you’re wearing any.’

Tawny was outraged. ‘Fuck off.’

‘Trust me. I’m the best you’ll ever have.’

‘I sincerely doubt it.’

He watched her, black eyes on blue, until she looked away.

‘Hey, baby, what’s going on?’

Jacob flinched as Lilly-Sue returned to his side. On seeing the famous model she raised herself a little taller. Tawny looked between them.

‘Prick,’ she muttered, before melting off and getting lost in the crowd.

Tawny posed for a flurry of photographs before ditching her date, vanishing into the Mercedes and zooming back to the Four Seasons. Her skin was crawling and she scratched furiously, nearly drawing blood, her manicured nails working so fast against her arm that her driver, normally too timid to speak, asked with trepidation: ‘Are you all right, Ms Lascelles?’

‘Mind your own fucking business,’ she snapped back, tugging down the sleeves on her jacket, ‘and keep driving. Isn’t that what I pay you for?’

The dividing glass slid up.

Shit!

Jacob Lyle was a handsome bastard. Just the kind of man she had used to entertain—rich, pampered, polished rich boys with a lust for domination.

And a lust for the rest …

It’s over! Don’t think of it!

But she couldn’t help it. Some men brought it rushing back. They reminded her of the bad times. Jacob Lyle was one of them.

Jacob’s a cocky sonofabitch.

It was the look in his eyes—of greed, of ownership, of entitlement; Tawny had faced it more times than she cared to mention. Though admittedly that sort had been rare for her: more often she would be landed with squalor; dirty, grimy vagrants who demanded all manner of degeneracy. Jacob represented those rare prizes they had all prayed for when the gates opened. Bored money, the girls used to tag them, sailing in after their city dealings and power lunches to splash a few bills on a stripper or three.

Dancer, remember? Not a stripper.

If only that was the worst bit. It wasn’t.

The worst bit was the way Jacob had appraised her.

How it still had the power to turn her on …

Tawny hated herself, but it had excited her: that flash in his eyes, the spark of desire. She would never tire of it as long as she lived. The need for male approval was stitched into her fibre, as vital to her as blood. Where she came from, beauty equalled attention, attention equalled cash—and cash equalled the ultimate prize: freedom.

Was she free now?

Tawny recalled the crisp exchange of bills like it was yesterday, the loose tug of a tie and the hush of material as it fell to the floor. The scent of aftershave and cigars, brandy on breath; and the cold, clammy press of skin against hers …

Back at the hotel, she hurried up to her penthouse and ran a deep bath. She filled it with salts and lotions, syrups and tonics, anything to scrub the horrors away.

Tawny soaked in the water until she met the cusp of sleep.

Forget it.

Those days can’t catch you now.

It was gone, it was over—and anyway, she never had to see Jacob Lyle again.

8

Rome

Eve Harley lifted her head from the toilet bowl in her suite at the Villa Maestro and groaned. Why did she feel so ill? All week she had been waking early, making a mad dash for the bathroom, and it was near impossible to keep food down.

Was it something she ate? Was she sick?

She ought to have consulted a doctor before flying, but couldn’t bring herself to. It was a weak excuse, but still. She had seen too many of them, been inside too many hospitals. The antiseptic, the white coats, the plastic chairs in the waiting room while she and her mum had braced themselves to be seen, armed with a new tank of lies …

‘Are you sure you should go?’ her editor had asked the day before, taking in her waxy complexion and sunken eyes. ‘You look terrible.’

Eve was damned if a bout of nausea was going to stop her doing her job. She was yet to take a sick day in her life; she didn’t believe in them. Often she got teased that she would be working on her deathbed. It was only half a joke.

If there was even a sniff of a lead then she wasn’t letting anyone else reach the payload first. American senator Mitch Corrigan was one such assignment. Last month Eve had interviewed him on an imminent presidency campaign, and she remembered being seriously unnerved by his veneer. OK, so all politicians had one, but there was something about Mitch Corrigan’s that sat more uncomfortably than most. Throughout their exchange Eve had noticed the splinters in his smooth disguise: eyes that darted, a twitchy knee, then the façade would slip seamlessly back into place and he would deliver yet another perfectly rehearsed answer. She didn’t buy it for a second.

Now the senator had come to Italy, and it seemed he was doing all he could to keep the trip under wraps. Orlando Silvers had supplied the tip-off, in exchange for her spinning an effusive piece on Angela’s new label (Orlando liked to make out that he didn’t dote on his sister: Eve thought it sweet that he did). Corrigan’s every move was publicised to the hilt ahead of his White House bid—except for this one. For some reason, the Republican didn’t want them following him here.

The senator was intriguing, no doubt about it. Eve intended to find out why.

She cleaned up, took a brisk shower and snatched her bag.

No time to be ill. There was work to be done.

It was a struggle to keep the Jeep in her sights as they roared east out of the city.

The February sky was slate-grey, the autostrada darker still, throwing up spray from the vehicles in front. Senator Corrigan’s Jeep was going at speed, switching lanes without warning and then abruptly ducking out on the exit to Ferentino. It was important Eve kept a safe distance—she did not want to give herself away.

They peeled off onto a winding, deserted road. She held back, careful only to take a corner once the Jeep had a chance to move out of sight. Hulking trees dripped darkly and the sky thickened, bowed with the deluge it was set to unleash. Her hired Fiat’s wipers jammed and momentarily she was blinded, the taillights up front her only beacons before the feeble swish resumed. She kept her headlamps dipped.

An animal shot out of the verge. Eve swerved, almost losing control, her nearside tyres scuffing the ridge of a ditch. She slammed on the brakes, the steering wheel spinning wildly in her hands, and abruptly came to a stop. The Jeep had vanished. Flooring the gas once more, Eve bombed along the slick road, determined not to lose her trail, and then, just as she was starting to fear Corrigan was long gone, a stain bled out of the mist: brake lights, far ahead. The Jeep was slowing, taking a turn into a bank of trees. As she came close, Eve saw it was a narrow dirt track, concealed behind a screen of leaves and just wide enough for the car to slip through.

Further up the road was another vehicle, a red Golf, parked at an angle.

She slowed and climbed out. The rain took seconds to soak through her jacket, matting her hair and chilling her to the bone. It was silent apart from the steady, gentle patter of raindrops. A bird cawed. Dark wings flapped.

Eve picked her way along the track. It was tricky under her Converse and pimpled with potholes, rocks and foot-deep puddles, but she couldn’t risk being picked up on the sound of an engine. At last, beyond a final twist, she caught the hush of a distant, murmured exchange. She tried to decipher what was being said.

There followed a mechanical scrape, like a gate opening.

Eve gave it several minutes before advancing. Concealed in the trees, she watched from afar. Wherever Senator Corrigan had come to, it was high security.

A hundred yards or so from where she hid, armed guards in military dress were pacing a mesh-wire blockade. Clumpy boots crunched on the wet ground. Every so often their radios crackled and a response was uttered. At each end of the barrier was a makeshift hut, housing further lookouts. The track continued beyond.

What was this place? No signposts off the road, no risk of pedestrians taking a stroll out in the middle of nowhere and stumbling across a hidden garrison.

And even if they did …

It was clear that nobody was getting past this—unless they had been invited.

Senator Mitch Corrigan had been invited.

Eve spent all afternoon trying to locate the building at Veroli. She scoped Google Maps, her own GPS, hunted any scrap that might get thrown up via a search, but according to the web the house did not exist. The only clue she hit on was a record, infuriatingly brief, connecting the Veroli Estate to the Casa Rocca in Rome. Eve knew of the auction house, had once met its famous jeweller Celeste Cavalieri, and she made a note to renew the contact. Her memory of Cavalieri was of a quiet, uncertain woman, a thousand miles from herself, and she was confident she could bleed enough from her to get her story off the blocks. What had Mitch Corrigan been doing there?

Lying back on her hotel bed, Eve tapped a pen against her teeth.

She was onto something big, she was sure of it.

Her BlackBerry beeped. She reached for it, taking news from her assistant of Kevin Chase’s forthcoming trip to London, and stifled a ripple of disappointment that the email wasn’t from Orlando. Why would it be? They never exchanged messages unless it was to plot their next encounter—and that had been her decision, remember?

Eve didn’t admit the anticlimax, even to herself.

The first time they’d fucked she had been strict on the rules: it was physical, nothing more, and she wasn’t getting into it for a boatload of emotional mush or sentimental phone calls. Orlando had laughed. Told her she was a tough cookie.

Eve allowed herself a rare moment of reflection and smiled, thinking of him. Normally she kept Orlando in his Orlando-shaped box, there when his body was joined with hers and gone when it wasn’t. But sometimes, just sometimes …

They had met at an industry party three years ago. The attraction had been immediate, the kind of magnetism that Eve, a born cynic, had dismissed as Hollywood garbage. She hadn’t known who he was, this arrogant man in Versace pinstripe and expensive aftershave, but it soon became apparent. He was the Orlando Silvers, successor to the empire: son and grandson to a legendary man, brother to heiress Angela. He was at the helm of one of the most powerful families in America.

After that first time, she hadn’t expected to see him again. She had been taken aback when, a week later, he had got in touch to say he was in London, and did she want to meet? Orlando travelled as much as she did, and when they crossed cities it made sense to hook up, no strings, no commitment, just straight-up sex.

Before long they were exchanging more than sweat and kisses. He was useful to her, accessing as he did circles she could never hope to penetrate, and she useful to him, a muscle in the UK media that could change perceptions overnight. Never did they discuss anything deeper—Eve knew little about Orlando’s life and he even less about hers. If they took other lovers it was never mentioned, if they made the mistake of falling asleep in each other’s arms it went unsaid, and they never had a dialogue that began with anything like the words, ‘So where do you see this thing going?’

It was the perfect arrangement.

Orlando Silvers was a stellar fuck and that was all there was to it.

What did it matter that he hadn’t been in contact? Eve knew the clan was in Vegas; she had seen Angela pictured there at the weekend with her father. Orlando would be with them. She would ask him when they next met, and depending on Orlando’s mood he would either elaborate or tell her gruffly, ‘Business.’ After three years she had learned to read him directly, knew when to push and when to leave alone. Maybe it wasn’t so far from a real relationship after all.

Eve swung her legs out of bed and padded to the bathroom. She stopped at the door. Just do it, she told herself. Then you’ll know. You’ll know it’s a stupid idea.

Her eyes fell to the rim of the bath, where the little white stick stared back at her, frank and unapologetic.

She did what she had to do, left it and returned to the bedroom.

Crazy girl. You’ve always been careful. It isn’t anything, you’ll see.

At the window, Eve parted the blinds. From high above the city she could see across the spires and rooftops and make out the bitten-down curves of the ancient Colosseum. The rain had cleared and tentative sunlight filtered through the clouds, soaking the amphitheatre in tender light. The bulbs in its arches were starting to come on, glowing hubs that grew against the stone with quiet, timeless dignity. In the violet sky, the evening’s first stars were beginning to appear.

She returned to the bathroom and checked the result.

It didn’t surprise her.

Fishing her phone from her bag, she dialled a number.

He picked up on the fourth ring, brusque voice announcing his name.

Eve took a breath. ‘Hi. We need to meet.’

9

Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary

The attic was exactly as his son had left it. A narrow bed was pushed into the corner, the walls cobwebbed and stained with damp. A wooden table housed a heap of dusty books. Words were crudely scratched into its surface—terrible, heartbreaking words.

Voldan Cane read them. Misery swam in his throat.

He had not meant to come into the attic. The space had been out of bounds since Grigori’s violent death, and Voldan knew to access it again would only spell fresh angst. Regret swilled in his stomach, bitter and black. He felt so alone.

Grigori, my darling son … Why did you do it?

‘Mr Cane?’ came a fearful enquiry from the bottom of the attic stairs. Janika. Her English was poor and so they conversed in Hungarian. ‘Are you all right?’

Voldan cawed his response, a monotone bleat: ‘Leave me alone.’

Unfortunate that it should come out that way, like a robot, with no more or less feeling than if he were reciting a shopping list—but the point was made. Voldan no longer bothered with pleasantries. Janika got paid, didn’t she? And if she ever decided she’d had enough and went to tip him down the staircase, well fine, he would welcome it. Things could get no worse.

He heard her scurry off down the hallway.

Oh, my son … Voldan wheeled himself across the desolate attic room. He hadn’t counted on this compulsion to revisit Grigori’s bedroom. It was a need to be close to his boy again, to inhabit the air he had breathed, to embrace the view he had seen, and always, above all, to seek the reasons behind the tragedy.

The reasons …

Grigori Cane had been a sweet failure, a weakling and a misfit from the day he was born. They had known it when they’d first held Grigori away from the womb, a screaming, wrinkled infant not two minutes old, and his dark eyes portals to a soul far older than they knew. Voldan had done everything in his power to integrate his child with normal youngsters, to give him a normal life. But Grigori had not been normal. He had been special. Shy and reclusive, with a debilitating allergy to sunlight and a stammer that made him a mockery, he had been helpless against a lifetime of taunts and rejections. The son of a tycoon, he should have had everything. He should have flourished. Instead he had carried the weight of his battered soul like a cross.

Perhaps his demise had been imminent.

Perhaps nothing could have stopped it.

It had been no easy feat getting up to the attic, in Voldan’s decrepit state. Janika had lifted him, her solid Hungarian haunches straining under his load. The castle was vast, Voldan and his faithful maid the only inhabitants, and his recent consignment to a wheelchair worsened matters. Janika had deposited him on Grigori’s bed while she brought the chair up—frailty an unwelcome admission for a man who had once been head of a worldwide banking corporation. Once, Janika had suggested he sell and move to a more manageable place. Unimaginable. Leave Szolsvár Castle, the home that had been in his family for generations? Leave the place where his wife had given him his only son, and in doing so had perished in childbirth? Leave the place where, twenty years later, Grigori had flung himself from the Great Hall mezzanine and splatted to his death? The ghosts here needed him. He needed them.

They were all he had left. His family.

After all, it was Voldan’s own fault he was in this state. After Grigori died, there had been nothing to live for. His purpose had evaporated. His heart had ripped. He had attempted to follow in his son’s footsteps and the results had been disastrous.

Deformed like a monster. Paralysed like a corpse.

And now he was trapped in this devil-sent machine, left with the use of only the thumb on his right hand. He was unable to speak save for a croaking voice box.

From the turret Voldan could see woodland, a blanket of green that stretched to the horizon. Grigori had returned here during the last few months of his life, scarcely leaving his room, refusing to eat or drink or accept visitors.

‘I am a failure, Father,’ was all he would say. ‘I do not deserve to live.’

Voldan’s thumb twitched on the arm of his wheelchair. When he thought of his son he was filled to the brim with a restless injustice. He had been robbed.

Turning to go, he almost didn’t see it. From darkness, a glimmer of light …

Voldan looked, and looked again.

If the wheelchair hadn’t become stuck in the groove between two floorboards, he might never have found it. ‘Janika!’ he yelled—at least it felt like a yell, even if it did come out in that wretched, miserable, bionic drone. ‘Janika!’

‘I am here, Mr Cane!’ The maid came rushing up the stairs. She was middle-aged, with a frizz of mouse-brown hair, a flaccid chin and a sagging bosom. Seeing him stranded lopsided in the furrow, she hurried over, flapping her arms like the wings on a nesting turkey. ‘Oh, Mr Cane,’ she cooed, righting him. ‘What happened?’

The floorboard was loose. Voldan felt it give beneath the wheel. That was what had caught him. The monotone was back:

‘There is something under the floor,’ he said, the words betraying none of his excitement. He had thought he knew every inch of his son’s domain, but no, here was more. Something Grigori had tucked away, kept to himself, a parting secret.

Something he had wished his father to find.

Janika removed the floorboard with a sturdy grunt. Inside was a wooden box.

‘Lift it,’ Voldan demanded. Janika did as she was told. ‘Open it.’

Darkness fell across the turret window. Clouds brooded and in the distance came the first rumble of thunder. The lid prised open.

Janika tilted the box so that Voldan could see its contents.

He didn’t understand. ‘Who are they?’

Janika removed one of the photographs. It was a picture of a woman. Across her face was streaked a giant red cross. The red was smeared, turning to brown.

Blood?

The maid extracted another. This one was a boy. It bore the same red mark.

Angela Silvers and Kevin Chase. What had they to do with his son?

‘The rest,’ instructed Voldan electronically. ‘Empty the rest.’

There were five more: seven in total.

Journalist Eve Harley … Model Tawny Lascelles … Investor Jacob Lyle … Senator Mitch Corrigan … and Celeste Cavalieri, the jeweller.

All defaced by that same blood cross: the mark of Grigori’s plague.

‘What is this, Mr Cane?’ Janika whispered.

Voldan’s eyes hardened. On the back of each photograph was scrawled a single word. BITCH. LIAR. THIEF. FRAUD.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, already tasting on the tip of his tongue the sweet, sticky nectar of revenge. ‘But I intend to find out.’

10

Las Vegas

‘Angela Silvers! Just as pretty as I remember, hey, Don?’

Carmine Zenetti, casino boss and hotel magnate extraordinaire, greeted them in his palatial office above the Parisian. Angela remembered him from her childhood—a squat, stout man with a black monobrow and hands like bear paws. She knew her father hated being called Don. Her father knew she hated every minute of being here.

‘No need to remind me,’ Donald said amiably, as he accepted a cognac and they were encouraged to sit. The panorama looked out on the dazzling Strip, where in the spring sunshine tourists milled amid the peaks and spires of the replica city. Giant billboards screamed news of the hottest show in town while glittering hotels ushered through the next bout of spenders. The air was charged with the sharp tang of money.

Angela refused her drink. She had no appetite. Since her father’s revelation in Boston, she had barely let a thing pass her lips.

‘I gotta say, I’m glad you finally came around.’ Carmine smiled fatly. ‘All these years there I was thinkin’ we were meant to be, but you had me wondering there for a time …’ Carmine waggled a heavily jewelled finger at her father, one of a handful of people in the world who was permitted to do so, and chuckled. ‘But now you see it makes the best kind of sense. Zenetti and Silvers, united for the future.’

Angela clenched her fists in her lap.

‘But hey,’ went on Carmine, eagerly rubbing his palms, ‘what are we waiting for? I know the guy you’ve really come to see.’

Another, younger, man stepped into the room.

‘Meet Dino, my eldest.’ Carmine clapped him on the back. ‘Dino, you remember Don Silvers … and this, of course, is the gorgeous Angela.’

There was a long silence.

Dino was like something out of a catalogue—coffee hair, twinkling eyes, and a stacked body that was suited to perfection. He was an ad for mob fashion, gold rings glinting on his fingers, collar crisp, jacket pressed. Angela guessed he was in his thirties, indisputably handsome but so far from her type that even in a radically different context she could never have considered him a match.

It didn’t matter who Dino Zenetti was. He wasn’t Noah.

Her heart sank. How am I going to tell him?

She played out her defence, each claim more ridiculous than the last.

We can still see each other; it won’t change a thing. Dino means nothing to me. I’m doing it for the business, a transaction, no emotions, I swear …

Even Noah Lawson’s boundless patience wouldn’t stretch that far.

‘Aren’t you kids gonna say hello?’ Carmine boomed, breaking the tension with a guffaw. ‘I tell ya, Donnie, this is like being back in the sixth grade!’

‘Good to meet you,’ said Dino, in a gravelly husk. He put out his hand. Angela shook it. She said nothing. Every instinct recoiled. It wasn’t too late, she could still back out of this; she could still change her mind.

‘I guess you two’re gonna want to get t’know each other, huh?’ Carmine thrust a glass into his son’s hand and supplied a wink. Their conspiracy filled her with horror. She wanted to run, never stop and never look back, until she reached his arms.

If only that was all there was to it …

‘I want you to listen carefully,’ her father had said that night in his office, ‘for if you choose to accept, our empire is yours. Everything. You take over.’

The words Angela had waited her whole life to hear.

Her father’s confidence, his respect, his finally recognising what she was capable of, a bond between them of trust and belief, nothing to do with her brothers.

But she could never have guessed at what cost.

‘The business is dying,’ Donald had explained. ‘I’ve been shielding you from it. I haven’t told Orlando, or Luca, or any of the board. I haven’t even told your mother. I’m telling you, Angela, because you’re the one I am counting on to help. We’re in bad shape. Real bad shape.’ He had wiped a hand across his face and she’d heard him swallow, a dry, sickening sound, coarse with regret. ‘Twelve months ago I put money into a sideline I believed was a dead cert. I was wrong.’

Donald Silvers was never wrong. He had made a fortune on those grounds.

‘But—’

‘Let me finish. That’s only the start.’

And then he had confessed the awful truth.

Her father had been diagnosed weeks ago. The doctors had given him mere months to live. Isabella had been protected from that blow as well.

‘No,’ Angela had spoken with someone else’s voice, tinny and strange in an upturned world, ‘you won’t,’ she fumbled for sense, ‘you can’t—’

‘I am.’

‘They’re wrong. You’ll get through it—’

‘The Zenettis can pull us out,’ said Donald, matter-of-fact, no time for weakness. ‘They’re our last hope. They can give us back our future. Your future, Angela, should you decide to commit.’

Her chest tightened. ‘Commit to what?’

He had laid it out in basic terms. The proposed marriage to Dino, the combined fortunes bailing them out of debt, the mutual interests to both parties as they embarked on a super-empire merging the last word in leisure and retail.

The Silvers would take a cut, thirty per cent against the Zenettis’ seventy, but the brand would survive. Given time, it might even grow.

And she would be there to rebuild it. Her business. Her chance.

Her chance.

Carmine Zenetti wanted to make it official, cement the allegiance via a union with his son. Angela was the key. Donald hadn’t been in a position to negotiate.

Her heart in exchange for her family—not just the dying wish of her father but her own wish, too: to step out from the wings and inherit the trophy.

She couldn’t. She must. She wouldn’t. She had to …

‘Wanna take a walk?’

Dino lifted an eyebrow. Everything about him was suggestive. His knuckles were peppered with hair and he wore a signet on his pinkie. His nails were clean, his hands smooth, as if he had done nothing more in his life than to change a light bulb.

Angela stood. She could feel her father’s gaze drilling into her but she could not return it. She could not look at him. Any other disclosure she would have welcomed, but not this. Never this. She was running on autopilot, ignoring Noah’s attempts to make contact, cancelling his calls for fear she would lose control as soon as she heard his voice, trying to find some space while she figured out what on earth she was going to do. Every way she looked at it, there was an impossible penalty to pay. Refusing her father was unthinkable.

So was sacrificing Noah.

Selfish as it was, it came to this: Angela did want the title. She did want the job. She did want to claim what was hers because she had earned it.

‘C’mon,’ encouraged Dino. ‘Let me give you a tour of our little hotel,’ he put the emphasis on our, ‘see if you like it.’

Angela followed. She could hear Carmine preparing to pop the champagne, the murmur of approval that passed between him and her father. She felt trapped in a nineteenth-century drawing room; engaged to be married against every belief her heart held true. Her head told her different. Her head told her this was a done deal.

Perhaps Noah would understand. Perhaps he would let her explain and then he would see that this was the only way. They could still be together—they were already forced to meet in secret, what real difference would it make?

One promise she could make him utterly: that she would never be with Dino Zenetti in the proper way. Their partnership was for show; that was all.

Noah would understand. She would make him.

Dino led the way. It reminded Angela of a walk she had taken a long time ago.

A boy she had fallen for, and nine years later still unable to set him free.

Boston 2005

‘ Noah, oh yes, right there, that’s it! ’

Noah Lawson obliged, driving deep into the woman who was lying spread-eagled across her expensively upholstered sunlounger. He was sixteen, nailing his boss’s wife in the pool house he was meant to be cleaning, and what’s more he was getting paid for it. Getting paid for getting laid … What boy wouldn’t?

Mrs Mason wasn’t bad either, tall and buxom with the greatest pair of tits this side of Vermont. Noah dipped his head to them, licking and grazing as she arched beneath him, grabbing tufts of his corn-blond hair and raking her scarlet manicure down his back. He tucked one hand behind her knee, pushing his cock harder and harder until she screamed. Mrs Mason’s lipstick was smudged, her mouth parted in ecstasy.

‘You make me so hot,’ she moaned. ‘Where’d you learn how to do this stuff?’

As if to reinforce the point, Noah drew out, hovering his dick millimetres from Mrs Mason’s sweet spot. She groaned, thrashing her head from side to side.

‘Now! Take me now!’

He rested his thumb on her swollen clitoris, wondering when Mr Mason with his bald head and stuffy suits and perspiring brow had last done this, and began to tease, dipping his thumb inside her, drawing out her wetness.

‘Noah! Please! Take me!’ She was delirious, her hands reaching up to maul his chest before sliding down to clasp his proud, rock-solid erection. Noah rode through her fingers, his balls ready to burst. Mrs Mason’s pussy was pink and glistening, her dark bush trimmed in anticipation of their weekly meetings.

Noah Lawson looked older than sixteen. Mrs Mason would have a heart attack if she knew. Truth was, he had bedded dozens of women and none of them had a clue. He had lost his virginity to a friend’s older sister when he was twelve, a quick and strange fumble in the back seat of a vintage Cadillac, where he had panicked and pulled out and spunked all over her hand. He had come a long way since then.

‘You asked for it,’ he breathed, and in a single stroke he plunged into her, collapsing onto her tits. Mrs Mason was yelping, rocking so hard beneath him that he had to grab her wrists to hold her down and she was pulsing and writhing and biting his neck and only then did he let himself come, a series of white-hot electric spasms.

Noah rolled off, panting hard, his bronzed stomach rising and falling. He gazed up at the whirring ceiling fan. Mr Mason would be back soon.

‘I gotta split.’

‘Don’t—’ She sat up, starry-eyed. ‘When can I see you again?’

‘Soon.’

‘When?’

‘Keep this place dirty.’ He grinned. ‘Gives me more to do.’

As he exited the Masons’ estate, summer sun shining on his back, it was panning out like any ordinary Friday: a couple hours at the Masons’ and then on to Hank’s Hardware for the rest of the day. Noah had quit school the year before—more accurately, he’d been expelled—and there was no one at home who gave enough of a shit to place him elsewhere: his mom was a waster and his dad had walked out on them years ago. Life was down to him. There was only one way to escape this neighbourhood and that was with a shedload of cash in his back pocket.

Soon as he could, he was getting as far from this town as possible.

He grabbed a hot dog, ravenous after the morning’s exertions. Mrs Mason had slipped him an extra fifty bucks, which he could have taken offence at but didn’t. There was enough money floating about this joint and since he hadn’t seen a dime of it since the day he was born, it was high time he cut a piece. The Lawsons were the embarrassment of Bourton. Everyone knew they had nothing. Everyone knew his mom was a bum and his dad had drunk himself to death in a ditch somewhere.

Everyone knew Noah had gone the way they’d expected him to, bailing on school and drifting the streets: a loser, a troublemaker, a failure, a lost cause …

And yeah, maybe they were right. Maybe all he’d end up doing with his life was fucking married women in their pool houses while their husbands went out to work. He’d be hauling crates for Hank the rest of his days, earning six dollars an hour and trying to remember the name of the last girl he’d slept with.

Noah lost his appetite for the hot dog and tossed it in the trash.

A van pulled up outside Hank’s and began unloading a delivery. Noah grabbed a couple of crates and headed through the door, colliding almost instantly with the most incredible-looking girl he had ever seen in his life.

The crates went smashing to the floor.

‘I’m sorry!’ The girl dropped to her knees, attempting to gather the mess.

‘Don’t , ’ he knelt, ‘it’s glass.’

‘Ow!’

A prickle of blood flowered on her index finger. She sucked it.

For the first time in all his sixteen years, Noah Lawson was tongue-tied. The girl looked up at him, her eyes a deeper shade of green than he had known existed. Her skin was pale except for a flash of colour at the cheekbones.

‘I’m Noah,’ he blurted.

She took the finger from her mouth and inspected it. ‘It’s just a graze.’

‘It was my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

I was looking at you, he thought. Why haven’t I been looking at you for every second of every minute of every hour of my life?

‘Angela,’ she said, with a tentative smile. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Me too.’

She stood. He joined her. They couldn’t take their eyes off each other.

‘Can I walk you home?’ he asked.

‘Aren’t you meant to be working?’

‘I can come back.’ He didn’t care. ‘Let me.’

That shy smile again. ‘OK.’

The exit chimed just as Hank, the store’s owner, came through.

‘What the hell’s just happened out here—?’

But the door was already swinging shut behind them.

Noah Lawson did walk Angela home, that day and the whole summer after. He could have walked her to the ends of the earth and back, and still never tired. He knew from that very first day that he would never be able to share her with anyone.

11

London

It was Saturday night and Kevin Chase was performing live on The Craig Winston Show. He hated gigging in tight studio spaces, so close to the primly seated front row it felt as if he was screaming the lyrics in their faces. It reminded him of his audition with Cut N Dry: the panel of execs, Sketch looking on approvingly as he had sang and danced like a court buffoon until every muscle in his body hurt. It had gone to the wire between him and some stammering kid whose name he couldn’t remember.

The choice, Sketch told him later, had been easy.

Tonight marked the unveiling of his new single, the coming-of-age ‘Wise Up’. Recently commissioned by Cut N Dry in light of Kevin’s refusal to continue playing the pretty-boy-perfect role, it was about crossing the frontier into adulthood—or at least that was how Sketch had sold it. It wasn’t quite as sexy and edgy as Kevin had hoped for, but he supposed it was a start. At least it wasn’t about cuddly fucking toys.

‘ You say you wanna feel me, girl this is the real me, come right here and deal me, cos girl I wanna call ya, I swear I will enthral ya, baby take it all yeah … ’

The audience remained on their fat asses as Kevin charged the small stage, working his dance routines, the flaps of his knee-length Cavalli coat flying out behind him. A handful of Little Chasers had been admitted which prevented the whole thing becoming totally cringe-worthy, like he was an upstart kid flaunting his wares at a school assembly, and squealed their approval as he shuffled to the beat.

‘ I swear girl you’re so beautiful, you know I think you’re beautiful … ’

At this the Little Chasers squealed some more, and Kevin noticed through the blaring lights that one of them was at least his age, if not a couple years older. That was a novelty. She was pretty, too, with a thick dark fringe and sparkling eyes.

‘Be mine tonight, the best night of your life …’ He stepped off the stage, an impromptu move, and claimed the girl’s hand. Fingers snatched at him from all directions, mauling his clothes and tugging him close. But Kevin’s gaze remained on the girl’s. ‘Don’t put up a fight, let me hold you tight …’

The girl stared back at him in open worship, her lips sweetly parted.

Kevin hit the closing high note, tipping his head back to belt it, and before the lights went down he twirled once, brilliantly, on the spot, punching his arm high into the air. The applause was ear-splitting. Kevin returned to the stage to receive Craig Winston’s praise, and decided then that he would be banging that girl tonight.

‘ Never go with a fan. ’

That had been one of Sketch’s first nuggets of advice.

But Sketch wasn’t here now, was he?

The girl was. His assistant had sorted it.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ the girl told him, her voice shaking wildly as she perched on a chair in his dressing room. Kevin was busy peeling off his suit.

‘You don’t mind …’ he gestured to his bare, sweat-drenched torso, ‘do you?’

She blushed and turned away. ‘I, er …’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, relishing the power. This was a different kind of power to the power he felt on stage. Sexual. Potent. Animalistic.

It would be his first time. Great that she was older, she could steer him if he needed it, but his own pleasure would be paramount. It was the golden combination.

‘M-Marie,’ she faltered.

‘That’s a pretty name.’

Kevin kept his pants on for now. He was conscious that he hadn’t yet got hard. When were you supposed to? Now? When she got her tits out? After it went in?

He stroked her hair. ‘You like me, don’t you?’ he warbled.

‘Yes,’ Marie choked.

‘I bet you never thought you’d be here, right?’

‘N-no.’

He leaned down. ‘I’m going to have sex with you,’ he whispered.

Marie’s eyes were pools of lust. She tried to kiss him.

‘Not yet,’ he told her. ‘Take your top off.’

Her fingers trembling, Marie undid the buttons of her shirt. Underneath she was wearing a plain white bra. Her stomach was pale and smooth and she had a constellation of freckles on her chest. Kevin reached to touch them. Slowly his hand moved lower, cupping her breast. It felt heavy in his palm, like a balloon filled with water. He handled it enquiringly, as if he were testing the weight of a bag of sugar. He moved to the other one, and her nipple stiffened under his thumb.

Marie tucked her arms behind her back and released the clasp. Her tits sprang into view, full and white. Kevin registered a faint ripple of longing, obstructed before it reached his groin: a message that wasn’t quite computing.

He continued to fondle distractedly, like a chef oiling a cut of pork.

‘Do you like them?’ Marie asked in a small voice.

He supposed so. ‘Yeh.’

For Marie it was a green light. Quick as a flash, she was fumbling into his underpants, attempting to release his coiled-up dick.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked when he pulled away.

‘Nothin’,’ he grunted. ‘You done this before?’

Marie lifted her chin. ‘Course.’

‘Good.’

As if to prove it, Marie shuffled out of her skirt and knickers and stood before him in all her naked glory. Kevin watched the triangle of fuzz between her legs, warily, as if it were an animal about to pounce. Still he felt nothing.

Maybe he should speak to Sketch about increasing his vitamin dosage.

One blue pill, one red pill, every day like clockwork—he had to stay healthy, Sketch vowed, keep ahead of the competition. The pills were a special formula designed to soothe, relax and nourish. Kevin had been guzzling them for as long as he could remember. Given how out of control he had felt lately, he dreaded the thought of what he would be reduced to without them. Without them, he might die.

Joan had made sure in those early days that he never missed a pill. Do what Sketch says, honey; Sketch knows best. Of course Sketch knew best. Sketch always did. It was gruesome how much of a brownnose Joan was—all yes, Sketch this and yes, Sketch that. Her head was so far up Sketch’s ass you could practically see her toenails in the seat of his pants.

‘Can I give you a blowjob?’

Kevin looked down at his dangling appendage. Maybe once it got in Marie’s mouth it would start doing something. But that never happened in porn. The guy’s penis was already an upright, splendid spear—not a flaccid, starved little thing that resembled a gerbil at the bottom of a cage. He wanted to weep.

Kevin backed up. ‘Actually, I don’t think—’

Marie moved like lightning. She was a substantial size, the same height as him easily, and threw him against the dressing room door. Tits smashed against his chest and her glossy lips attacked his face. He could feel her warm, fruit-scented breath, and before he knew it she was clasping his dick, rubbing it with the flat of her hand, up and down, up and down, until the friction started to burn.

‘Stop it.’ He took her wrist. It hurt. ‘Back off a second.’

‘Let me, Kevin, please,’ she begged. ‘I promise it’ll be good—’

‘No—’

‘I’ll swallow. I promise to swallow—’

‘Stop!’ Kevin pushed her away. Marie stood, helpless, attempting to cover her modesty now the glow of their union was off the cards.

Her bottom lip wobbled. She was about to cry. Great.

‘Get dressed,’ he told her, as kindly as he could. This wasn’t her fault.

‘But …’

‘Just do it!’ he roared. ‘Get dressed and get out. Now!’

With a series of whimpers, Marie took her time pulling on her clothes, waiting for him to change his mind and ask her to stay. When he didn’t, she miserably hauled open the door and slunk outside, her eyes brimming with tears.

Kevin closed the door. He sank to the floor, his head in his hands, trembling.

He felt awful. What a fucking disaster.

12

Eve Harley paced her Kensington apartment and decided that she would do just about anything right now for a glass of wine. Scratch that, a bottle.

Orlando was due in thirty minutes. She was trying everything she could to distract herself, tidying things pointlessly, rearranging possessions, even attempting to settle down with her item on Mitch Corrigan, but nothing could train her mind.

Their encounter hurtled towards her like a nuclear explosion.

It wasn’t Eve’s style to be nervous. Her job landed her in dozens of compromising positions and she knew how to handle herself. But this wasn’t work.

For once, her private life was centre stage. It was an uncomfortable spotlight.

Her anxiety at seeing him wasn’t helped when she flicked on the TV and caught him live at his London engagement. Orlando was opening a restaurant in Chelsea with a popular TV chef, out on the carpet shaking hands, cameras scattering the night with stars, and his pristine, moneyed grin flashing white in the storm.

In the end, he was late. An hour passed before the buzzer sounded.

Eve had never invited him to her home before. Personal space was off limits, always had been with her boyfriends (not that he was one of those), and the arrangement with Orlando was no exception. As if she was giving something away by letting him see where she’d come from. There wasn’t a great deal of personal memorabilia about the place, and certainly no family photographs, but even so.

Predictably he grabbed her as soon as he walked through the door.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, gathering her into his arms and nuzzling her neck. He smelled expensive, of leather and cashmere scarves, of warm winter coats.

She pushed against him, went to begin, but he stopped her with a kiss.

‘So this is new,’ Orlando murmured, enjoying the game, ‘calling me up out of the blue—what’s going on?’

Eve stepped away. He mimicked her frown before realising she was serious.

‘Is everything cool?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’ A beat. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Sounds serious.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘OK if I take off my coat?’

She nodded, watching him shrug out of his jacket and hang it on the back of a chair. At last his eyes roamed over her flat, refined by nature of its postcode but still scant compared with the opulence to which he was accustomed. The entirety of it amounted to his en-suite bathroom. Nevertheless, he broke the tension:

‘Nice place.’

Eve wanted to blurt it. Knew she shouldn’t.

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘A beer would be good.’

She returned with the bottle, cracked the cap and sat down.

‘Look,’ Orlando said, joining her, ‘if this is about Angela I can’t help. I don’t know what she’s doing in Vegas and my father won’t tell us a damn thing. So if it’s that you want then you’ve come to the wrong—’

‘It isn’t.’ Eve waited until he had taken a sip of his beer, wiped his hand across his mouth and then she said: ‘Orlando, I’m pregnant.’

His expression didn’t change.

Eve remembered his teasing on the phone. What was the deal? Couldn’t it wait? He wasn’t planning to be in town for a couple of weeks, couldn’t she hold off having him till then? She would have to; she went in on the joke, acted like it was nothing but every hour since the news had been agony. She had consulted her GP and conception was cited as the New Year. That meant she was coming up for nine weeks.

Eve hadn’t thought anything when she’d skipped her first period—she had never been one of those women who could count it by the day.

‘Well?’ she ventured.

His face was steady and she wondered if this had happened to him before. What was earth-moving to her was another pain in the ass for him. That stung.

‘How?’ Orlando asked.

‘I’ve got a pretty good idea.’

He nicked his chin, the shadow of a beard. ‘We’ve always used protection.’

‘It can still happen.’

Eve looked down to her lap. She hated that she had to cut the apologetic figure. It wasn’t Orlando making her feel that way, just the role the woman had to fill. This was happening to her. It was her body and therefore her problem.

The chair scraped back. Orlando stood. ‘How long?’

‘Nearly three months.’

‘And you just found out?’

‘I did a test in Italy. I called you straight away. I wanted you to know but I felt it was important to tell you face to face.’

‘Why didn’t you do it sooner?’

She chose not to react against the note of accusation in his voice. He was in shock, just as she had been. Just as she still was.

‘First month it was nothing unusual. Second month, it was. That’s when I did the test. The weeks add up. So do the days. Every minute that passes …’

‘What next?’ He turned to the window, put his hands in his pockets. His back was taut, the muscles beneath his shirt strained. She wished she could tell what he was thinking, but at the same time dreaded it. Supposing he wanted to keep this baby?

Eve wasn’t ready to become a parent. Analysing it, she didn’t expect she would ever feel ready. Her own experience had been enough to put her off for life. Her father had been a terrible, violent man. All her memories were riddled with his vile disease.

Who was to say that Eve wouldn’t mess it up as spectacularly as he had? That the damage she had been subjected to wouldn’t be transferred to her own child?

Who could promise, really promise, that that wouldn’t happen?

She dreamed of her baby. It had the eyes of her father and she hated it on sight.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Orlando asked, turning to her.

At first she didn’t understand. Then, when she did, relief hit—but it was tinged with an unexpected shiver of resentment. He had assumed, albeit correctly, that she was set on abortion. Was she that obvious? Could he read it in her face?

‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

She was definite. She didn’t need Orlando tagging along, holding her hand and saying all the wrong things. It would be a cold contract, not dissimilar to their relationship, in and out in a day and she would deal with it by herself.

She couldn’t think of it as a person, just a thing inside her that wasn’t yet born.

What kind of life could she give it? She wasn’t fit to be a mother, and as for her situation with Orlando—they could never provide their child with anything stable.

‘I’m glad you feel the same,’ she said. It sounded hollow.

Orlando nodded. Out on the street, car horns blared. Normal life continued; it was only their bubble that had burst. Eve didn’t recognise the serious, dark-eyed man in front of her. Their relationship so far had been defined by sex and secrets, by the thrill of the chase and a no-strings respect that left both their consciences clean.

All that had been severed. Always a string would now bind them, the cord of this misfortune, and it would throttle anything they had.

The ending made her sadder than she expected.

‘Is it mine?’

His question came out of the blue. It hit her like a slap, cold and sharp.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Is it?’

‘How dare you. You arsehole.’

‘I had to ask.’

‘No, you didn’t. You didn’t have to at all.’

Orlando sat down, but she pushed her own seat away.

‘You have to admit,’ he said softly, ‘we don’t know each other. I’m checking.’

‘You’re insulting.’

‘So there’s been no one else?’ His voice was quiet. Different.

To her mortification Eve blinked back the hot stem of tears.

Don’t cry! She never cried. It was the sheer injustice of his accusation, this lead weight she had been carrying around, the fear she had faced all alone, no one to share it with until now—and now she had, he had treated her as little more than a slut.

‘Yes,’ she lied. She didn’t know why. She wanted him to be jealous, maybe, or simply to prove him right, to drive him away for good. ‘But it isn’t his.’

Orlando stayed quiet a while before he said: ‘Who?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does to me.’

‘The timing’s yours. It’s definitely yours.’

But when she looked up she could see that she had lost him.

Fine—if that’s what you think, think it!

She wanted him to hurt. She was hurt, why should he get off free?

‘I need you to go,’ she said.

Orlando looked like he was about to say something, then he changed his mind.

‘You’ll let me know?’ he said, slipping on his coat and making for the door. His bearing was cool, professional, playing out the motions.

‘Yes.’

‘I guess that’s it, then.’

‘I guess.’

The door opened. ‘Goodbye, Eve.’

Eve didn’t say it back. She waited until she heard the door close, a soft, final hush, and his footsteps travel down the stairs. Only then did she let the tears fall.

13

Washington, D.C.

MITCH CORRIGAN: WHO IS THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK?

In spite of the blonde head plunging determinedly up and down in his lap, Republican senator Mitch Corrigan couldn’t stop staring worriedly at the article that had landed on his desk that morning. He squinted at the byline.

Eve Harley.

Vaguely he recalled her. She had talked to him here at the Farley Senate Building, before he had left for Italy. Tenacious. Persistent. Borderline rude. And now she had published a piece on his ‘hidden persona’. Exactly what he didn’t need.

Mitch squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on the mouth clamped around his dick. His wife’s gem-laden fingers were spread across his thighs, her lips going methodically to work with as much eroticism as a fundraiser bobbing for apples.

Seated at his mahogany bureau, from the waist up Mitch Corrigan was any ordinary politician—tie neat, collar pressed and cufflinks polished. Only his flushed face was a clue to what was going on beneath: pants down by his ankles, shirt untucked, and his wife’s tongue catching and flicking his struggling dick as if it were a melting ice-pop. Finally, Mitch came. It was a ragged, unsettled climax.

He couldn’t stop staring at that venomous write-up.

Mitch Corrigan made me uneasy … He might have been a film star, but the time for acting is over … How can he convince a nation if he can’t convince me?

Melinda sat back and flipped open a compact from her Louis Vuitton purse.

‘Stop looking at it: it’s just some witch out to grab a headline.’

Mitch tucked his shirt and zipped his flies. ‘For a man in my position I’d say that headline was a substantial concern, wouldn’t you?’

‘Our marriage is also a substantial concern,’ Melinda complained, shooting him her best martyred expression, ‘but I don’t see you caring half as much about that.’

Mitch gulped his guilt like a lump of cotton wool. He shuffled the papers on his desk, moving Eve Harley’s Examiner piece to the bottom of the pile. The Melinda he had married two decades ago had been a sweet, innocent girl, unimpressed by money or fame. She had always kept his feet on the ground, stuck with him through the drugs, the drink, the partying and the depression. Now that girl was gone.

‘Don’t you care, Mitch?’ she spat. ‘Go on, have the guts to tell me the truth.’

Truth. The word shivered between them, a caped stranger.

The world would never believe the truth. It could never understand.

His phone buzzed. ‘They’re ready for you, Senator Corrigan.’

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he told Melinda, clicking his briefcase shut.

His speech went down a storm. Mitch was unsurpassed when it came to putting on a show. He was master of the persuasive address, the loaded pause and the witty riposte. His years in Hollywood had served him well.

He might have been a film star, but the time for acting is over …

Eve Harley was a clueless hack whose job it was to sniff out heat, even when there was nothing to back it up. Mitch was careful. The press would never get to him.

Afterwards, a posse of reporters was lobbying for a word. Microphones lunged as he paced through the foyer. ‘What’s next, Senator Corrigan? Is 2014 your year?’

Mitch turned at the door to his committee, winning smile resolutely in place. After feeding them their quota of practised lines, he slipped into his antechamber.

Checking there was no one else around, he located the bathroom.

Mitch had a diehard bathroom routine. He could not do the business unless any and all cubicles behind him were vacant. The stalls had to be open, wide open, so he could see into them. He refused to have his back to a closed door.

If you want my ass so bad you’ll have to damn well find it first!

But they had found it last time, hadn’t they?

No way was he laying his ruined rump bare. He might as well put a tablecloth under it, give them a knife and fork and invite them to pull up a chair. Christ!

Today, Mitch was in luck. The restroom was empty. After a quick inspection in the bank of mirrors, comprising a swift adjustment to his chestnut-coloured toupee and a reassuring thumbs-up, he unfastened his pants. As he emptied himself into the urinal, he prayed that Melinda had scarpered back to the apartment. Mitch was grateful for tonight’s TV slot—with any luck his wife might have gone to bed by the time he returned. Occasionally she would grope for him in the dark, murmur something enticing like, ‘Have you showered? If you’ve showered you can put it in me,’ but if he left it long enough she would have her eye mask on and her earplugs in.

If Melinda only knew where he’d been, what he’d seen …

Images from the house at Veroli came rushing back: the elderly couple, the shed in the courtyard, the driving rain … Part of Mitch wished he had never gone, had never laid eyes on the terrible reality. But there had been no choice.

Now he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that these creatures were out there, biding their time, preparing to strike, their skills and machinery eclipsing anything this planet had to offer. Rome had confirmed their existence once and for all.

The invasion was nigh—and Mitch was its target.

Signor Rossetti had explained. ‘They want you, Senator Corrigan. You are a special man. You will soon run America, the most powerful country on Earth …’

Mitch would never forget those words as long as he lived. Them.

One probe was all it took. Fiercely he yanked up his pants.

Trembling, Mitch Corrigan bolted for the door.

The car arrived on the dot of six to escort him to the studio. Mitch was due live on America Tonight in an hour. He couldn’t be less set for a public airing if he tried.

‘Remember our focus is the campaign,’ Oliver, his PR guy, chattered, stabbing keys on his BlackBerry. ‘I’ve briefed the producer on what we will and won’t say. I’m not sitting through a Who’s Who of Mitch Corrigan movies like we did last time.’

Mitch’s knee started to shudder as the downtown traffic rushed past. ‘It’s what they’re interested in,’ he conceded. After eight years in politics, people still hankered after morsels from his showbiz past: instead of hearing his views on a proposed health reform or a controversial rule on education, what they really wanted was a rendition of a celebrated catchphrase from his best-known flick, nineties action-fest A Good Day to Die. In it, Mitch’s character Blaine, a stunt driver, tells his arch-enemy to: ‘Side with me if you want to ride with me.’ Those ten words had haunted him the majority of his adult life. They got yelled at him in the street, at party conferences, on beach vacations, in restaurants when he was halfway through his shrimp appetiser …

‘Wrong,’ corrected Oliver, ‘we tell them what to be interested in. Once we confirm our White House campaign, they’ll soon see where our priorities lie.’

Mitch felt exhausted by the whole thing. Along the line he guessed he must have signed up for this demented full-throttle ride, first Hollywood, then Washington, then a fucking presidential bid. Why was he doing it to himself? Fame was a cruel mistress. She had brought him notoriety, but she hadn’t brought him happiness.

In the vehicle’s wing mirror he spied the same black car he had noticed trailing them on to the freeway. Mitch narrowed his eyes. His knee juddered.

Quietly he eased back in his seat.

‘Everything OK?’ asked Oliver.

‘Fine,’ he replied.

Mitch couldn’t confide in Oliver. He couldn’t confide in anyone. They would pour scorn on his revelations: Too many drugs with the Screw Crew? That had been the name of his actor clique, years ago when the A-listers had stalked Sunset for babes and tallied up their victories. Maybe he had taken too many drugs. Maybe he had lost his shit at too many parties. Maybe the whole thing was a delusion brought about by his longevity at the top of a precipitous fame mountain: a gradual decline.

Mitch could forget all about a White House campaign if the world uncovered a breath of what he knew. Who would have thought it? This was the man who, back in his heyday, had been king of the silver screen; he had wrestled crocodiles, battled felons, shot at hijackers from a swooping chopper and flown missiles into Vietnam …

Yet here he was, besieged and cursed, tripped and taunted in the endless labyrinth of his waking nightmare. His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his trousers. He checked the mirror again. The black car was still in pursuit.

‘Here we are.’ Oliver was all business as their vehicle pulled up at the studio. Mitch sank down in his seat. The black car slid past, its windows opaque.

‘Senator Corrigan, it’s an honour, thanks again for joining us.’ A smiling producer led him through the rear entrance, and he was encouraged by Oliver to raise a hand to the waiting band of paps shouting his name. Ten minutes in Make-up and he was set.

Mitch had to wait backstage while Jerry Gersham’s star billing took the stage. Noah Lawson was that rare concoction to which every actor aspires: looks, charm and talent. It was why he was Hollywood’s hottest property. Mitch knew that while he himself had done an OK job, somehow garnering his handprint on the Walk of Fame, he had hardly been the most versatile of players. In fact, his acting was shit.

‘Side with me if you want to ride with me.’ Good grief.

The studio audience went crazy as Noah told a joke. The actor ran his hand through his blond hair and gave them an easy grin. So charming, so relaxed …

Mitch wished it could be that straightforward for him.

The studio lights burned. A trickle of sweat travelled down his neck and into his collar. His tongue bloated. His lungs squeezed. Panic rose in his belly.

The house at Veroli flashed terribly through his mind. The thing …

Mitch released a strangled cry. He could take it no longer. He felt his asshole begin to protest, that horrid twitching dance it forced him into whenever it recoiled against a further assault, as if still reeling from the penetration two years before, as if so certain it was about to happen again: his poor, vulnerable, raided asshole.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my final guest for this evening. D’you want to ride with him?’ Cue roar. ‘It’s Senator Mitch Corrigan!’

But it was too late. The wings were empty. Mitch had already fled.

14

New York

Tawny Lascelles was partying in a club on Gansevoort Street, less with friends than with tolerable randoms who were out to get papped with anyone who was anyone and, better still, the most desirable supermodel on the scene. Who cared if the hangers-on were genuine, so long as they were the right level of attractive? Which basically meant attractive enough to act as a plumping cushion for Tawny’s irresistible jewel, but not so pretty as to rival her in any discernible way. Tawny did not like to be rivalled.

It was survive on your own in this industry, or don’t survive at all.

Tawny was fresh from this afternoon’s FNYC shoot, her first for Angela Silvers’ tag as it announced the launch of its hyped new range. Working with the upcoming label was her most envied gig to date. She treasured the bitten expressions on her fellow models’ faces as yet another deal went her way. Tawny snagged all the major names. Why? Because she was outrageously stunning, she chilled with the right people and she flirted on that line between innocence and danger that, for all the hard work in the world, models either possessed or they didn’t.

‘Everyone in here’s, like, staring at you,’ teased her wardrobe girl, Minty.

Tawny sighed, sipping vodka as her blue eyes scoped the room.

‘Check out Tess Barnes’ sherbet drainpipes!’ she purred. ‘So unflattering.’

‘I know, sack the stylist.’

‘I like her T-shirt though.’

‘Not as cute as yours.’

‘Serious?’

‘Sure. She’s too bony.’

‘Or I’m too fat?’ Tawny’s retort was quick as a whip.

‘Shit, no! God. You, fat? Come on, you’re the only model that exists right now, far as the bookings go. Tess Barnes is so yesterday. You, babe, are today.’

Minty’s deft brushwork, credited with awarding Tawny the most striking and replicated eyebrows of the decade, was almost as impressive as her charm offensive, which was subtle enough not to be noted by Tawny but sufficiently forceful as to make her utterly indispensable to her number-one client. Tawny, like most models, thrived on compliments. Minty was the best at giving them.

‘I’m bored,’ said Tawny, as Kevin Chase’s new record came on and everyone flocked to the dance floor. ‘Wanna get high?’

The girls vanished into the bathroom. Tawny took a compact from her purse. When she had first been snapped with halos of powder round her nostrils, her manager had freaked and several pussy brands had backed out of their contracts. Now, it was expected—even encouraged. She was a supermodel, not a role model.

Tawny clocked him as soon as they emerged.

‘Great,’ she said. ‘There’s that jerk-off I met in LA.’

‘Who?’

Tawny flicked her mane. ‘Jacob Lyle.’

‘Really? Where?’ Minty’s voice dropped. ‘Shit, he’s sexy, isn’t he?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Not for you?’

‘He’s so full of himself it’s coming out his ass.’

Minty giggled. ‘Should we go say hello?’ she asked.

‘No way—he’s a fucking perv.’

But Minty saw how Tawny narrowed her eyes, checking that if Jacob Lyle were indeed a perv, then he would be perving exclusively on her. It was the same story wherever they went: Tawny had to be the most attractive girl in the room and, eleven times out of ten, she was. What was it with models? They had been given exteriors most girls could only dream of, yet however gorgeous or successful they became, the jaws of insecurity went eternally snapping at their Louboutin heels. Tawny was legendary for her constant appraisal of other women. Despite being tagged the World’s Most Beautiful, the Sexiest American or the Most Significant Style Icon Since Marilyn Monroe, the supermodel existed in fear of her crown being snatched.

Other women were perpetual and dreadful threats. Minty recalled a gallery opening they had been invited to last year, from which Tawny had demanded to leave almost immediately. She never admitted it, but Minty knew. Another woman at the function had been enticing male attention: Celeste Cavalieri, the Italian jeweller. Celeste’s allure was at the other end of the spectrum from Tawny’s: she was thin and petite, with a pixie crop of sable hair and deerskin-brown eyes. Celeste’s beauty was quiet. It did not shout from the rooftops and it did not flaunt or strut. It did not even know itself.

Celeste hadn’t noticed the attention—let alone cared. Tawny couldn’t bear it.

‘Did Jacob come on to you?’ Minty asked now, keeping their exchange on safe ground.

‘Yeah.’ Tawny polished off the vodka. ‘Course.’

‘What did he say?’

‘I can’t remember.’

But that was a lie. Tawny remembered every word. Sometimes she replayed it in her mind and it turned her on so much that she had to vanish into the nearest toilet cubicle and plunge her fingers into her knickers until she came.

‘If you’re so hot on Mr Lyle,’ Tawny commented, ‘he’s all yours.’

It stank of bullshit. The thought of Minty Patrick receiving Jacob’s attentions was unthinkable. Jacob had been enamoured by her, by Tawny; his tongue had practically been hanging out of his mouth. Tawny knew he was a blatant, shameless womaniser, the kind of arrogant that, while you sussed it, was irritatingly appealing, and she recalled the flutter of interest when it emerged he’d once referred to university campuses (Jacob’s preferred haunts for checking out fresh talent, business or otherwise) as ‘cam-pussies’, for the sheer number of girls he bedded. This sort of thing ought to send women screaming for the hills, but somehow, with Jacob’s swag, had them screaming in their beds at night with a dildo vibrating between their legs.

Tawny was the fairest of them all—and she planned to make Jacob work for it.

‘We’re going.’ She grabbed her purse.

‘What? Already?’

‘Tell JP to send a car.’

After another toilet refreshment, the women took the elevator down to the street. It was a cold night and Tawny wrapped her fur tighter as they were ushered into a hovering car. Deliberately she faced away from the road opposite. The only downside to her beloved Tower Club was its neighbouring joint, the gritty, grimy Rams & Rude Girls Dancing Bar. As usual, the memories clung on, dripping poison.

Tawny had been a different girl when she had first arrived in New York.

Another life. One she could never, ever go back to.

She’d had nothing and no one. Running from Sunnydale, the hick town where she’d grown up, Tawny Linden had been an ugly duckling desperate to make something of her future. Maybe she would become an actress, or write a film script, or find a rich boyfriend. Instead, she had been picked up by Nathan, a man who made his living skulking the subway and collecting waifs and strays like old coins.

Beyond her lank hair, train-tracks and wide, trusting eyes, Nathan had seen Tawny’s potential. Bar work, he’d sold it as. Good pay. The start of a new chapter …

She should go with him, he said. He would look after her.

Nathan certainly did—and then some. He looked after her every morning. Every night. Every hour in between, until she was sore and ragged and weeping …

Tawny Linden had been powerless to leave. She could not go back. The Rams was the closest thing she had to a home and, over the coming months, as her beauty surfaced and her duckling became a swan, she began to bat for the big league.

That was when the competition really got going.

It was always a question of which Rams girls the punters wanted that night, who was prettiest and who they were prepared to pay most for. That was how the girls earned their keep. From the beginning Tawny understood she had to be the chosen girl, always, every time—she had to be the hottest, the most willing, the sexiest and the best—in case the Rams decided she wasn’t bagging the dollars and fired her ass out onto the street. She’d have ended up a hooker, just another sunken-eyed junkie begging for dimes. OK, the work wasn’t easy—the men she was forced to service, the things they had made her do—but it was a damn sight better than that.

Thank Christ she had gotten out when she did.

‘You OK?’ asked Minty. ‘You look like you saw a ghost.’

Manhattan rushed past. The Mercedes was warm, the seats plush. Tawny lit a cigarette and opened the window, flicking the butt with red-painted talons.

‘I’m better than OK,’ she said. ‘I’m Tawny Lascelles.’

Minty gave a nervous laugh.

‘No kidding,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you always been?’

But Tawny didn’t reply.

15

Celeste Cavalieri held the diamond up to the light. It twinkled and dazzled between her fingers, a plum-sized explosion of brilliance. She angled it, examining the way it refracted and dispelled the gleam, her eyes trained to hunt out the tiniest imperfection. The clarity was superb, a fifty-two carat Peruzzi with faceted girdle. Bright white.

She would never consider lifting a piece such as this, but the magnetism was always there. It wasn’t about the value, or even the object itself—it was simply the thrill of the steal. Once, Celeste had taken a comb from a woman’s open bag, next to her at an exhibition. Once, she had slipped from a Paris department store with a silk scarf folded away in her purse. Once, she had removed a silver-plated espresso cup from a bistro in Bruges. It didn’t matter what it was. It mattered that she took it.

‘Are you nearly done?’

Celeste jumped. She turned to the museum overseer, who had popped his head round the door. ‘Sorry,’ she smiled, ‘you startled me.’

‘It gets quiet in here, huh.’

‘Sure does.’

He returned her smile. ‘Let me know when you’re ready?’

Celeste nodded. The door closed behind him and she exhaled.

Never again! But every time was the last. Every time she swore she was through. Celeste Cavalieri was revered, a trusted asset to the world’s richest families. As if she had to push that trust, a dare, to see how far it would strain …

She touched the bracelet on her wrist, ruby and silver. Her first ever steal, from a castle in Hungary. She could see it now: buried deep in the forest, its turrets rising like a drawing in a fairytale. The owner had been an ex-banker, living there with his son. Their names escaped her now. Strange people. The son had a stammer.

Celeste had been summoned to value a painting of the banker’s deceased wife, commissioned to the finest artist of the decade. A portrait of a woman, hung dourly in the castle’s Great Hall, the oil thick and dingy and the features encased in shadow …

A channel of cold seeped down her spine.

Carefully, reverently, Celeste replaced the museum diamond in its casket. The jewel shone as a nugget of treasure on the ocean floor, seductive and dangerous.

Exiting the building on Central Park West, she was met by a bustling hive of rush-hour workers and sky-facing tourists. As she hailed a cab, her attention was caught by a bizarre headline on a nearby newsstand. She did a double-take, scarcely believing her eyes. It read:

ITALIAN INDUSTRIALIST INVOLVED IN ALIEN HOAX.

Celeste approached. The accompanying photograph showed Signor Rossetti being escorted from the Veroli house she had run a valuation at back in February.

Detectives stormed the financier’s hidden-away mansion at the weekend and described what they found as ‘a grave and bold deception’. Rossetti and his wife were arrested on suspicion of three counts of fraud, including extortion of money from a group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists. Claiming their estate to be a UFO crash site, the Rossettis’ replica was ‘impressive’ and ‘high-concept’, prompting Rossetti to be tagged ‘the Martian magician’ …

Celeste was startled. No doubt about it, the Veroli house had been peculiar, even by the standards she was used to—these old money clans were invariably eccentric, their half-forgotten-about painting, battered coffer of Grandmother’s gems or relic hidden in a drawer fetching enough to sustain any ordinary person for a lifetime.

But this?

She remembered something else, too—the truly unusual part. Among the clandestine meetings she had witnessed, one visit in particular stood out. Celeste had been locked in the Veroli library, stifled behind shrouded windows and permitted to leave the room only under escort. But she was trained to decipher nuance, it was her trade, and no detail escaped detection: a smack of footsteps drifting in from the gallery, a series of closed doors and an American accent, gruff and male, speaking with authority but at the same time deep unease. Celeste had placed it right away.

Republican senator Mitch Corrigan—movie star turned government royalty. Family man. All-American hero. Toast of Washington. What was he doing here?

Rain spitting against glass, Celeste had dragged up a stool and peeled open the drapes. The Veroli courtyard spilled into view. Out on the cobbles stood a billowing structure, a shed draped in tarpaulin, flanked by two sentries in protective helmets and boiler suits. The visitors were given the same, and after a short dialogue were admitted. Twenty minutes later they emerged, faces ashen, eyes thick with horror.

Shocked, she’d stumbled down. What was in there? What had they seen?

Celeste thought no more of it. She wasn’t paid to ask questions. Even so, she’d been intrigued when, a week later, reporter Eve Harley left a private appeal on her voicemail. As a rule, Celeste didn’t liaise with the press and, despite further attempts, hadn’t been in touch. Here, then, was why. A group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists …

Senator Corrigan would be wild with fear at the exposé.

‘Hey, lady, you want a ride or not?’ The cab driver leaned out of his window, chewing gum.

Hastily, Celeste bought the paper. People never failed to amaze her. Humans were more complex and subtle fakes than any gem she could uncover. She made her living from citing forgeries, from scratching the surface and finding what lay beneath. Knowing when something wasn’t all it appeared. She herself was no exception.

Climbing into the taxi, she slammed the door hard.

Back at the Plaza, she undressed, folded her clothes into a neat, even-sided block and brushed her teeth, once, twice, a third time. Celeste spent minutes brushing, always did, before and after every meal and sometimes in between. It made her feel clean, and the fiercer she brushed the more she stripped away. She didn’t need her shrink to tell her it was all connected: the theft, the OCD, the insecurities, the throttling habits, the damaging relationship she’d been in for five years now, so that every trip away she was counting the days till she could leave, just to get away from him …

Slipping beneath crisp white sheets, she flicked on the TV and landed on a biopic of Tawny Lascelles—Rise of a Fashion Icon. Tawny was gabbling into camera at a fashion shoot, chatting to reporters at a red carpet line-up then posing on the arm of her latest boyfriend, her dress split to the thigh and her scarlet lips pouting.

Celeste was ready to switch over, but something about the model held her in thrall. She had met Tawny once, a while back. Though she mixed regularly with the rich and famous, she still found their company challenging—all that show and glitz, it wasn’t her thing. Discretion and caution were the hallmarks of her career and over the years she had honed them to perfection. In a crowd she could blend in, become hidden, and that was exactly the way she liked it. Anonymous.

The supermodel had been even more striking in real life than she was in pictures: goddess-like, with long, caramel legs and tousled blonde hair. Celeste had felt outshone by her in every conceivable way. On introduction she had extended the arm of friendship, warmly saying hello, but all Tawny offered in return was a sniff of disdain, as if an unpleasant smell had passed under her nose. She had scanned Celeste up and down, deemed her unworthy of comment—worse, offensive to her in some way—and proceeded to whip round and stalk off without a single reply.

‘Models!’ their host had feebly joked, thrusting another drink in her hand.

Celeste had been able to think of a few other words.

She killed the channel and lay back.

What must it be like to be Tawny Lascelles? Brazen, unapologetic, so absolutely sure in her own skin as to cease to care an iota for what other people thought? Her rudeness was so blatant it almost demanded respect. Celeste had been left open-mouthed, wondering what on earth she had done wrong.

She closed her eyes. Sometimes, when she was alone, she imagined she was a different woman—a woman like Tawny, contained and confident, wholesome and undamaged, resting in splendour like a china doll in a velvet-lined box. A woman like Tawny didn’t harbour darkness. She was a golden girl, a perfect swan. Clean.

In comparison, Celeste was rotten. Soiled. Ruined. Broken.

Evil.

And so she should be. She didn’t deserve to be happy, to have those accolades. Not after what she had done. Why should God look out for a thief and a killer?

Outside, street shouts drifted up to her window. Celeste glimpsed the moon through the panes, huge and bright.

16

Broadway’s Gold Court Theatre was buzzing. Noah Lawson’s star billing had attracted fans in their thousands, the production selling out within hours of tickets hitting the stands. On opening night, the atmosphere backstage was electric.

Angela dressed in jeans and a sweater, sneakers and no make-up. Managing to slip behind the elaborate fan tails of a bunch of chorus girls, she located Noah’s dressing room and knocked. The seconds before he answered were endless.

She knew she shouldn’t have come. Not tonight. It wasn’t fair to drop this bomb when he was minutes from a performance. Are you crazy? Maybe she was. Maybe she had actually lost her mind. Maybe, despite her justifications, she was embarking on a foolish and terrible thing from whose consequences she would never recover. Since Vegas she had been running on empty. She was stupid and mad and selfish—and desperate beyond her wildest dreams. Turning up like this wasn’t fair.

Neither was it fair to let him read about it in the morning papers.

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