“Getting out quietly” involved cattle-class tickets on a standard flight. Hardly something Jon was used to, but he managed better than she did. Until he pulled up the seat rest between them and held her tightly, muffling the screams of the babies and the inane conversations going on around them. Most of the plane’s occupants were tourists, excitedly chattering after their holiday. Normally they’d have amused her, but she was too tired and heartsick to think of anything except the nightmare she’d walked into fewer than four days ago.
She had a new passport, two pairs of jeans, four tops and some underwear to her name, with the college notes that she’d been carrying at the time of the explosion. That was all she had to show for five years in Italy.
Franco didn’t live at the café so he and his family could arrange for their belongings to be packed and shipped. They were seated half a dozen rows farther back, so all they could do was chat generally. The police had warned them not to talk about their experiences on the plane, or anywhere else in public.
At the moment Lina was too tired and shocked for much to penetrate, but it would soon. Already fragments of sensation were returning to her, and the sheet of glass that had seemed to stand between her and the real world lowered bit by bit. When it dropped completely she wanted to be somewhere private. Completely private.
Jon had treated her with the kind of gentleness and consideration that she’d needed at first. Now she needed some space on her own to breathe and take stock. Her future would never again include someone else controlling her. While away, she’d learned the habit of self-dependence and she liked it. Already she was thinking about what she could do when she got back.
She’d need somewhere to live. If her mother had married someone rich, perhaps he owned a house or apartment building big enough that she and her mother could stay in the same place for a short time. Just until she found her feet. She wanted to continue her studies. But she’d need some kind of job to see her through, which, considering her history, might prove hard to get.
By the time the captain had asked them to put on their seat belts she’d regained control of her wayward emotions. She could smile at Jon and murmur, “Thanks. I feel much better now.”
“You’re not alone,” he began.
She interrupted whatever he was about to say next, afraid he would make a commitment he might later come to regret. “I’ll be fine now. I’ll go home with my mother, find somewhere to live and get on with my life.”
His eyes widened. “I thought you’d come home with me.”
She shook her head. “You have enough to cope with. If you have a memorial for Byron, let me know, please.”
She was sorry for the hurt she caused. She saw it in his eyes, the edge of shock, then sorrow. Let him think she cared more for Byron—for now.
But no. She couldn’t play games with him. It wasn’t fair. “Listen, Jon, it’s not you, it’s not Byron. I don’t ever want to depend on anyone else again. Or anything else. I want to be me, to have a life of my own. You understand?”
“You can have that with me.”
“You don’t want that. Once the paparazzi know I’m back, they’ll resurrect all the old stuff about me. Or they’ll ignore me in favor of the newest party girl. Either way it won’t look good for you, will it? They’ll want to drag you into the mess if you’re with me. I want to find out who I am.” She lowered her voice so only he could hear her. “I lost five years of my life to drugs. I still have to find out who I am, what I want. You see?”
“Kind of. But are you sure you want to go home with your mother?”
She shrugged. “For now, but not for long. And if it gets unbearable, I promise I’ll come to you. Truly.”
He bit his lip, making her want to caress it with her tongue, but she held back. “You better. I didn’t find you and bring you back for you to return to what you had.”
She covered his hand with hers. He’d put the armrest back down at the request of the flight attendant, and it lay between them. “I promise.”
He examined her closely. She felt flayed open and she glanced away hastily. He turned his hand under hers so they clasped hands. “Okay. But believe me, I’ll be in touch. As soon as I’ve cleared the mess of Byron’s death.”
“What do you want me to tell the press? Anything?”
His mouth firmed into a grim line. “Tell them Byron was a victim of drugs. We can’t deny he was a hopeless addict, we can’t whitewash him after his death. Although my mother might want to. Don’t mention anything else.” He meant the gangs.
She sighed in relief. At least he was taking that part seriously. If they kept quiet, the gangs would leave them alone, she was sure of it. These days they were more about commerce than family, and it didn’t make sense to send an expensive hit man just to ensure their silence. Not when they realized just how high profile she and Jon were. The explosion would do it. Shit, the shot the day before would have worked.
“Yes. I’ll say that.” And one day she might tell him the rest. Like everyone else, he assumed she’d been a wild, thoughtless party girl five years ago. She had—thanks to Byron, always ready to share every excess with her—stayed up as long as she wanted to. Byron had given her some of herself back, just not enough. Ironic that his brother was finishing the job. Even more ironic that he didn’t know it.
Recently she’d become an advocate of letting sleeping dogs lie. Unless she had reason to do otherwise, she intended to continue letting them slumber.
Much better that way.
They took their time leaving the plane, letting the crowds rush past, and as if by accident, they found Franco and his family behind them in the line. They smiled and exchanged pleasantries, partly in Italian, partly in English. Franco’s oldest son spoke excellent English, and his siblings could communicate well enough.
Lina decided to accentuate the positive. “That will help you. Are you excited?”
“Oh yes!” The girl, who was in her early teens, beamed. “We are to have a shop in New York and we will go to school.”
Lina exchanged a glance with Jon, who gave her a slight nod. He’d arranged something for them. “I’m hoping that Franco and his son will help with one of the stores on Fifth. You know the one.”
Briefly she thought of the flagship store at the top of Fifth Avenue. Surely he couldn’t mean that one? But no, there was another, farther down. Much smaller. “Yes, you’ll like that.”
“Will we see you?” The youngsters hadn’t spent much time in the café. The area wasn’t the best, and Franco kept his family tucked away in the suburbs. It was nice that they thought of her.
“Yes. I’ll come see you.”
She received smiles. Franco must have told them this was a holiday, or a good thing, because they didn’t seem worried in the least. Probably the best way to handle matters.
“You have my contact details?” Jon asked.
Franco nodded. “Si. You are very kind.”
Jon dismissed his thanks with a shrug. “Go straight to your hotel and sleep off the jet lag. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
“Grazie.”
They separated then, Lina and Jon to go through the returning citizens channel and Franco and his family to join the longer line of foreign nationals waiting to pass through. Even the line they joined was a fair length. But he smiled at her and chatted as if this was any journey. As if she was returning from a short trip abroad, not a five-year absence.
By the time she’d left the area she felt almost normal. Her nervousness had receded to a gentle stirring in her stomach, almost like hunger pains.
Until the cacophony hit her. Shouts of “Bella!” “Over here!” shocked her into stepping back, right into Jon’s body.
He drew a deep breath, one she felt as if it were her own, then he placed his hands on her waist and gently urged her forward. “We knew this would happen.”
“Yes, but not this much. Why am I such news?”
“You have to ask? You’re the prodigal daughter. Thin
k of them as the fatted calf.”
He could always make her laugh. Thinking of the media as cattle did the trick at least until she got past the barrier, to be enveloped in slim, scented arms. “My darling!”
Forcing her face into an expression of bland compliance, Lina stepped back. “Mother.”
She touched a lace handkerchief to her eye. “I was so worried.”
Someone shoved a microphone at her face. “Where’ve you been, Bellina?”
Relieved at the chance to break the connection, she turned to the man. “Studying abroad. I didn’t want anyone to follow me. It worked, didn’t it?”
“So are you and Jonathan Brantley an item? When’s the happy day?”
She glanced over his head and saw a pretty girl throw herself at him. He caught her, but didn’t seem in any hurry to rid himself of her. And then, on her left hand, the third finger to be precise, a glitter caught the light. An engagement ring.
Strange how easily the mask she used to wear in public could reassert itself. She turned to the reporter with a broad smile. “Does it look like it? He came to Italy to find his brother, and I helped. His Italian isn’t too good.”
“Are you a reformed party girl?”
“Oh yes.” She tossed her head, letting her hair fly about her face. “Totally.”
The knowing face of the reporter told her he received that piece of wisdom with not a little skepticism. “And what are your plans now?”
Arms grabbed her from behind. “She’s coming home with us,” her mother said firmly.
Us? Oh yes, the husband. She fixed her smile in place and turned around to confront her mother’s latest beau. Husband or lover, they tended to the same type. Big and bruising in more ways than one.
But this one was of average height, and wearing glasses. True, he possessed a strong frame, but he appeared to be around fifty, or maybe sixty, and almost normal-looking.
Another man stood by his side, also smiling, also wearing glasses. Gold-framed ones that suited his green eyes. He wore his dark hair brushed straight back, not to one side like Jon’s, and his features were clean-cut. Handsome. He wore black slacks and a green shirt that hinted of the color in his eyes. She’d never seen eyes so emerald. He stepped forward and held out his hand. “Gary Farina. Glad to meet you.” She took his hand and stared into his hypnotic gaze before remembering to smile. “Hi.” She swallowed, feeling like a young girl again. A long time since she’d felt like that.
“Shall we get out of here?”
“Oh honey, I have so much to tell you!” her mother gushed, moving forward to take her arm. “Let’s go home, like Gary says.”
“Where are you living now?”
She now lived in a large apartment in the Dakota building on the Upper West Side. Very swish. The kind of apartment her mother had always wanted. People not in the know assumed that New York upper-class society was a homogenous whole, much as those outside regarded the British aristocracy as a single unit. Neither were true. People of Italian origin might be allowed on the outskirts, invited to big charity dinners and the like, but never to the quiet gatherings. Anna Forde, now Farina, had always wanted the dinner parties as well as the balls. Then she’d begun to gather people around her, and their parties had at first rivaled the exclusive WASP dinners, then turned wild. Anna had longed for what she couldn’t have, always, and she’d transmitted that sense of longing to her daughter. But Lina had gone after other things.
Now Anna had the wealth, by the look of things. Apartments in the Dakota didn’t come cheap, or often. And this one actually looked like a home. Oh yes, it contained expensive furniture and Oriental carpets, but the carpets looked as if they’d been in place for a while and the furniture was arranged in comfortable and practical ways, as if someone actually sat there and watched the big-screen TV, or read from the huge case of well-thumbed volumes lining two walls of the study.
Anna chatted, gossiped, and Lina had to concentrate to listen to her. She’d never bothered with the inconsequential chatter that filled Anna’s days. This time she needed to know what the situation was here, and she’d only do that by reading between the lines.
Anna was happy. She adored her husband, she really did. And the son, Gary, helped his father with the company they ran, the newsstands business. It had grown from a small delivery enterprise in Hoboken to the giant enterprise it was today, and they were justifiably proud of it.
After showing her to a bedroom, Anna suggested she shower and join them in the lounge for a drink. “I think I have something to fit you, my darling. You’ve gained some weight, haven’t you, so it’ll have to be something loose. I thought cocaine was good for taking off weight?”
“I preferred heroin, when I could get it.” Lina didn’t comment on her mother’s incredible tactlessness. What was the point? She’d never do anything about it. Anna gave a moue of distaste and left to find her some clothes.
Lina liked this room. Unpretentious and comfortable, the colors rust reds and ivories. Pretty. With a wide, soft bed she just wanted to sink into. Shower and bed. She’d keep the little chat as quick as she could.
Unfortunately life didn’t always turn out like that. Half an hour later, showered and dressed in one of her mother’s too short, busily patterned dresses, Lina sat in the main living room of the apartment with her stepfather, her mother and Gary. Was he a stepbrother? She wasn’t sure she liked that idea. So she’d just call him by his first name.
Her mother smiled and petted her, seeming not to remember some of the more uncomfortable scenes in their past. Seeing her, even like this, as serene as she ever got, Lina could see it, feel it. Taste the blood in her mouth after a particularly vicious slap. Hear the scream, “Don’t tell me lies!”
But she kept it behind her mask, the one she’d rediscovered when she walked into the paparazzi. Didn’t wince, didn’t show by one twitch of her lip that she remembered. Now Anna patted her hand. “I hope your wardrobe in Italy was better than this. I haven’t been home in a while, but I remember it was all style, style, style in Rome and Milan.”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t interested in style and I couldn’t afford it anyway.”
“So do you plan to catch up with old friends?”
No wonder she’d never managed to kick the habit here. Her mother couldn’t understand the value of a clean start. “No. I decided to get some kind of qualification and make something of my life.”
“Darling, you don’t need a qualification to do that!”
Ritchie Farina stirred in his chair, the creak of soft leather drawing everyone’s attention. “It depends what you want to do. What do you want to do, Bellina?”
“Lina.” The correction came automatically. She never wanted anyone to call her “Bella” again. Except maybe for one person. “I want to work with addicts. Ex-addicts. Of all kinds. I understand the mentality, and it gives me a lot of satisfaction when I help them.”
Her mother flapped a hand, her rings glittering. “Pah, why would you want that? In any case, we have other things to do. Starting with a visit to my spa. Then we’ll go shopping.”
“Don’t you think she’ll need to rest?” Gary asked quietly.
She liked him for that. “I have some jet lag, yes.”
“And shock, too.”
“I’m more or less over that. Jon helped a lot. He made all the arrangements.”
A calculating look entered her mother’s dark eyes. Lina knew that look of old. “We’ll have to make a point of visiting them. Say thanks, and invite them to dinner.”
Lina wanted to protest, but thought better of it. Her mother wouldn’t be satisfied until she’d got something out of the encounter and Lina wouldn’t reward her with an account of exactly how Jon had helped her. Neither, now she was home, would she use that to muscle in on his territory and forced reentry into the rarefied arena of WASP society.
“We could do that, invite them to dinner,” Ritchie said. “Most people enjoy a visit to the Dakota.”
&n
bsp; She hadn’t liked to mention that, but it had impressed her. “Have you had the apartment long?”
His lips twitched in a momentary smile, the creases between his mouth and nose deepening. “I inherited it. It was always an exclusive building and my father wanted to prove he’d really arrived. He made sure we couldn’t ever sell it by stipulating that the money would go to a charitable trust if I did. I’m currently making efforts to break that clause. Not because I want to sell it, of course, but because I want to make that decision for myself.” He flicked a cold glance at his son.
Gary looked away. Lina sensed tension in the air, tension that had nothing to do with her. Ritchie gave an easy laugh that she found forced. “I consider this a family home, not an asset. You are welcome to stay here as long as you wish, my dear.” He cleared his throat.
The thought of staying in the same place as her mother, however beautiful the place, still gave her shivers. Lina set her jaw. “Thank you,” she said, and put it down as another of her fears that she needed to overcome.
Ritchie cleared his throat. “And we have to arrange to see your lawyer.”
“Do we? I didn’t know I had one.”
Anna glared at Ritchie. “I was going to talk to her about that later. No sense doing it now. We can afford anything she wants.”
That reminded Lina of something. “I’d rather not be beholden to anybody. I appreciate you letting me stay here, but I want to be independent, to get my own apartment and plan my life.” She wouldn’t tell her mother about resuming her studies yet. Anna would declare, as she had before, that she didn’t see the point. Or getting a job, which she’d have to do if she wanted her independence. She looked forward to it.
Instead of insisting in fulsome terms that she stay, Ritchie shrugged. “There’s plenty of room here. You can come and go as you please. Although we tend not to go in for wild parties.”
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