Enthralled by Moretti

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I can’t discuss that either.’

  Alessandro stood up abruptly. ‘Good luck finding your money,’ he told her coldly. ‘If anything needs to be discussed about the shelter, you might want another lawyer to handle it.’

  ‘I’ve already begun tidying up all my ongoing case files. Someone else will be handling all the details with the shelter. I...I’ve been given permission to leave at the end of the week. I should be working out a month’s notice but my boss—’

  ‘Not really interested.’

  Chase remained standing, watching his departing back. She told herself, bracingly, that it was always going to end—yet the hollowness filling her felt as destructive as a tsunami. If she wasn’t a homeowner, if she had been one of the millions renting, she knew that she would have upped sticks and disappeared. No job, no Alessandro and a threat waiting for her when she returned: it took all her courage to gather herself and head back outside down to the underground.

  Brian would be there. He had told her in a chummy voice laced with menace that he would be waiting when she returned, that he didn’t mind just hanging out there, although if she wanted to hand her key over to him...

  Chase shuddered.

  * * *

  Heading in the opposite direction back to his office, Alessandro angrily realised that the very last thing he was in the mood to do was work. He still had a conference call lined up for later that evening. He got on his mobile, spoke to his secretary and cancelled it.

  Hell, could he have been that stupid that he had fallen for the walk up the garden path yet again? With tremendous effort, he side-lined the fury raging through him and tried to recall the details of their brief conversation in the brasserie.

  She hadn’t given him an answer when he had asked her why she had handed in her notice if she needed money. That, for one thing, made no sense. Whatever debts she had managed to incur, she wasn’t so stupid that she could imagine settling them without a regular salary coming in. So had she been sacked? Had they discovered something? Had she been embezzling? It seemed a ludicrous idea, but hell, how was he to know when she had offered no explanation for her behaviour?

  No, this was not going to happen again. He was emphatically not going to be left stranded with a bucket load of unanswered questions, as had happened last time round. Whether he ever laid eyes on her again or not was immaterial. He would pay her a little visit and would stay put until she answered all his questions to his satisfaction. Then, and only then, would he leave.

  He called his driver to collect him. Rush-hour traffic meant that it took a ridiculously long time before his driver made it to the building, even though his car, parked outside his house, was only a matter of a couple miles away as the crow flew. It took even longer to navigate the stand-still traffic in central London.

  His mobile buzzed continuously and he eventually switched it off. He was fully given over to trying to disentangle the conversation he had had with Chase. He felt like a man in possession of just sufficient pieces of a complex puzzle to rouse curiosity and yet lacking the essential ones that would solve the conundrum.

  This, he told himself, was why he was sitting in the back of his car, drumming his fingers restlessly on the leather seat and frowning out of the back window. He had been presented with a complex puzzle and it was only human nature to try and figure it out, whatever the cost. Frankly, he would drag answers out of her if he had to.

  It was considerably later than he had expected by the time the car swung into her small road. From outside, he could see that lights were on. ‘You can leave,’ he told his driver. ‘I’ll get a cab back to my house.’ He slammed the door and watched as the Jag slowly disappeared around the corner.

  If there was a small voice in his head telling him that his appearance on her doorstep made little sense, given the fact that she had never been destined to be a permanent feature in his life, he chose to ignore it. Finding answers seemed more important than debating the finer points.

  He leaned his hand on the doorbell and kept it there for an inordinately long time. Where the hell was she? If the lights were on, then she was home. She had a thing about wasting electricity, just one of her many little quirks to which he had become accustomed. He scowled at the very fact that he was remembering that at this juncture.

  Chase heard the insistent buzzing of the doorbell but it took her a second or two before she generated the enthusiasm to get the door. In the lounge, a fuming Brian was filling a bin bag with whatever he fancied he could take from her. There was nothing she could do about it; he was bigger and he had no conscience when it came to violence.

  She’d have done anything to get rid of him, to have him out of her house. He told her to get rid of whoever was at the door.

  ‘Too busy here for visitors, darling. Still a lot to get through before I leave!’

  Chase pulled open the door and her mouth fell open in shock. Alessandro was the last person she had expected to find on her doorstep.

  ‘You’re not getting rid of me until you tell me what the hell is really going on with you!’ were his opening words.

  ‘Alessandro, you have to go.’

  She was scared stiff; that much he could see. He pushed past her and halted as a man in his thirties sauntered out of the living room. In the space of mere seconds, Alessandro had processed the guy and reached his verdict. This was no smarmy, overpaid young lawyer. This was a thug and, whatever was going on, Chase was afraid.

  ‘And you are...?’ If there was going to be a fight, then he was more than up for it.

  ‘Not about to tell you, mate. Hang on...thought you said you’d broken up with lover boy? Lying to me, were you? Don’t like lies...’

  Alessandro clenched his fists. Chase had backed away and was stammering out some sort of explanation which he barely registered. No, this wasn’t going to do. He had hold of the man’s tee-shirt and felt roughly one hundred and forty pounds of packed muscle try to squirm away from him. Escape was never destined to be. He propelled the man back towards the sitting room. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the room had been decimated. A black bin bag was stuffed to overflowing on the ground. Another was half-full. Was this the ‘spot of bother’ she was in?

  ‘You’re going to tell me what’s going on...’ He addressed her but kept his eye on his frantically writhing captive. The man was a bully; Alessandro could spot the signs a mile away. The sort of loser who didn’t mind throwing his weight around with anyone weaker than him but would run a mile if faced with stiff competition. Alessandro prided himself on being stiff competition. He listened intently while Chase babbled something about Brian wanting money...taking her stuff...

  The missing pieces were beginning to fall into place. So the money had been a legitimate request. She hadn’t been trying to con gold out of him. ‘Here’s what you’re going to do, buddy.’ His voice was low, soft and razor-sharp. ‘You’re going to unload that bin bag and return all the nice lady’s possessions to her. Then you’re going to apologise and, when you’ve finished apologising, you’re going to leave quietly through that front door and never show your face here again. Do you read me loud and clear?

  ‘And just in case...’ He tightened his stranglehold so that the man was gasping to catch his breath. ‘You get it into your head that you can ignore what I’m telling you, here’s what will happen to you if you do. I’ll employ someone to dredge up every scrap of dirt on you—and I’m betting that there’s a lot—and then I’m going to make sure that you get put behind bars and the key is conveniently thrown away. And don’t think I won’t do it. I will. And I’ll enjoy every second of it.’

  He watched in silence, arms folded, as his orders were obeyed. Out of the bin bag came all the bits and pieces which, Alessandro knew, would have taken Chase years to accumulate. Some were worthless, some—such as her computer, her tablet, the plasma-screen tele
vision which she had laughingly told him had been an absolute indulgence because she really didn’t watch much TV—weren’t.

  His apology was grudgingly given until Alessandro ordered him to try harder, to say it like he meant it...

  He left as quietly as he had been ordered to do. Then there was just the two of them, standing in a room that looked as though a bomb had exploded in it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Chase mumbled. Yet she was so glad that he had come because now she felt utterly safe. She moved to begin picking up some of her possessions from the ground, stacking them neatly on the sofa, very conscious of Alessandro’s eyes on her. ‘Why did you come?’ she asked.

  ‘You need something stiff to drink.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Do you have any brandy?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She finally met his eyes and hesitantly perched on the edge of the chair with her hands on her knees. ‘There’s half a bottle of wine in the fridge,’ she offered when he continued to look at her in silence. ‘It’s all I can do by way of drink, I’m afraid. I don’t keep spirits in the house.’ Shock was creeping over her. She didn’t want alcohol but she had to admit that she felt a little better after she had swallowed a mouthful from the glass he placed in her shaking hand a minute later.

  ‘I guess you want to know what all that was about,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Understatement of the decade, Chase.’

  Chase stared down at her fingers. She’d been rescued by a man who had only returned to the scene to find out what was going on because he was like that—would never have been able to accept a brush off without demanding answers.

  She would have to explain how it was that she knew Brian, how he had happened to be in her house. She would have to come clean about her background and know that he would be filled with contempt. Contempt for a woman who had lied about a fundamental aspect of her life and maintained the lie all through the time she had been seeing him. But there still remained a part of her that she refused to reveal, because to reveal it would be to lower herself even more in his estimation.

  ‘You’d better sit down and I’ll tell you. And then...’ She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘You can leave and it’ll finally be over between us.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE WAS STILL in her work clothes, the same dreary grey suit, except she looked...rumpled.

  ‘Did he lay a finger on you?’ Alessandro asked suddenly. ‘Did he touch you?’ This was as far out of his comfort zone as he had ever been. Even with parents intent on squandering their inheritance—parents who had been shining examples of irresponsibility; who had opened the doors of their various houses to artists and poets and playwrights, most of whom had been pleasantly stoned most of the time—through all that, he had never come into contact with the seedier side of life. The side of life that threw up people like the thug who had just been thrown off the premises. Even with diminishing wealth, he had still lived a sheltered, privileged life.

  ‘No. No, he didn’t.’ Chase could see the incredulity stamped on his beautiful face. He was shocked at what he had found, shocked that the woman he thought came from a solid, middle-class background could know someone like Brian Shepherd. ‘Although it’s not unheard of for Brian to lay into someone just for the hell of it, never mind if he thinks they’ve done something to him.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that guy, Chase?’ Alessandro frowned. ‘When you said that you couldn’t tell me why you needed the money, did you mean that you owed that creep money?’

  ‘No, I did not owe that creep any money. He just...’ She stood up, suddenly restless, but then immediately sat back down because her legs felt like jelly.

  ‘What, then...?’

  ‘If you would just sit down and stop prowling.’

  Alessandro paused to look at her narrowly. ‘If you didn’t owe the guy money, then why would he have gathered half of your possessions and stuffed them into a bin bag?’ He sat on the chair facing her. Their body language was identical, both sitting forward, arms resting loosely on their thighs although, whilst Alessandro’s expression was one of intense curiosity, Chase’s was more resigned and reflective.

  ‘Brian and Shaun were friends,’ she said quietly, not daring to meet his eyes, fearful of what she would see there. ‘They were friends from before I met Shaun, childhood friends, even though Brian was older. They grew up on the same council estate.’

  ‘Which calls into question the type of man you chose to marry.’

  ‘When you’re young, it’s very easy to get drawn in to the wrong crowd.’

  ‘I’m trying to picture your parents allowing you to get drawn in to the wrong crowd. Or didn’t they have any say in the matter? Maybe they were too busy projecting to happy times ahead in Australia...?’

  ‘There is no Australia.’

  ‘Sorry, but I’m not following you.’

  Chase nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. She wondered what hand of fate it was that had returned Alessandro to her life, only to have her fall in love with him all over again. Instead of getting him out of her system by sleeping with him, by putting that unfulfilled fantasy to rest, she had managed to well and truly cement him into every nook, cranny and corner of her being.

  ‘My parents don’t live in Australia. In fact, I have no parents. I was a foster-home kid. I was shuffled from family to family, never staying anywhere for very long. I never knew my father. My mother died when I was very little from a drugs overdose. I pretty much brought myself up. So, you see, everything you think you know about me is a lie.’

  Of all the things Alessandro had been prepared for, this was not one of them. ‘Lyla...?’

  ‘Was the name I chose when I met you. When I thought that I could create...make myself out to be...’

  ‘You fabricated everything.’

  ‘No. Not everything!’

  Alessandro slammed his hand on the side of his chair and vaulted to his feet. He felt tight in his skin. He needed to move. Energy was pouring through him and he was at a loss as to how to contain it. This must be what it felt like to imagine your feet were planted on solid ground only to discover that you were trying to balance on quicksand.

  ‘Everything about you has been a lie from beginning to end. God. Why?’

  ‘I made stuff up. I was young! I met you and I wanted to make a good impression.’

  ‘Not only were you married, not only did you choose to conceal that fact from me eight years ago, but you also chose to conceal everything else. So your husband was...what, exactly? And how did you manage to make it to university? Or maybe you weren’t a student at all. Were you? Or was that another lie?’

  ‘Of course I was!’ Chase cried, half-rising to her feet in an attempt to halt the flow of his scathing criticism. She sat back down as quickly as she had stood up. What else might she have hoped for? That he might have been understanding? Sympathetic? Why would he be? To him, she was now a confirmed liar and, if she had lied about everything, all those significant details, then what else might she have lied about? Her emotions? Her responses? It felt as though she had built a relationship on a house of cards and, now the cards were all toppling down, she had no idea how to start catching them before they all fell to the floor.

  ‘Really? What strands am I supposed to start believing now?’

  ‘I was a student at university,’ she said with feverish urgency. ‘I never did a lot of studying...’ At this she laughed bitterly. Studying, when she was growing up, had not been seen as something worth wasting time doing. They had all known where they were destined to end up: out of work and on the dole, or else in no-hope jobs earning just enough to scrape by with a little moonlighting on the side.

  ‘But I discovered that I barely needed to. I had a good memory. Brilliant, in fact. I would show up at school after a couple of days
doing nothing, playing truant, and somehow I’d still be ahead of everyone in the class. I’d skim through a text book and manage to have instant recall of pretty much everything I’d read...’

  The handful of teachers who had noticed that remarkable ability had been her salvation. Because of them she hadn’t become a quitter, although she had learned to study undercover. There had never been any mileage in standing out.

  She looked at him and held his inscrutable gaze. ‘I guess you must find all of this completely alien. I don’t suppose you’ve ever known anyone from the wrong side of the tracks...’

  The chasm between them had never seemed wider, now that she was revealing the truth about her background. Even if she had been the person she had once claimed to be, the middle-class girl with the normal parents, there would still have been a chasm between them. Of course, he would have been attracted to her because of how she looked. Sadly, physical attributes were not destined to last; she accepted that, in an ideal world, he would have dumped her sooner or later anyway. He had been born into privilege, whatever his disruptive background, and he would always have ended up looking to settle with a woman from a similar background.

  Not only had she lied to him, but she had lied to herself for ever thinking otherwise. And she had. When she had met him again and when she had fallen in love with him again. When she had nurtured silly dreams of ‘what if?’s...

  ‘Coming from the wrong side of the tracks is one thing,’ Alessandro said brusquely. ‘Lying about it is quite another. Were you ever going to tell me the truth?’ His sense of betrayal overshadowed every other emotion, including anger.

  ‘What would have been the point?’ Chase asked defiantly. ‘As you pointed out...as we agreed...it’s not as though we were ever going anywhere with this relationship. Why would I have spoiled things with lots of truths I know you wouldn’t have wanted to hear?’