by Victoria Fox
‘New single / departure / maturity / fan loyalty?’ Her notes ran out.
‘You got all you need?’ asked Kevin’s PR coldly. The dog barked, a shrill, piercing yap. Kevin continued to stare emptily at her through his shades.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Go suck on it,’ she thought she heard him mumble.
Eve took the tube to Green Park, where she drank coffee at The Wolseley, so strong and black it made her teeth hurt. The café’s lofty ceilings, gleaming floors and buzz of conversation brought to mind Orlando in his polished American world, dealing in money, fast cars and women, not giving her a thought as she wrestled alone with the biggest verdict of her life. Had he thought about her? Was he thinking of her now?
Angela’s engagement had been announced the previous week. Money stuck with money: that was the way it went. Orlando was the same. The only place his and Eve’s worlds had deigned to cross was in the bedroom. He had messaged once since their meeting with the stark words: I’ll pay. The instant the cash had landed in her account—too much, a gross sum to assuage his conscience as much as anything else—she had returned it. She didn’t need his guilt money. This wasn’t about that.
Eve spread her reports across the table. Her vision swam. The words blurred. Her scoop on Mitch Corrigan and Rome was the piece to define her career.
But for once that meant nothing. How could it, when tomorrow she was booked into the clinic and the life inside her died?
She paid her bill and left.
In the park she sat on a bench, cold, her hands clasped between her knees, looking out at nothing in particular. A jogger came past, his feet pounding the stiff April ground. She remembered being here as a girl, with her father, before things turned sour. Sitting on his shoulders. Making a daisy chain. Happy memories. She must have been five, maybe six—before Terry Harley got famous and their lives went to ruin. Greed. Vanity. Pride. Ego. How different things might have been.
It was too late now. Perversely, her mother had loved him until the day she died. Eve could not extend that charity. She could not care any more.
In 1987, Terry Harley had enjoyed one-time chart success with the band he had been toiling with for years. Overnight, their lives were transformed. Terry became public property. He became an idol, thrust into the spotlight, the country’s hero, not just hers. At first it had been fun, and he’d been happy, but when he stopped coming home she wished it would all go away and she could have her father back.
It’s just a performance, her mum used to comfort her, don’t be frightened. But soon the performance took over. The performance became his life.
He made millions—and lost them just as quick. Pissed away on alcohol, drugs and strippers. On his family’s misery. Terry turned from the man they knew. He turned into a monster: fame-grabbing and desperate and hell-bent on ruling the world.
In the months and years that followed, his campaign of terror began.
Terry rolled home drunk every night of the week. He beat her mother black and blue. He locked them in cupboards, his own flesh and blood, starving and crying and battering the door as they begged through their tears to be let out. One night, Eve had listened at the top of the stairs. Terry was on the rampage; she heard her mother’s pleas as he threw her across the kitchen, calling her a whore, a bitch—his wife, Eve’s mother, how could he? Eve darted to bed, the sheets taut, trembling with fright, and heard his footsteps mount the stairs—thump thump thump. The handle turned. She had seen him against the light, a savage silhouette swaying queasily in the shadows. When he approached, horror set in, paralysing her, impossible to make a sound. She thought her heart might stop. She thought she would die. What was he going to do?
He had put his hand around his daughter’s throat. Seconds passed. Eternity. Booze fumes filled the air. Eve blinked against the black veil of consciousness.
Next time, she knew he would kill her.
Terry Harley was the reason Eve did the job she did. Stripping it bare wasn’t going to win her any fans, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that when she was little she had wished for a miracle. She had wished for an angel who could see through walls, inside keyholes and under doors, an angel who could witness her situation as it really was, not as it appeared to be. Not how everyone else saw it.
She had wished for someone to explode the myth.
Today, she was that person.
Terry was a prime example of what happened when fame went wrong. People deserved to know. They deserved to see. Eve knew what it was like to live in the shadow of fame. She knew what it was to live in terror of someone powerful.
It was her war, and she meant every word.
‘You’ll never amount to anything!’ he had thrown at her once. ‘You’ll never do anything important—not like me!’
Eve put a hand on her stomach. Tomorrow was the right thing. It was.
Angela pulled up outside The Ritz. Her car almost collided with an auburn-haired woman crossing the road. She recognised her but couldn’t think from where.
Scooping up her cell, she braced herself and dialled Orlando. ‘Can you talk?’
Her brother was terser than usual. Orlando was in Boston this week, on the tail of a new resort franchise. ‘No,’ he snapped, ‘I haven’t got time.’ Then: ‘What is it?’
‘I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.’
Her chauffeur opened the car door and Angela stepped out. Heads turned as she entered the hotel.
The time had come to tell her brothers everything: about Silvers, about the future, about their father’s illness and the true nature of her engagement. She could carry the secret no longer.
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘London. Investors.’
‘Makes a change—I’m surprised that fiancé of yours let you out of his sight.’
‘He doesn’t tell me what to do.’
‘That sounds like a real American love story.’
‘Fuck off. Expect me Friday. Luca should be there too.’
‘What is this? You ditching the mob and eloping with Noah?’
His name stabbed her. ‘What?’
‘Come on, Angela, I’m not blind. He can’t be happy about Dino.’
‘It’s nothing to him. We broke up ages ago.’
There was a short silence. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Stay out of it, Orlando, I mean it. Have you heard from him?’
‘Noah?’
‘Luca.’
‘The Hamptons.’
‘Get him on a plane. And I don’t want Dad knowing anything about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘As if I haven’t got enough on my mind.’
It wasn’t like Orlando to admit liability. ‘Need to talk?’
‘It’s personal shit—it’s getting sorted. I’ll deal. I always do.’
‘Good. Then prepare to have some more shit thrown in. I’ll see you at the weekend.’
18
Palo Alto, California
MoveFriends HQ was the greatest sight this side of LA. Jacob thought so every time he visited. The glass building buzzed with entrepreneurial spirit, mixing the finest minds on the globe: what it was to be at the inception of something.
Leith Friedman was a geeky curly-haired guy who spent hours plugged into his music system and tapping code into a machine. His lanky frame was splayed across a Perspex chair in the open-plan arrangement, and in true Leith style his pants were too short for his legs, offering a glimpse of mismatched red and blue socks.
Jacob put a hand on his shoulder. Leith removed the plugs.
‘Yo,’ said Leith. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
Jacob thrust his hands in his pockets. He sensed the eyes of every female on his back. It was the same as on his college jaunts, crashing a sorority party and being spoiled for choice. Sorority girls were horny. He’d done things with them he didn’t dare repeat
—unless he was watching it back, of course. Kathleen and Kitty, the two special Ks. That had to be one of the most viewed in his collection.
A chick in a pencil skirt walked past. Jacob undressed her with his eyes.
Leith was looking at him. ‘What’s up?’
‘Do I need a reason to check in on my investment?’
‘Knowing you, there’s an ulterior motive.’
Jacob grinned. ‘Always is. You got an hour?’
Jacob’s business summits frequently took place in nightclubs. He liked to get drunk, shout ideas loudly over the music and get whoever he was with so soaked on tequila that he could extract from them precisely what he needed.
‘You’re here to persuade me,’ Leith ventured. ‘Aren’t you?’
Jacob downed a shot. ‘It makes sense.’
‘Aren’t we rich enough already?’
Jacob’s reply was swallowed by the music. He repeated it:
‘How rich is rich enough?’
‘The money’s a bonus. I never did this for the money.’
‘Bull.’
‘I did it to change how we access the world. To bring people together.’
‘What are you now, Jesus fucking Christ?’
Leith wrung his hands. Jacob fed him another shot. ‘Listen,’ he straightened his jacket, ‘this is win-win. You still get to change the world, Friedman—you get to change the world in a bigger way than you or I ever dreamed.’ He dropped his voice so only Leith could hear. ‘This is the Russian government we’re talking about, man … do you get it?’
Leith pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘What if someone finds out?’
‘They won’t.’
‘How can you know?’
‘This kind of trade goes down all the time. Collusions, collaborations, the whole world gets built on it. D’you think we know the first thing about what goes on in our own government? Deals get made every hour of the day. Don’t you want in?’
‘It’s sinister.’
‘What isn’t? This is business, my friend. Remember when we started out? Remember what I told you? You need balls to get ahead. Big fucking balls. Because everyone’s out for a piece and most of these guys have got bigger balls than you. Only you know how big your balls actually are—the rest is pretend.’
‘Can we stop talking about my balls, please?’
Jacob kicked back in his chair. The way he saw it, the proposal was a gift. Any growing industry would receive an approach for takeover sooner or later, and the only thing that made their situation extraordinary was the unusual nature of the bid. Russia wanted MoveFriends for reasons unspecified. If reports were to be trusted, they had been assembling an advanced global surveillance system for the last decade. Jacob believed MoveFriends would form part of a grid able to footprint where any individual was at any given time, combining all the personal data of Facebook with a geographical tracking of where in the world that person was. When you took it that way, their site was already doing the job: just because they wrapped it up as a non-obligatory social network didn’t detract from the essential notes of scrutiny. Jacob had put this to his partner before. Leith had capitulated. The sale would make them richer than kings.
‘We lose control,’ shouted Leith, over a blast of Jason Derulo.
‘Then we forge on. MoveFriends has grown. It’s time to fly the nest.’
Leith accepted another shot. He removed his glasses and wiped them on the fabric of his shirt. Then he replaced them, lifted his drink and said: ‘All right. You’ve got yourself a deal.’
By the time Jacob returned to his apartment, he was defiantly drunk. Leaps in business gave him the violent horn. He fumbled with his key card, forehead slumped against the door, and Tawny Lascelles swam into his head. He had to have her. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. She was a super-fox. He was frantic to nail her.
He would contact his assistant about it in the morning. Nobody refused Jacob Lyle and got away with it. If Tawny didn’t come to him, he would have to go to her.
Inside, he loosened his tie and flopped onto the bed. He grinned, the ceiling spinning, at what a ride life was: a multibillion-dollar enterprise; a treaty with one of the most formidable powers on the planet; girls queuing round the block to suck his famous dick …
Jacob thought of all the entrepreneurs who had approached Leith and him in the beginning, pitching their ideas, anxiously crapping their pants for approval and praying that if a dash of the MoveFriends magic rubbed off on their own initiative they would be made for ten lifetimes. Some of the concepts Jacob had sat through had been nothing short of insane. These days everyone fancied himself as the next big breakthrough. Having the audacity was one thing, but having the means and the intelligence to carry it forward quite another. It was why he and Leith fit so well.
Before Jacob passed out, one such encounter crept into his memory. A couple of years ago now, a kid they had laughed out of the room. A kid they had made cry.
Dark hair, pale skin, a stammer …
That wasn’t why they’d laughed; it was the kid’s blueprint. Jacob would never forget it. A living doll, anatomically precise, fitted with voice recordings and a library of phrases, some soothing, some sexual, anything you wanted to hear, all you had to do was ask. The doll was a friend when there was nowhere to turn: a robot for the lonely and the lost. He couldn’t decide if it was more spooky or tragic.
Jacob wasn’t proud of his behaviour, but neither did he award it a great deal of thought. He hadn’t got this far by making friends.
He hoped he hadn’t made too many enemies either.
19
Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary
Voldan Cane was drawing his plans.
Slowly but surely, they assumed their dreadful shape. Night and day he strived. He researched every name on his beloved son’s list. He found things out—the basics, the details, the obscure—and in doing so furnished himself with all he needed about the seven: where they lived, their families, where they had grown up, what they wore, what they ate, what they drank, who they slept with, their fears and phobias, their weaknesses, their strengths, their greatest loves and their greatest losses …
No stone was left unturned in Voldan’s pursuit of knowledge.
Before the discovery of Grigori’s box, his life had held no purpose. Now, he had been given a quest. Grigori had offered it to him from beyond the grave.
Avenge me, Father, he seemed to cry. Make them pay!
Wind and rain thrashed against the windows of Szolsvár’s Great Hall. A whistling draught in the rafters cried a haunting cry, reminiscent of his lost wife’s moans as she writhed in the throes of childbirth. The ghosts had returned.
Voldan brought his wheelchair to a halt in the centre of the stone floor.
Janika had done the best she could with the mess, but there remained a tell-tale stain if you knew where to look. The fifth slab from the arched window bore a faint, fiery hue. It was where Voldan had crashed, leaping from the same mezzanine as his son and breaking like china, the blood seeping thickly. Only, where Grigori had succeeded in making away with himself, Voldan had failed.
Voldan had been gathered up, a cracked doll, his spine snapped in two.
The wheelchair had been his penance—that, and the appalling beast that confronted him every time he peered into a mirror. For the plummet to stone had not been Voldan’s first attempt on his life. In the early agonies of his son’s demise, he had made an initial, idiotic attempt at suicide by chucking a bucket of acid in his face. His reflection had been too like his son’s to abide—he could meet it no longer.
To be deformed and disabled, what point had there been to his life?
Now, at last, there was a point. The devil worked in mysterious ways. He had been spared in order to carry out this fatal assignment.
Seven deadly sinners …
How he despised them! They were the people who had wronged his Grigori, who had forced his son to see no way out of this cruel, unfeeling
world but for the horrible exit he had taken. They had crushed his spirit. They had ruined him.
Mercy was not an option.
Vanity, pride, lust, greed—whatever their crime, one punishment fit them all.
The plot Voldan had conceived was outrageous. It was high risk, and it was high impact. It would rock the world and shock the masses. It was gloriously evil and resplendently clever. There would be no traces—nothing to lead them to Szolsvár.
He could hear Janika rattling around in the far reaches of the castle, preparing the summons he had so diligently worded, envelopes ready to courier at dawn.
Voldan closed his eyes and pictured the invitations in his mind.
The trip of a lifetime … A charitable cause …
The kind of publicity an emperor alone could buy.
Two months was all. Two months until it began.
20
Las Vegas
‘Angela! Dino! When can we expect to hear wedding bells?’
A crowd of press jostled at the entrance to the Parisian. Even at public appearances, galas or business matters for FNYC, the attention had never been this extreme. News of the union had exploded across the media.
Angela Silvers and Dino Zenetti: the golden couple. Engaged.
She pictured the word on a locked bathroom door. ENGAGED. Click and then closed. Bolted in. Trapped.
‘Hey, slow down!’ revelled Dino, in a pressed Ralph Lauren ensemble that was in defiance of the Nevada sun. ‘I only just managed to get a ring on her finger!’
‘Angela, this got serious fast! Was it love at first sight?’
She knew what love at first sight felt like. This wasn’t it.
‘Dino and me,’ she said, ‘it was one of those things. Sometimes it comes right out of the blue and catches you when you least expect.’
It didn’t matter what lies came out of her mouth. Angela was a puppet for these people, not a person. The cameras formed a glittering wall that she stared straight through, her smile a rictus, Dino’s hand holding tight to hers, cold and clammy.
The Boston house had received bouquets and magnums, congratulations from Donald’s associates and abundant gifts designed to secure allegiance with the world’s newest megadynasty. Dino welcomed the attention, of course. As Carmine’s only son, he had waited to step into his moment. Angela was the prize. Dreams came true.