Impulse

by Catherine Coulter

  “Why did you do this?” he asked. “And where in the name of insanity did you find her?”

  Dominick came to within a foot of him and said, “You’re a traitor. I brought you home to die a traitor’s death. A firing squad.”

  Dominick nodded to Marta, and she backed up to stand with the compound guards. Then he said, “You’re a turncoat, Marcus. It pains me to have you shot, but I have no choice.”

  “No trial? No hearing of the charges, no marching out of the evidence against me?”

  Dominick just smiled. “We’ll see, Marcus.” He turned to Rafaella. “Hello, my dear. You’ve gravely disappointed me as well. And Coco. You’ve disappointed her too.”

  “Anyone else I’ve disappointed? How about your son? I’m to be shot too?”

  “Perhaps. Come inside.” He turned to the woman and the two men. “Thank you, Marta. You did an excellent job. Give my thanks to Olivier. I owe him, and I don’t forget my debts.”

  Marcus stared at Dominick. Olivier! Had the man called Dominick just because Marcus had refused to give him Rafaella? Now Olivier was Dominick’s confidant and helper? He glanced toward Marta. Olivier?

  Marcus supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised by anything now.

  Merkel was standing in the front doorway. He nodded to Marcus but said nothing. Marcus raised a brow, but Merkel just looked away, saying, “Please come into the library, Marcus, Miss Holland.”

  But Dominick was there before them, opening the door, smiling at them, then stepping aside for them to enter. “Do allow the lady to go first, Marcus.”

  Rafaella strode into the room; then stopped dead in her tracks. Her stepfather was standing there, dressed in one of Dominick’s white linen suits, looking like a plantation owner whose trouser legs were too short. He didn’t look afraid, but when his eyes met hers, she read suffering there.

  “Oh, no,” she said and with a small cry ran into her stepfather’s arms. “Oh, Charles, what happened? He got you because I uncovered the Rembrandt fake! I’m sorry, so sorry. It never occurred to me that he’d know. It’s my fault, dear God, I was so stupid. It’s all my fault.”

  Charles just hugged her, but he was frowning over her head. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Marcus Devlin, sir, and—”

  “Don’t you mean Marcus O’Sullivan?” Dominick interrupted smoothly. “It was stupid of you to use your real name in Paris. Marta told me you had. O’Sullivan. Very Irish. It allowed me to do some checking, Marcus. I should be hearing back very soon now. I’ll strip your cover away and then we’ll see how much of a traitor you really are.”

  Marcus freely admitted to himself that he’d been a fool, a colossal fool. But he hadn’t thought, hadn’t realized, that there could be any danger. It had been a hospital registration, nothing more, done just to protect Rafaella from the vultures of the press, and look what had happened—

  “You’ll be disappointed, Dominick,” Marcus said. “There’s not a thing to find out about me. I’m just a soldier, your soldier, and a damned good resort manager.” He took Rafaella’s hand and looked at her stepfather, in Dominick’s clothes, complete with a pale blue silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of the white linen jacket. Even though the pants were too short, he still looked self-possessed and intelligent. “You’re Mr. Rutledge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we all sit down?” Coco waved a hand toward the plush wicker furniture.

  Dominick frowned at his mistress. “Rafaella, you will sit here, beside me.”

  “Why should she?”

  Dominick’s eyes narrowed on his mistress’s face. “Because I said so. Come here, Rafaella.”

  Rafaella said nothing, merely sat beside him on the wicker love seat. She felt suddenly weak—she hated her body for betraying her—and afraid. Oh, yes, she was afraid. Dominick would kill all of them. And Charles, poor innocent Charles. She didn’t care that he’d tried to kill Dominick. She didn’t blame him for that for a moment. She just wished he’d succeeded. At the moment, he looked tightly controlled and oddly gallant.

  “Now, said Dominick, “I see that we’re all here.”

  “Where’s DeLorio?” Marcus asked.

  “I don’t want him here. It’s not necessary.”

  “Why not?”

  This time Dominick openly frowned at Coco, who was sitting just across from him. “Why are you questioning me? You will be quiet or you will go to your room. You have no right to question me, now or ever.”

  Coco just looked at him, and said patiently, “Of course I have every right. I’ve lived with you for over three years. I’ve slept with you for over three years. I’ve pandered to your every whim for over three years. I’ve listened to you expound on the stupidity, the selfishness, the immorality, and the cupidity of women for over three years, their general uselessness except as vessels for men’s seed. I’ve been faithful to you for over three years. And when you insisted, I even aborted a child for you three years ago because it was a girl and you only wanted a boy.”

  “Shut up, Coco!”

  Coco smiled then, a cruel smile, vicious, and frighteningly sad at the same time. It was, Rafaella thought, insight hitting her, as if the dam had burst, and at long last she was seeing this woman without her mask.

  “Ah, yes, I forgot that women were also rapacious and self-indulgent. Also, you made certain I wouldn’t ever get pregnant again. You pretended you didn’t know, but I found out that you did. That butcher of a doctor you hired told me when I saw him eight months ago. He told me that you’d told him to tie my tubes because you didn’t want any more accidents and I was getting too old for such risks. You couldn’t take a chance that I’d produce a Down’s-syndrome child. The doctor told me you’d acted so concerned, so loving, and you were just protecting my health.”

  “That’s a lie! You will not speak of such things now! You will get out of my sight!” Dominick jumped to his feet, yelling. He was beyond caring that everyone was listening, and seeing him not as the suave civilized man, smooth and controlled, but as a man with anger—pale flesh, eyes dilated with rage. Coco was looking up at him, insolence and contempt obvious in the way she’d crossed her arms over her breasts. He said to her, his voice vicious, “I was going to tell you that I was through with you. Oh, yes, just as soon as Frank told me Sylvia was out of the way, I was going to tell you to get out. That was my plan all along.”

  “Why?”

  That bloody word again! Dominick’s eyes glazed with fury. Blood pounded in his temples. He wanted to kill her, stuff his fist in her mouth.

  “Why?” she repeated. “You haven’t already found a sweet young thing to replace me, have you? Tell me, Dominick, why?”

  “Because I plan to marry Rafaella. You’re too old to give me children, to provide boys for my dynasty. And you can’t anyway—oh, yes, I made sure of that. I didn’t want any more whining from you, any more inconvenience. You were a mistress, nothing more. My mistress. You didn’t have the right genetic makeup to make the kind of children I wanted.”

  “Oh, you mean the kind of genes Sylvia had? The kind of genes that produced DeLorio?”

  “Shut up, damn you!”

  “I suppose you’ll have Frank kill me, just like you had him kill Sylvia?”

  “Get out!”

  Coco didn’t move. There was a moment of stunned silence.

  Then there was laughter, stark, ugly laughter. It was frightening because it was so unexpected. It was Rafaella who was laughing, loud and raw, deep in her throat. Now she was throwing her head back and laughing harsher and deeper.

  Dominick felt out of control, and he couldn’t allow it to continue. He yelled, “Stop that!”

  Rafaella looked at him, stopped, then hiccuped. She giggled. “Oh, dear, it’s so funny.”

  “What’s going on here? What’s funny?”

  Dominick’s question was aimed at no one, so he didn’t really expect an answer.

  Then Rafaella said, “Sir, I wouldn’t be your wife i
f you were the proverbial last man in creation. Marry you? That’s a sick, very ugly joke.”

  Dominick’s face darkened with blood. He knocked a chair from his path and stumbled toward her. “Let’s just see, Rafaella. Let’s just see. You’ve been screwing Marcus, and now you’ll try me out. I’m better than he is, you’ll see, he’s just clumsy Irish scum. I’ll make you love it, just like all my women have loved it—”

  Rafaella felt Marcus tense, his body ready. She said easily, “That’s what your son said. He said Marcus was nothing but a bungling bull compared to him. He said he was the world’s greatest lover, that he’d teach me what pleasure was all about. That was before I kicked him in the groin, of course. Then he was a pathetic whimpering little boy. Something else he has in common with his father, I’ll bet.”

  Marcus was ready to spring, quite ready to kill Dominick if he had to. Why was she pushing him like this? Why had Coco all of a sudden turned into a different woman, baiting him beyond his limits? Had the worm finally turned? He remembered the ugliness Rafaella had felt after the meeting with Olivier, her rage, her feeling of helplessness. Had Coco finally rebelled against being a possession, a thing? Merkel, Link, and three guards stood by the library door, their faces impassive, all except Merkel’s. He looked both appalled and disgusted. What could Marcus do? The guards would mow him down in a second if he attacked Dominick. Their Uzi submachine guns were ready, stocks folded down.

  In slow motion, colors soft and blurred and people’s faces faded, all of it just like in his nightmare, Marcus saw Dominick reach out, so slowly, so precisely, to grab Rafaella’s arm. Marcus said, his voice loud and cutting, “You can’t sleep with your own daughter.”

  Time stopped. Dominick froze, staring down into Rafaella’s face, into her pale blue eyes, eyes that shaded toward gray when feelings ran deep and strong.

  Action teetered, spun out of control, speeded up, colors became distinct and raw and far too real. “No,” Dominick said, but he dropped Rafaella’s arm and took a step back. “No, Marcus, you’re lying. She can’t be my daughter. It’s absurd. You’re making it up.”

  Charles Rutledge said quietly, “No, he’s not lying. Rafaella is your daughter, more’s the pity. Her mother is my wife, a beautiful woman whom you seduced and betrayed a very long time ago.”

  Dominick suddenly straightened and walked to his desk. He kept his back to everyone. Then he said, not turning, “Just what is your mother’s name, Rafaella?”

  “You knew her as Margaret Pennington. You met her twenty years ago in 1975 in New Milford, Connecticut. You charmed her, wooed her, seduced her, lied to her, got her pregnant, and deserted her. Do you remember the five-thousand-dollar check you tossed on her hospital bed? After, of course, you discovered she’d given birth to a girl. And then you walked out and you never looked back. You miscalculated there. She was very rich, an heiress. That’s why she didn’t tell you her real name. Thank God, at least she didn’t trust you all the way. I don’t believe she’s ever realized that even if she’d had a boy, you still wouldn’t have left your wife. There were no threats then from Carlucci as yet, but Sylvia was pregnant, wasn’t she? With DeLorio. And she was your legal wife, and Carlucci was rich and powerful beyond your wildest imaginings. Poor Mother. You fooled her to the very end, perhaps even into eternity.

  “Would you like to know something else ironic? Sylvia, your wife, your now very dead wife, was possibly the drunk who hit my mother. She could be the one responsible for my mother being in a coma in the hospital. You betray my mother and your wife kills her. You’re quite thorough, Dominick.”

  Dominick turned finally to Charles. He was in control again, calm, his voice quiet. “This is why you’ve tried to have me killed. You created this assassination squad to come here to the island to kill me. You tried again in Miami. You hate me because of what I did to your wife. But I still don’t understand why you painted the word Bathsheba on the helicopter. What meaning does it have?”

  Charles Winston Rutledge III looked from his stepdaughter to the man he wished dead. He looked at Coco, who slowly nodded at him, saying nothing now, but her eyes were clear and deep, accepting. Charles said slowly, his features expressionless, “I remember staring at that painting—it is one of the favorites in my collection—and thinking about Bathsheba, the woman. Who was she, really? What was she really like? She was, of course, the seduced woman, powerless, manipulated and used. But unlike Margaret, she hadn’t been discarded; David had kept her, his obsession for her lasting an eternity. But you threw Margaret away and it was she who became obsessed—with you, a mirror image of a man, not whole, not complete. I liked the irony of it, I suppose. The man who’d had you killed was the man to gain Margaret’s revenge for her, the man to free her from her obsession with you. I suppose that’s why.”

  Charles turned to smile at Rafaella. “My stepdaughter knew nothing about it. I was gravely concerned when I discovered she’d come here. She did it on her own, without consulting me. She acted on impulse. She’s completely innocent.”

  Charles shook his head, adding, “I didn’t even know she’d ever seen the Rembrandt.”

  “I did see it once, a long time ago, in that special room you had, and then I finally remembered. I was stupid not to consider the consequences when I got the officials at the Louvre to have the painting authenticated. I’m sorry, Charles. Nor did I tell you about the biography. I didn’t want you involved, you see.”

  “Ah,” Coco said, smiling ironically toward her lover. “The biography. The infamous biography. I told you, Rafaella, that this wasn’t a good time for you to be on the island.”

  “Biography?” Charles looked perplexed.

  Rafaella said quietly, “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to worry you, to involve you in any way. I was going to write his biography—oh, yes, Dominick, that was very true. It’s just that I would have told the complete truth about you. Not all that sugar-coated rubbish you were telling me. None of that garbage about you being such a philanthropist, running all those drug-rehab programs. The world would have seen you as you truly are. A common criminal who sells guns to terrorists, a man who rivals Roddy Olivier in being dead inside.”

  Dominick looked toward Marcus, and frighteningly, he was smiling. “Well, are there more confessions? More demonstrations of hatred? You wanted a trial, a hearing, my dear Marcus, well, that’s what has come to pass. Everyone has spilled his or her guts, even my dear Coco. Would you care to add to it?”

  “No,” Marcus said.

  “I remember now,” Dominick said suddenly. “I remember Margaret. She was so very young, so vulnerable—her parents had just been killed, you know—and she was so fresh and innocent, and yes, I wanted her. She looked a bit like Sylvia, isn’t that an amusing coincidence?” He shook his head and turned to stare out the French windows. “Yes, so very beautiful she was, and she was ready to learn about life, about sex, and so I taught her. I didn’t hurt her. I gave her a wonderful summer.”

  “You got her pregnant!”

  “True, Rafaella, with you. Surely that was a good thing from your point of view. I had to tell her then that I was married. And then Sylvia was pregnant with DeLorio. It was complicated until Margaret birthed you, my dear, a girl. But I was fond of her for a while. And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I wouldn’t have married her even if she’d presented me with twin boys. My father-in-law was powerful, was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams at that time. I saw him as above the law, as above God.”

  Rafaella said, “I wish she could see you, see you as you really are, right now, right here, surrounded by those you’ve hurt, by those you’ve used, by your mercenaries hired to keep you alive.”

  “Rafaella. That’s a lovely name, my dear. Even if your mother had used Holland for her last name, I doubt I would have remembered her. One forgets, you know, particularly women.” He paused a moment, then continued, his voice softer, more faraway, “I wish I hadn’t learned you were my daughter until after I’d made love
to you. I fear I view incest in the same way I view drugs. I’m irrevocably against both. You’re quite lovely, Rafaella. I’m drawn to you, of course, because you’re so like me. And you are, you know. I see that now. I wonder if I had made love to you whether Coco would have tried to kill you.”

  “No, Dom, I wouldn’t have killed Rafaella. I would have killed you. Slit your throat.”

  Dominick didn’t rise to this bait; indeed, he ignored Coco, and said, still looking out the French windows, “Ah, look, here’s Lacy, and he’s got DeLorio with him. It looks like Frank had to rough the boy up a bit. I’m sorry for that, but DeLorio must learn to govern himself, must learn self-discipline.”

  “Are you really sorry?” Rafaella said. “DeLorio wants to be free of you, but you can’t bear the thought. He’s more like you than you think, Dominick, an ambitious little mobster, a—”

  Dominick moved quickly, more quickly than Marcus could react. Dominick slapped Rafaella hard, sending her head snapping back on her neck. Then Marcus was on him, his hands around his throat, and he was tightening his grip, feeling the slack flesh of his neck crumple and wrinkle beneath the pressure of his fingers, and he could feel the flexing of Dominick’s throat muscles, hear the ugly gurgling sounds—

  “Let him go, Marcus. Let him go.” Merkel was behind him, speaking softly, speaking slowly, trying to make him understand and stop, to get hold of himself. Marcus felt Merkel’s .357 Magnum in the small of his back.

  Marcus understood finally, felt the blind rage recede. He didn’t want to die for nothing, and that’s what it would be at this moment in time. He wouldn’t be saving anybody, certainly not himself, not Rafaella. He eased his hands from Dominick’s throat. He pushed him back, sent him stumbling into his desk. He watched him clutch at his throat, gently massage the bruised flesh.

  There wasn’t a sound in the room. Marcus turned to Rafaella. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. Dominick’s handprint was bright red on her cheek.

  Frank Lacy ushered DeLorio past Merkel and Link into the library. They stood staring at Dominick, bent over his desk, his face blotched red, his throat muscles working convulsively.