The Santiago Sisters

by Victoria Fox

  ‘You heard. I want to marry you. I want to make you my wife.’

  She was shocked. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Scarlet’s sorting herself out—or so I hear. I can begin divorce proceedings.’ Vitto touched her face. ‘We’ll be free. I know it’s fast, but what’s the point in delaying? Scarlet only pulled that selfish prank because she’s as miserable as I am. You believe me, don’t you?’

  Calida had turned that woman’s plight over and over in her head. Scarlet was troubled; it wasn’t Vittorio’s fault. He was a victim as well, afraid to cut ties for fear of what she would do next. Calida had stuck by him through the thrashing media, staying silent in the wings, knowing the real reasons for the breakdown: mental instability, a history of psychosis. She had to trust him. ‘Of course I do,’ she said.

  ‘Focusing on a wedding would be exactly the start I need.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know it’s not the most romantic proposal,’ he said, as if he were apologising for an over-cooked steak before dumping it in front of her, ‘but there it is. If Scarlet sees me engaged, she might finally realise that I cannot help her any more …’

  ‘Did you hear me, Vitto? I said yes.’

  A smile broke over his face like sun across an Italian field. ‘You will?’

  ‘For the third time, yes.’

  He kissed her, as ardently as he had when they had first met.

  ‘You won’t regret it,’ Vittorio murmured, easing her back on the couch, the ice cream forgotten apart from the cold slip of his tongue as it found hers.

  I know I won’t, thought Calida, picturing Tess Geddes’ face when she read the news and saw her long-lost sister’s picture alongside the famous tycoon’s.

  The notion was electrifying. You bet I won’t.

  ‘What the hell?’ Lucy asked on Friday evening, after Calida told her about the proposal. ‘What is he thinking? His wife nearly died!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Calida, I mean it—I get that he’s hot and rich and whatever, but marriage?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘Is love one of them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to marry him if I didn’t love him.’

  Lucy frowned. ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘Give Vitto a break, he’s been through a tough time—’

  ‘Nuh-uh, I’m not buying it,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m your best friend and I wouldn’t be much of one if I weren’t honest with you. This is the rest of your life we’re talking about, and you need to know where you stand. Have you even met his family?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘His friends?’ she pushed. ‘Do you even know that much about him? How can you be sure he hasn’t been stringing you along? That there’s nobody else?’

  ‘You’re over-thinking,’ said Calida. She didn’t want to hear it. In her soul she already knew, but she was strapped on to the ride and there was no way she was getting off. It had taken years to secure her ticket. This was too precious to let go.

  I won. You lost. He’s marrying me, not you. He chose me.

  ‘So he’s left Scarlet,’ said Lucy.

  ‘He’s leaving her.’

  ‘And how exactly are you going to appear when it comes out he’s got engaged two seconds later? When Scarlet’s still on suicide watch?’

  ‘She isn’t.’

  ‘I heard she was.’

  ‘Vitto told me different.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that!’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know what.’

  ‘If I was getting engaged to him,’ said Lucy, ‘what would you tell me?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘It’s totally fair.’

  ‘OK.’ Calida thought about it. ‘I’d tell you to be careful, but that it’s your life and your decision, and I’d support whatever path you took.’

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. ‘Focus on the be careful part.’

  Lucy’s words stayed with her as she travelled across town for a shoot. All the way through the job she was unable to focus. Marrying Vitto was a means to an end. It marked deep satisfaction, a payoff at the end of a long, hard-fought match.

  But then what?

  She couldn’t think that far ahead—but it wasn’t that far, not really. After the glitz and sparkle of a wedding, Calida would have this man in her bed until the day she died. Would he be faithful to her? Would she make him content enough never again to stray? No, she admitted, probably not. And why didn’t she care? Why didn’t she care if Vitto slept with dozens of other women while they were together?

  Because she didn’t love him: she had axed love out of her life.

  Love came at the expense of revenge. It was as clear-cut as that.

  At the close of the day, she made a decision, and directed the cab away from her usual route and towards Central Park. Vittorio had given her a key, once, to his apartment. She headed there now, wrapping her coat around her to shield her from the cold. A harsh wind was building. In the taxi, radio reports clamoured about the incoming Hurricane Sandy, instructing citizens to stay indoors, warning of floods and electrical cuts. Calida could sense a pressure in the air, of something tense about to break.

  Debris whipped and rolled and flipped on the sidewalks. Stores were bolted shut; their windows closed. The air howled like wolves.

  She reached his building and turned the key. Inside, the shelter was absolute. The foyer was cool, the marble indifferent, and a glossy bank of elevators offered to take her to the penthouse suite. On floor 37, she stepped out into the carpeted hall. She came to his number and stood in front of it, looking at the gold figures: 501.

  This high up, she could hear the gale take on a new pitch, like singing. A bulb flickered overhead. There was a rattling shudder from the floors below.

  Calida inserted her card. For a crazy instant she expected Vitto to be here and felt a frisson shoot up her spine at the possibility—of fear, excitement? But the place was deserted. The maid had been. Through the immaculate atrium, the bed was made, linens pulled tight and pillows plumped. Calida thought of all the ways Vitto had taken her in this room and suddenly it felt sordid. Had he brought other women here?

  She began in his study. Files, cabinets, desk drawers, she skimmed through them all, careful to arrange things as she had found them. What was she searching for? Evidence—for or against, it didn’t matter. Knowledge. Certainty.

  All was neat and meticulously ordered. Everything smelled of leather and ink. The bathroom yielded little, just a cupboard containing a toothbrush, painkillers, an empty phial of Xanax and some dental floss. In the living area, a glossy antique globe was filled with cut glass and, beyond that, a brushed granite bar boasted an array of bottled liquor. Finally she sat, exhausted, feeling foolish for her misgivings.

  Supposing he’s truthful … and I’m spying on him? My husband-to-be.

  She resolved to go. Before she did, on a final whim, she went to the bedroom. Idly she flicked through a few drawers but was more concerned with the accelerating wind that was moaning against the windows. Spats of rain patted the panes, streaking at first then threatening to burst. Grey clouds rumbled and churned in the distance; flashes of light glowing and sparking between. It wasn’t a New York sky. It looked as if New York had been lifted and put down in another location, even on another planet. The metropolis, with its zing of cash and thrum of life, belonged to people and galleries and sushi bars. The sky, huge and Biblical, belonged to an ancient, savage anger.

  Then, Calida saw it. She tugged one of the drawers too hard and something glittering spilled into view. It appeared to her like something from a dream.

  A gold chain, puddled there, with an oval at its centre.

  It was the size and shape of a pebble. For a weird moment Calida thought it was hers, it had to be hers, and had to touch her neck to remind her that it wasn’t.

  It was someone else’s. A matching one, exactly the same … A locke
t.

  Teresita’s locket.

  Calida blinked. She stood still for a very long time, trying to wake from this illusion, it had to be an illusion, but each time she opened her eyes it was still there.

  She experienced a flashback, bright and quick as lightning: Teresita being driven away in the car that day, her face through the window, hopeful and sad, searching for her twin’s and never finding it. Calida had stayed out of sight, and then, as now, had touched the locket at her throat just as Teresita’s had glinted in the light.

  The question sailed towards her like paper on the wind.

  Had her sister been wearing her necklace all this time?

  Had she kept it, cherished it; worn it with Vitto, with Steven, with Simone?

  Why hadn’t she got rid of it? Why hadn’t she thrown it away?

  The Tess Geddes Calida knew—or rather didn’t know—would have melted it to liquid and forged gold coins from the pool. I don’t have a sister, she’d said.

  But that didn’t make sense. Not if she’d kept it. For this wasn’t just jewellery: it was a bind, a declaration of their sisterhood, two halves of a whole, from the day Diego had given them, wrapped in tissue, and they’d helped each other tie the catch.

  The locket flashed. Calida fought to join the dots, to add the sum, her brain tripping over itself to decipher what it meant. Outside, a hurricane ignited.

  Pocketing the necklace, Calida fled the apartment. The elevators were out of order so she took the stairs, two or three at a time, running, unable to believe what had happened, and emerged on the street, straight into the eye of the storm.

  42

  Stockholm

  In her parents’ mansion a short drive north of the city, Scarlet Schuhausen grabbed the divorce papers that had arrived that morning and tossed them into the fire.

  Good riddance. I’ll sign over my dead body.

  He’d like that, wouldn’t he? If she’d succeeded in taking her own life. Give him a clean divorce, an easy way out, then he could resume screwing his way across Europe, across America, across every fucking continent on the globe.

  Scarlet fell to her knees in front of the hearth. The family’s snoozing greyhound, Pippi, peeled one eye open. She held on to Pippi’s fur and cried.

  Hidden behind the mantelpiece was her secret addiction. It should have been drugs; it should have been liquor—but it wasn’t. She pulled out the envelope. The rest of the photographs Henry Doric had sent. Cuttings she herself had collected.

  All of the same, hated woman … That slut.

  What she longed to do to that whore! From the second she had identified Tess Geddes in the pictures, the woman had possessed her. Had Tess met him through Steven? Had she gone crying to Vitto about her husband’s perversions, and together they had conjured up perversions of their own? I’ll show you perversions, you tramp.

  Scarlet had already dispatched her team of trusted moles. They were following Tess right now, tracking her moves, steering her into that final corner from which she would be unable to escape. Scarlet would meet her there. Then she’d have her fun.

  The time had come to take back what was hers. Oh, yes.

  Tess Geddes was going to pay.

  43

  England

  A thousand miles away, Tess woke early and stumbled downstairs in her stone-built Cotswold cottage. She flicked on the kettle and listened to the radio; winter sunlight streamed into the kitchen, bathing the surfaces and bouncing off the wooden floor.

  Escape. She had sought it, and she had found it. Already she felt safer, no longer prickling at the slightest creak or shiver, or jumping at her cell or whenever the door buzzed. Out of the city, her paranoia eased. Her suspicions waned. Too long she had been in the vortex of the public eye. Thank God she’d got out before she’d had another breakdown. This was it, then. Peace. Anonymity. Safety.

  Tess opened the door to welcome the morning. A robin landed on a nearby branch, where it hesitated a moment before darting off. Down at the gate, a cold stream of blue threaded among the rockeries, shot through with darting fish and mossy clumps of riverweed. Tess shivered, still in her nightdress, and was about to check herself for venturing into plain sight before remembering that here, in this refuge, there were no paparazzi lurking to take her picture. Who cared what she looked like?

  Over breakfast she read yesterday’s paper. There was a piece at the back about Vittorio—months on from their own break-up, apparently he was divorcing Scarlet and marrying someone else. The paper made cryptic reference to ‘a new woman in Da Strovisi’s life’, and ‘the promise of marriage to this mystery belle compels him to take the leap …’ Tess felt sorry for whoever had fallen prey to his advances. Vittorio had conned her, led her to believe that anyone with whom sex was that good—the first great sex of her life—had to be right. Wrong. But then Steven had been terrible at sex and he’d been wrong too.

  Tess closed the paper just as her post dropped through the door. She had asked Maximilian to hold all her mail unless it was urgent, and had given this address only to a select number of people. She went to check the mat, and saw an envelope from Mia.

  Inside, a plain white card was stamped with black script:

  Mia Ferraris & Alex Dalton

  invite

  Tess Geddes

  to celebrate their wedding

  on: Saturday, October 25, 2014

  at: Le Château de Montereau, Paris

  Tess digested the words. She was thrilled for her friend; Mia was the dearest person to her and she wanted her to be happy. But something stuck. She hadn’t seen Alex since before her car crash and only faintly remembered him being at the hospital—but maybe she had dreamed that part. After all, she had dreamed the part about her sister coming. Emily Chilcott had later admitted, lamely, to never having crossed the Atlantic. ‘Things were super-busy …’ she’d claimed. ‘But I knew you’d be all right …’

  Alex’s care and concern for her had once been an aggravation—but Tess saw now, too late, that she’d liked it. Nobody since Calida had cared for her that way, the real her, the girl inside, her uncertain soul and her weakest parts. Alex had.

  But he didn’t care for her any more. Why should he? He had a beautiful, brilliant fiancée who deserved all his time and attention. ‘We want a long engagement,’ Mia had told her when she’d first shared her news. ‘It has to be perfect, every detail.’ Tess could only imagine how lovely it must be to plan a day like that, to take the time and care to make it right, because you knew that the person you were marrying was your forever.

  Tess placed the invitation on the mantelpiece. Before leaving the room, she turned it so it was facing the wall. For some reason, she couldn’t stand to look at it.

  The New Year arrived. The land remained cold and frosty; lights glowed in windows in early evening and the trees gleamed, bare and brittle. Maximilian ramped up the pressure to get her back in LA. To appease him, Tess cited the spring.

  A fortnight before she was due to leave, she received a call.

  ‘Tess? It’s Alex.’

  She was stunned; said the first thing that popped into her head. ‘Is Mia OK?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ A pause, before: ‘I’m staying in Chalmley. Mia told me you were in hiding out nearby … I thought maybe I could take you to dinner?’

  ‘What are you doing in England?’ she blurted.

  ‘Visiting my mother.’

  She was confused. ‘I thought your mother was …’ How would I know anything if I hadn’t been snooping on you? ‘I mean,’ she tripped, ‘I didn’t know if—’

  ‘Mum’s buried here,’ Alex said easily. ‘She was British—it’s where she grew up. It’s her birthday next week. I always come to the UK this time of year.’

  He said it so plainly that it broke her heart.

  ‘Is your dad with you?’ she asked.

  Alex made a noise that sounded like a laugh. ‘No.’

  ‘Is Mia?’

  ‘She had to fly out to Switzerl
and.’

  ‘Right.’

  Another beat. ‘So,’ he resumed, ‘do you want to?’ There was that tone again, the amused, entitled tone she used to find so exasperating but was now thankful to hear. They were friends, catching up; that was all. Mia had put them in touch.

  ‘OK,’ she agreed.

  ‘There are some good places between us …’ Alex said, and she waited because she sensed he hadn’t finished. ‘Or better still, I could cook for you at my house?’

  ‘You have a house?’

  ‘My aunt’s—she’s away.’

  ‘You can cook?’

  He laughed. ‘I can try.’ She felt his smile. ‘I’m always willing to try, Pirate.’

  On Saturday evening, Tess left at seven, her cab winding through pitch-black country lanes, the moon full in a ghostly sky. She felt silly for taking so long in deciding what to wear—since their phone call, if she was honest—and had eventually elected to play it casual, heels and a slip-on amber dress. Play it? You’re not playing anything, you fool. This is Alex. He’s Mia’s fiancé. He’s that cocky, up-himself kid at the danse d’éntrée who watched you hurl into a plant pot. Nevertheless, she couldn’t suppress the net of butterflies whose wings fluttered in her belly. She tried to find her gold locket, wanted to wear it, but it was nowhere. I probably left it in LA.

  When she arrived, reaching the cobbled building and hearing the cows moo softly in the dark, she was surprised. She had expected a grand estate to match Alex’s heritage, but this was modest—not much bigger than her own rented place. She thought about how Alex’s parents had met, what had drawn them to each other, and which one he was most like. Tess recognised the cavalier alpha associated with Richard Dalton’s oil empire, but there was another side, too. A deeper side; a side she hadn’t explored.

  Alex looked handsome when he answered the door, in a green-checked shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He didn’t look vain or arrogant any more. The impression had been a trick, and Tess felt cheated and excited at the same time, that this person had been beneath all these years and she hadn’t seen him.