Veretti’s Dark Vengeance (19 page)

‘What is it?’ he begged. ‘For pity’s sake, tell me.’
She shook her head, a gesture not of defiance but of helplessness.
‘I’m not letting you go until you tell me everything,’ he said in the gentlest voice Helena had ever heard him use.
But she couldn’t respond. The brave face she’d worn since losing the only person in the world to whom she’d been close had suddenly cracked and fallen away, leaving her defenceless.
‘Tell me about Antonio,’ he said. ‘We’ve never talked much about him, and perhaps we should.’
Still she couldn’t speak through her sobs, and he just held her while the storm quietened.
‘I know I was wrong,’ he offered, ‘but that’s all I know. Helena, please…’
She choked and moved her head back a little, enough to speak.
‘Antonio and I were never husband and wife in the proper sense,’ she whispered, ‘but in my own way I loved him. You wouldn’t understand. You know nothing about love.’
‘I might understand more than you know.’
‘No, you see things so simply. You want, you get. Kindness and affection don’t come into it.’
Salvatore groaned and dropped his head so that it just rested against her.
‘I loved Antonio,’ she said sadly, ‘because he was gentle and generous, and he loved me without wanting to grab everything and drain me dry. That’s what men do but he was different, better.’
‘I don’t understand. You could have had any man you wanted-’
‘That’s right, I could,’ she said, recovering enough to speak defiantly. ‘For the best part of sixteen years, I watched them slaver, pant, yearn. And I enjoyed it because I despised every one of them. I’ve been offered as much money as I liked if only I would-well, you can guess. But I never would. Never. Any man I wanted, yes! Only I didn’t want any of them. They couldn’t believe it. Of course they couldn’t. No man ever does. They all thought the same as you, that I was anybody’s as long as the money was right.’
‘Don’t!’ he groaned. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry about that. How can I make you believe it? I misjudged you. I’ve known for a long time. The first time we made love I knew you were different from what I’d thought.’
‘You expected a prostitute,’ she said bitterly.
‘No, but I did expect a woman of experience. Instead-I can’t say exactly-it was like making love to a girl. It might almost have been your first time.’
She was about to throw another bitter reply at him, but suddenly she noticed his eyes and realised there was something there she’d never seen before; not just earnestness, but a terrible honesty, as though his life depended on convincing her.
‘It wasn’t my first time,’ she said in a gentler voice than she had meant to use. ‘Just my first time in sixteen years.’
Once he would have been sceptical, but by now he had some hard-won wisdom. He urged her head against his shoulder, then stood there, wishing she would put her arms about him, or show some other sign of response.
‘Look at me,’ he whispered. ‘Please, Helena, look up.’
Something in his voice seemed to affect her, and after a few moments she did as he asked, revealing a face so weary and vulnerable that he drew a shocked breath. The next moment he was kissing her, not with passion but softly, letting his lips linger for only a moment on her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids.
‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’m here.’
Just why he expected this to reassure her he couldn’t have explained. She didn’t want him here. She wanted him consigned to the devil; she’d made that plain enough.
‘Helena-Helena…’
She made the tiniest possible movement towards him with her hand, and he thought, but couldn’t be sure, that she murmured his name. He didn’t wait for more but lifted her carefully and took her back into the bedroom, laying her down on the bed and stretching out beside her.
‘Trust me,’ he said.
He drew her close to him again, not making love, but offering warmth and security, and she seemed to understand at once because she clung to him with a helpless need he’d never known in her before, even at the height of her desire. He had no defence against the sensation which took him by surprise, upsetting every preconception, triggering feelings that alarmed yet exhilarated him.
‘What happened?’ he asked at last.
‘When I was sixteen I met a man called Miles Draker. He was a fashion photographer and he said he could make me a big name. I fell totally in love with him. I’d have done anything he wanted. I didn’t care about being famous, I just wanted to be with him all the time.
‘It was a wonderful life, making love at night, taking pictures by day. While he trained the camera on me he used to say things like, “Remember what we did last night-think that it’s happening now-now imagine you’re trying to please me.” And I did. Then I’d look at the pictures afterwards and see it in my own face. I thought it was my love that showed, but of course love wasn’t what he wanted. Pretty soon I was a success, just the way he had said. He gave me a contract, tying me to him, and I was the happiest girl in the world.
‘And then, just when we were starting to hit the big time, I discovered I was pregnant. I was so thrilled.’ She gave a soft mirthless laugh. ‘When I look back I can hardly believe how delighted I was. Fool! Idiot!’
‘Don’t call yourself names,’ he said.
‘Why not? They’re all true.’ Her voice took on a tortured edge as she went on, ‘Stupid, ignorant cow, brainless-’
‘Is that what he called you?’ asked Salvatore, who was beginning to discern the horrible end of this story.
‘That and a dozen other things. I thought he’d be pleased but he was furious. Just when we were getting somewhere I was going to “mess it up”. He wanted me to get rid of the baby and when I wouldn’t he screamed at me.’ Her voice rose almost to a shriek and she began to thump him, crying, ‘Thoughtless, selfish bitch-’
‘I said stop,’ he told her, covering her mouth with his own.
She was shaking violently and at first she continued to thump him, although with no strength behind it. He simply countered the blows by holding her steady until she gave up and yielded, her lips moving softly in what might have been a kiss, if only he could be sure.
‘Go on,’ he said at last. ‘What did he do?’
‘He kept on and on at me, saying it was his big chance as well as mine, and how could I be so selfish? But I couldn’t do it. This was my child, depending on me for protection. I tried to make him understand but he just got angrier.
‘I remember him sneering, “You weren’t actually thinking of marriage, were you?”’
‘Were you?’
‘I might have been once, I can hardly remember. If so I abandoned the idea pretty fast. He was so determined to “get rid of the problem” as he put it that he turned into a monster.’
‘Did he hit you?’ Salvatore demanded in mounting outrage.
‘No, of course not. He might have left a mark and that would have damaged the merchandise. He had his own methods. Once he brought a “medical advisor” to talk to me. When that didn’t work he just nagged, going on and on and on, screaming, shouting, calling me names all the time we were working.’
‘Why didn’t you just walk out?’
‘He had me tied to a contract. Besides, I knew I’d have to leave as soon as I started to show. I just wanted to earn while I could, so that there’d be something to live on. If that meant putting up with his nastiness, it was worth it. But then-’ she shuddered ‘-then…’
‘Go on,’ he said gently against her forehead.
‘One day when he was really bad I started crying, and I couldn’t stop. The next thing I knew, I’d lost the baby.’
‘Maria vergine!’ Salvatore muttered.
‘After that he thought everything was going to be fine. He’d got what he wanted, and what else mattered? When I wouldn’t go back to him he threatened me with legal action. But then a magazine gave me a big spread. Suddenly I was in demand as never before. I got taken on by an agency who told me to leave everything to them.’
‘What did they do?’
‘I never asked; I only know they managed to tear up the contract. I got a phone call from Draker, screaming abuse at me, but I hung up halfway through, and never heard from him again. A few years later I saw him taking seaside photographs of tourists. He didn’t see me.
‘After that I concentrated on my career and nothing else. And it took off. I had more work than I could cope with. There were always men who wanted to be seen with me, so I let them, but they never got anything else. I was dead inside and all I could feel for them was contempt. Until I met you I hadn’t slept with a man for years, nor wanted to.’
Salvatore held her in silence, but inwardly he was groaning. He wanted to beg her to stop because he couldn’t stand any more of such a nightmarish story. But in his heart he knew that the real nightmare was the way he’d lined himself up with all the others.
He was as bad as any of them; no, worse, for he’d always sensed something wrong. Instinct had told him from the first that she didn’t quite fit his image of the rapacious harlot, yet he’d blinded himself to whatever didn’t suit him. As her power over him had grown so had his anger at her for possessing such power. When he’d felt his heart touched he’d moved fast to shut it down.
‘And then there was Antonio,’ Helena said. ‘He was facing the end of his life alone, and all he asked of me was to be with him. He knew I had money of my own because he’d safeguarded it for me, so he never thought I was marrying his wealth.’
‘Don’t,’ Salvatore groaned.
‘No, I wasn’t aiming that at you. I’m just saying that he knew he could trust me, and that helped our whole relationship. I started out being fond of him, and we grew closer and closer. It was me he wanted-not my body, me! He was the only man I could ever say that about.’
Not any longer, he thought, but uncharacteristically lacked the confidence to say it.
‘He took such wonderful care of me,’ she mused.
‘You should have told me long ago,’ he murmured. ‘But then, I didn’t ask, did I? I never said one word that might have encouraged you to open yourself up to me as a person. I only thought about how madly I wanted you, and how you were leading me a merry dance.’
‘I meant to,’ she said. ‘After that first day I was so angry at the way you instinctively thought the worst of me. It never crossed your mind that I might have been sincerely fond of Antonio. I soon discovered that you knew nothing about love because you don’t believe in it.’
Suddenly she moved away slightly and turned, propping herself up on one elbow and surveying his face. ‘Shall I tell you something that’ll really annoy you?’
‘Anything that gives you pleasure,’ he said wryly.
‘I came to Venice with the fixed intention of selling you Larezzo. Antonio had told me that you’d probably make an offer and he was glad because it would give me some more financial security.’
She stopped, for Salvatore had covered his eyes and groaned.
‘And I drove you into opposing me by the way I behaved,’ he said at last. ‘I’m to blame for everything.’
‘No.’ She stroked his hair. ‘After what your grandmother told me I guess a lot of it was inevitable.’
He stared. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘About your father, and how he broke your mother’s heart with his other women.’
After a moment Salvatore asked quietly, ‘Is that all she told you?’
‘Only that your mother died suddenly.’
He sighed. ‘There’s a bit more to it than that.’
When he fell silent she moved closer and touched his face gently. ‘Do you want to tell me?’
‘Did my grandmother say that he brought his women home, and that they lived with us in a special part of the house where none of us were supposed to go?’
‘Yes, she said that.’
‘My mother encountered them sometimes. Then she’d retreat to her room and I’d hear her weeping. If I tried the door it was always locked. I wanted to comfort her, but she wouldn’t let me. I know now that there was no comfort anyone could have given her.
‘There was one woman whom my mother saw often because she wandered through the house whenever she wanted. She did it deliberately, I have no doubt of that. She wanted to be seen. She was letting everyone know that she considered herself the future mistress of the house, and my mother understood that message.
‘Then one night I stood outside her room, listening for her weeping, but it didn’t come. She never made a sound again. She’d taken her own life.
‘Since then I’ve always wondered, if I’d been more suspicious of the silence, if I’d forced the door open, would I have been in time to save her? I’ll never know.’
She was too shocked to utter comforting words where no comfort was possible. She only held him tight, stroking his head as tenderly as a mother with a child, and neither spoke for a long time.
‘How old were you when that happened?’ she whispered at last.
‘Fifteen.’
‘Sweet heaven!’
‘I grew up hating the idea of love because I’d seen what it could do. All women except my mother were monsters. It was safer to believe that. I resented you because you gave me thoughts I was ashamed of. I wanted you so badly that I’d forget everything else. All the things that had seemed important before were pushed aside, including my responsibilities to other people. In other words, I started acting like my father. I hated myself for that, and I almost hated you. But that was then. Not now.’
‘And now?’ she asked, breathless with hope.
‘Now I can say to you what I swear I’ve never said to any other woman: I love you. I thought I’d never say those words because I was sure they’d never mean anything to me. And I was content with that. I didn’t want to know. The world was safer without love. I was safer, and now I think I’ve always been seeking that safety, ever since the night I stood outside my mother’s silent room, and the world disintegrated.’
She almost said, ‘Safety-you?’ The mere thought of this powerful man knowing fear and uncertainty was incongruous. But she understood him now. He’d allowed her to see through the armour he wore against the rest of the world, into the wilderness, the place where that shattered fifteen-year-old boy still lived, cowering, begging for it not to be true.
She tightened her arms lovingly about him.
‘I didn’t see it then,’ he continued, ‘but I see it now. With you I found another world, one where there was love but no safety, and I think that’s why I was against you from the start.’
He gave a wry, self-mocking smile as he said, ‘I was afraid. That’s another thing I’ve never said before, but I can say it now. You were the unknown, and I didn’t have the courage to face it, until you took my hand and showed me the way. I can’t promise you an easy love, because it’s so new to me that I’m clumsy and ignorant. But I can promise you a faithful love, for all my life, and yours.’