Veretti’s Dark Vengeance (17 page)

‘And the name-Helen of Troy?’
‘That didn’t come from me. Some stupid journalist tacked it on, thinking he was being clever. After that everyone took it up. It was inevitable after we’d been seen together, but it wasn’t my doing. It was just a malign trick of fate.’
‘Malign? I don’t think so. Since when were profits malign? It is true, isn’t it, that this is outselling everything else?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s true. But I didn’t arrange it that way. I ask you to believe me, Helena. Please.’
She gazed at him, wondering if she’d really heard him say please.
‘I’m begging you,’ he said quietly.
Suddenly she knew she was at a crossroads, seeing two directions. She could take the road of believing him, loving him, taking him on trust with the terrible risk of a betrayal that would destroy her. Or she could take the other direction, call him a liar to his face, walk away, safe forever from his machinations.
Safe and dead.
What had happened to her in his arms was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, offering joy as nothing else could ever do. If she left now she would never be hurt again, but there would be no joy, only a frozen desert. All she needed was the courage to take the risk.
‘How can I believe you?’ she asked in agony. ‘You’ve always boasted that you’ll stop at nothing to get the better of me, and you seem to have done so very thoroughly. If I believe in your innocence after this-well, you’ll have got the better of me again, won’t you?’
She faced him. He was very pale.
‘You could think that,’ he said slowly, ‘or you could remember some of the things that-recently-well-we each remember what we want to.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she cried. ‘But I don’t have any choice. You did this, it happened-’
‘But other things happened too,’ he said harshly. ‘We both know that. Did they matter less?’
‘I don’t know. But I can’t believe something just because I want to. Perhaps it’s better to stick to what I can bear to remember. You said it wasn’t safe to cross you, and I’d find that out. Well, I did, didn’t I? And once a lesson is learned, it’s learned. I can’t unlearn it. I wish I could, but I can’t.’
‘Do you know what you’re saying?’ he said quietly.
‘I’m saying that I understand what you’ve been trying to make me understand from the start. And I accept it. I don’t want to, but I must.’
His eyes kindled.
‘And when I tell you this was an unlucky accident-you won’t even try to trust me?’
‘No,’ she said in a voice of defeat. ‘I don’t trust you. You’ve given me too many reasons not to.’ She gave a sudden harsh laugh. ‘Better to have it out in the open. Now we can stop deceiving each other. War to the death. So much simpler.’
‘War to the death,’ he agreed. ‘Perhaps it was always inevitable. Gloves off, no holds barred.’
Something had changed in him. The gentleness that had briefly been there when he begged her now gave way to a look that his enemies would have recognised and feared.
Salvatore couldn’t see how his face reflected the change. He only knew that he had done for this woman what he’d done for no other. He’d said please. He’d even begged. It chilled him to remember that he’d begged, that she’d seen him do it and scorned him. If he could have wiped her from the face of the earth at that moment he would have done so.
‘No holds barred,’ she repeated. ‘You talk of me trusting you, and there, in that picture, is the proof that you’re lying.’
‘Don’t say that, I’m warning you-’
‘Yes, you’re warning me. How typical. You play the innocent but all the time you’re making money out of me.’
‘Only out of your body, which you’ve been doing yourself for years,’ he said coldly.
‘Because it’s mine!’
‘Ah, yes, of course,’ he said in a tone of sneering discovery. ‘I’ve infringed your copyright, haven’t I? Your body is your property. It can be loaned or rented out for the evening, but the only one allowed to make money from it is you.’
‘Exactly. And you can be sure that I’m going to do so. I’m going to take every offer, and believe me, there are plenty. Some of them go further than I’ve ever been before-’
‘But they’re the ones with the most cash attached,’ he said with a derisive grin. ‘Every garment removed has its price. You should certainly take every chance. I apologise for being so remiss about the fee. Here.’
He handed her a cheque he’d been scribbling.
‘What’s that?’ she demanded, aghast.
‘Royalties. After all, I’ve made use of your body without paying for it as your other clients do, so now we’re even. I hope it’s the correct amount.’
For a moment everything in the world was the colour of her agony. When the mist cleared she realised that she must have struck him. There was a livid weal across his face, just touching his mouth.
Then the murderous rage died as swiftly as it had flared, and there was only the numbness of despair.
‘I’ll put this in the bank at once,’ she said calmly. ‘And, of course, I’ll send you a proper invoice so that it can go through the books.’ She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘Just be careful which column you enter it in.’
‘Helena-’
But she’d gone.
There was no time to think of Salvatore, even if she’d wanted to. The phone was never silent.
A fashion magazine sent an editor and several minions to Venice with instructions to search out a variety of locations to show off the large collection of clothes that arrived with them. Wearing a variety of bikinis she posed in gondolas and, as this was outside, a few passing tourists managed to take their own pictures, passing them on to the local newspaper, which printed them at once in glorious colour.
‘She is quite shameless,’ the signora observed, thrusting a newspaper out to Salvatore. ‘Just look at her.’
‘I would prefer not to,’ he replied, pushing the paper aside. ‘Her antics don’t interest me.’
‘Perhaps they should, since her name has been linked with yours. How could you have been so incautious as to let that happen?’
‘Since she’s Antonio’s widow, there was no way to avoid it.’
‘A widow! Oh, yes, she looks like a widow, flaunting herself, practically naked. Poor Antonio must be turning in his grave.’
‘Not him,’ Salvatore said with sudden wry humour. ‘He would have loved this. Have you forgotten what he was like?’
‘But he’s dead.’
‘Well, a man doesn’t change his personality because he’s dead.’
‘What did you say?’ she demanded, aghast.
‘Nothing-I don’t know what made me say that.’ He shook his head as though trying to drive off a swarm of bees.
‘I’ve no patience with that kind of fanciful nonsense, and nor did you used to have.’
‘Antonio himself told her that he didn’t want her to go around in widow’s weeds.’
‘You mean that’s what she says he told her. How convenient that he isn’t here to deny it!’
‘He wouldn’t deny it,’ Salvatore said slowly. ‘I can hear him saying it now. He always loved it when people envied the beauties on his arm.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t becoming like him?’ the signora asked coldly.
‘Quite sure,’ Salvatore snapped.
‘Then why have you let yourself be seen in her company? Admit it. You enjoyed flaunting her.’
Without warning he lost control of his thoughts. He was back again on the island, free to be open with her and to feel that she was open with him. Free from prying eyes: alone but not lonely, hidden from the world and glad to be so.
‘People who think they know you, but actually they haven’t the first idea.’
She’d said those words and they had found an echo in his heart, but who else would understand? Not one single person.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he told his grandmother coldly. ‘I had no such thought.’
‘Nonsense, of course you did, but you never stopped to consider, did you? What does it do to this family’s reputation to be connected with a woman who appears naked in public?’
‘She was already connected with the family. And she isn’t naked.’
‘Isn’t she? Look at that!’
The signora thrust the newspaper back under his eyes, so that he couldn’t escape the picture of Helena leaning back in a gondola. She was attired in a small black bikini, the twin of the one she’d worn in the first picture Salvatore had ever seen, the one he’d held in his hand only a few weeks ago, swearing vengeance.
How long ago that seemed now. The first picture had been relatively respectable, a woman on a beach with her husband. The new picture was the reverse of respectable, showing Helena stretched out luxuriously, her arms above her head, her lips softly parted. This woman was wanton, created for profitable sex.
And it was as false and wrong as his first view of her had been. He knew her now, sensitive and vulnerable in ways he’d tried and failed to understand.
In the matter of the figurine he was genuinely innocent. Wrapped up in thoughts of her, he’d overlooked what was happening in his factory, and failed to see the danger until too late. Nor would there have been trouble if some over-clever wit hadn’t attached the title ‘Helen of Troy’ to a piece that was otherwise anonymous.
Her anguished fury had left him stumbling for words and he’d made everything worse. Clumsy oaf that he was, he’d tossed money at her and seen the despair come into her eyes. The memory still made him groan aloud.
His grandmother refused to give up the attack.
‘That bikini covers almost nothing,’ she snapped, jabbing her finger at the picture. ‘Look at her breasts, look at her-’
‘That’s enough!’ Salvatore’s voice crashed across her words, shocking her to silence. He recovered himself quickly and said in a strained voice, ‘I see no need to discuss this further. Please understand that the subject is closed.’
The cold finality in his voice made her wary. After a moment she departed.
He seated himself and began to read a column of figures. Nor did he look up as she swept out of the room, a rare discourtesy that alerted her more than anything he’d said, or failed to say.
When he was safely alone Salvatore took back the newspaper and spread it out on the table before him, running his fingers over the picture as though he could bring back the vibrant living woman. But she was flat, dead. Certainly dead to him.
He began to tear the paper into small pieces and dropped them into the waste bin.
‘Helena, my dear! What a pleasure bumping into you!’
Surprised, Helena looked up to see Salvatore’s grandmother advancing towards her across the little café. Without waiting for an invitation she seated herself at Helena’s table.
‘Dear Helena, we’re all absolutely agog to see that you’ve resumed your brilliant career.’
‘I don’t care for the career as such,’ Helena replied. ‘I’m putting the money in Larezzo, which is my life now.’
‘Very wise. Of course, Salvatore is furious about it but that’s all to the good if it shows him that he can’t have his own way all the time. I really must congratulate you for the way you got his measure.’
‘I think he and I sized each other up pretty accurately at the start,’ Helena said carefully.
‘So many women are fooled by him. He seems enchanted by them, but it’s only a way of getting his revenge.’
‘Revenge?’ Helena echoed in disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me he’s grieving for some girl who dumped him years ago. No, I don’t believe that.’
‘Quite right. Salvatore can deal with trivial romantic interludes. I’m talking about his parents.’
Now Helena was genuinely surprised. ‘What about his parents?’
‘His mother was my daughter, Lisetta. Guido, her husband, treated her badly. They were in love at the start, but he got bored easily, and he had a wandering eye. Many wives in that situation cope by finding their own “distractions” but Lisetta couldn’t. She loved him so much and he broke her heart again and again.’
Helena remembered the two pictures of Salvatore’s mother, on her wedding day, when her face had blazed with joy, and then, just a few years later, a woman in despair, her face blank, so great was her agony and the need to hide it.
‘Worst of all,’ the signora continued, ‘Guido used to bring his floozies home, and actually sleep with them there. There was a part of the building where his wife was forbidden to go. He said he wanted his “privacy”.’
Helena flinched. This was a worse tale than she had expected.
‘Lisetta died very suddenly. He married his then-current mistress, a good-time girl who bled him dry and almost brought him to ruin. He died about fifteen years ago, and Salvatore had to spend his whole youth working to repay his father’s debts.
‘Of course, he knew what was going on, even when he was a child, and it has affected his attitude to women. His mother is on a pedestal, but he despises what he calls “a certain kind of woman”, and in his eyes practically all of them fall into that category.
‘He amuses himself with them, but sooner or later they discover what he really thinks of them. You, of course, were never fooled.’
‘No, I was never fooled,’ Helena said slowly.
‘I congratulate you on being so much smarter than the others.’
‘You don’t have to be very smart,’ Helena said with a brittle laugh. ‘Salvatore isn’t subtle. I had my fun, now I’m going home to England.’
‘Indeed? For long?’
‘As long as it takes me to make the money I need.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Then I’ll go and leave you to your packing. Goodbye, my dear, it’s been so nice knowing you.’
Her plane was due to leave at three in the afternoon. Promptly at noon a young man came to her door to collect her luggage. When she’d finished paying her bill at the desk the young man was waiting to escort her to the motor launch. The back of the vessel was a cabin, lined with windows, and inside it she could see where her luggage had been placed. The driver, neatly dressed in uniform and cap, stood outside at the wheel. He didn’t turn to acknowledge them, but Helena had a strange feeling that his back was familiar.
Her escort showed her into the cabin, said something to the driver, and left. The next moment the boat was pulling away from the hotel, gaining speed. Helena waited for the right turn which would take them in the direction of the airport, but instead they continued out into the lagoon.
‘Hey!’ She banged on the glass, trying to attract the driver’s attention, but he didn’t seem to hear.
She banged harder. This time the driver turned his head and looked at her.
It was Salvatore.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Stop this boat.’
But they went faster. From the direction it was clear that they were headed for the island, and if she let him take her there she would miss her plane.
‘Salvatore!’ she shouted, hammering harder on the glass. ‘Don’t you dare do this.’
He didn’t even look round.
There was a door at the far end of the cabin. If she could jump into the water, taking her bag with her tickets and passport, she could swim ashore.