Wicked Ambition

by Victoria Fox

  The debauched soirée in Crete, the grape-sucking honeys…

  There he was, donning the tiara, sprawled on a four-poster and high as a kite.

  Oh, baby, yeah! someone had commented. You can be my king any day of the week!

  ‘We took it down in less than ten,’ his manager babbled, ‘but it’s too late. Millions have seen it. The papers have got hold of it.’

  Cosmo blinked through the nightmare, rigid in his seat.

  ‘It’s hitting newsstands tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do. Cosmo, forget whatever embarrassment you might be feeling. This is a fucking legal nightmare.’

  He stared blankly at the screen, at his fully and disastrously stripped form, at his most private, sickest fantasies laid bare for all the world to see, and only then did the enormity of it register. In that moment he knew unambiguously that life as he knew it had been snuffed out.

  ‘Cosmo? Are you listening? We’ve called a crisis meeting downtown. Whatever you’re doing, cancel. Just get the hell out of there. The press are on their way.’

  Cosmo’s brain shut down. Its magnitude was incomprehensible. Its destruction was unthinkable. He clenched his fist around the shuriken, pricks of scarlet blood flowering and spreading through his tightened fingers.

  Grace Turquoise da Luca.

  Cosmo buckled to the floor on the altar of his sin and after that there was nothing.

  71

  The board said it all:

  1. SWAY, LEON (USA): 9.5632s (WR)

  2. JACKSON, JAX (USA): 9.5724s

  He had won. He had won. He had done it. He had won.

  I’ve won.

  Behind him, a strangled cry was released into the air. Jax Jackson was on his knees, imploring the sky before crashing to the ground, tight as a ball, groaning like an animal.

  He had won.

  By an infinitesimal margin but a margin all the same.

  72

  Robin watched Leon’s race on TV. She had told herself she wouldn’t but in the end she couldn’t help it. She killed the channel as soon as his win was confirmed.

  ‘You should go to him, you know,’ advised Polly, curled up on the sofa with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. ‘Tell him how you feel.’

  Once, Robin would have denied having any feelings whatsoever, habitually on the defence. Now, she didn’t bother. It was plain to see. She had even been honest enough with Steffen to give him the real reason when she had called it quits with him.

  Is it someone else?

  Yes.

  Are you with him?

  I should be.

  But she and Leon were torn, and even more so now he was officially the fastest man on Earth: the new world record holder, unreachable, immortal.

  She was happy for him. She was sad. It was confusing.

  The girls were recovering from the Beginnings tour, by all accounts an unqualified success, before the ETV Platinum Awards at the weekend. After that they would be returning to the UK. For Robin, it couldn’t come a moment too soon. She had plans to sell her flat, putting an end to the roller coaster of the past few months. Her new London address would stay strictly confidential. No more unwanted contact. No more fear. It was over.

  ‘Well?’ pressed Polly, holding out the tub.

  Robin dug her spoon in, losing her appetite so it sat sticking out like a pitchfork.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied glumly. ‘In another lifetime.’

  73

  Ivy took up her weapons and handled each in turn, stroking their contours as one might the surfaces of a priceless ornament or the coat of a beloved pet, with tenderness and fascination. It was important that they become acquainted with each other.

  The big night was tomorrow. She wondered how many lives these firearms would take as she blasted the event into outer space.

  Robin Ryder would be the last to go down. By then her twin would be paralysed with fear, rendering the act all the purer. Ivy wondered what her sister would say, if she’d be incoherent with fright or able to articulate her shock. Would she recall their encounter in San Francisco? Would she make a connection to the gifts she’d received? Would Robin realise that Ivy was her flesh and blood, the might-have-been ally she’d deserted? Or, at the instant of her expiry, would she find herself lost in the empty regard of a complete stranger?

  Dusk was falling. Carefully Ivy folded her Burger Delite! uniform, the costume she would never again be made to wear, and pulled the blinds, shutting out the night.

  She instructed herself to savour it. Anticipation was everything.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Ivy frowned. She went to it, pressing her eye against the peephole.

  Connor.

  She stepped away, staying quiet, and chose to ignore it.

  ‘I know you’re in there,’ Connor wheedled from the porch. ‘I saw you come in.’ She didn’t respond, so he added: ‘And I saw you close the blinds…’

  Ivy squinted. Surrounding her was an armoury of weapons. There was no way she could conceal them before he entered her den.

  ‘I’m waiting.’ His voice seeped in from behind the door. ‘I brought beer…’

  Ever since she had arrived in LA, that insidious cretin had been begging her for an evening. Fine. She’d give him one. Soon he’d wish he had never stepped over her threshold.

  Ivy opened the door and put her head around, concealing the interior from view. Connor was surprised, had been on the cusp of walking away, and turned with an expression of unappetising enthusiasm. He was sweating beneath his armpits and at the plump round swell of his gut, like a hog in a buttoned-up shirt.

  ‘Hi,’ she purred, smiling as she had to Graham and to Nicki Soba and to every man she could claim something from. Connor would be the last.

  An early treat…an appetiser before tomorrow.

  ‘Why don’t you come in?’

  74

  ‘Leon, you can’t leave town.’ His agent was begging. ‘You’re hot property right now.’

  ‘It’s only a few weeks.’

  ‘I don’t care. This is big, buddy; this is the biggest it gets. I’ve been off the hook all morning—everyone wants a piece of you. Can’t it wait a month?’

  No, it couldn’t. After he had paid a visit to Marlon’s killer there wouldn’t be anywhere to go except as far as possible from LA—maybe for good.

  Leon had returned from Europe a winner. His mom and sister had met him and the three of them had held each other in Arrivals, not caring about the paparazzi shouting his name, not caring about the press requests and calls for product sponsorship and media deals. Leon had one priority: his family.

  It was down to him. He had to face the man who had taken his brother’s life.

  Gordon Rimeaux, better known as the infamous G-Money, the man in the photograph who had possessed the nerve, the audacity, to join the mourners on that unbearable day in 2000 when he knew all along that he was responsible for their loss. To think he had befriended Leon and gained his trust. Leon had spoken to him about Marlon; they’d connected, they’d talked. It was like a sick prank.

  Now Gordon had to pay the price.

  Leon had packed his bags. One last job to do and he was hitting the road.

  ‘I’ll call when I’m back,’ he told his agent.

  ‘When will that be?’ came the spluttered reply. He began to say something else but Leon clicked the cell off and with one hand snapped it shut.

  The apartment had been cleared. Aside from the bag he would carry with him, all Leon’s possessions were boxed and ready to go. The Marlon evidence had been put away, sealed, left for the next person to uncover its secrets—and uncover them they would. Leon’s defence, perhaps, when he came to stand trial? He envisaged them finding the photograph and understanding why he had been forced to make Rimeaux face up to his crime.

  Grief consumed him. Anger, betrayal, shock and heartache—all the emotions he’d thought had been left behind had in fact just been waiting to resurface. Knowing the man respons
ible after all this time wasn’t liberating, it didn’t feel like justice or rightness or any of the things he’d invented; it was simply sad—incredibly, pointlessly, sad.

  He was doing it for his mom and for his sister. What had he left to stay for? Lisa was out of his life, and Robin…well, if he was honest she had never been in his life at all. Tonight she would be performing at the Platinum Awards and then she would be returning to England. Everyone and everything moved on, it was a fact of life, and that Leon hadn’t been able to move on for thirteen years meant he was ready to make up for it.

  Grabbing his bag, he took one final glance at the place he called home before opening the door. To his surprise, somebody was already waiting.

  A hooded figure, hands in pockets, head bowed.

  The man looked up and met Leon’s gaze.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Gordon Rimeaux. ‘Can I come in?’

  75

  Kristin surveyed the dresses her stylist had laid out for tonight’s big event. The Palisades Grand would right now be gearing up for a no-holds-barred star-studded spectacle, and Kristin couldn’t wait to see sparks fly. Photographers would be arriving. Reporters would be vying. The red carpet would be rolled out. Excitement fluttered in her belly.

  She consulted the hangers, trailing her fingers down the fabrics—silk, lace, chiffon, satin—and remembered one glowy afternoon when she and Bunny had raided their mother’s closet while Ramona was out. The fabrics they had found, so exotic and sumptuous, like buried treasure, had provided hours of entertainment. They’d experimented with each combination, feeling so grown-up but laughing like girls beneath netting and jewels and scribbled-on make-up, as they’d taken each other’s pictures and giggled at the results.

  Bunny. She willed her sister to hear her. I’ll always be with you.

  For a second she wasn’t alone. The sensation was so acute that abruptly she swung round, expecting to find Bunny in the doorway. The feeling remained, brimming with promise and mystery for a weird, extraordinary moment, before fading away.

  Holding the chosen outfit beneath her chin, Kristin turned to the full-length mirror.

  Tonight, she had someone special to look good for. How could she have missed him all this time? Imagining his face, his laugh, made her warm inside.

  The realisation was a gift from Bunny. What was meant to happen, the love that was meant to be, the fiction Kristin had made a living from…that had finally turned to fact.

  And you’ll always be with me.

  76

  Leon sat with his hands together, head down, jaw tensed, concentrating. Gordon did the talking. Part of Leon wanted to slam him to the ground and part was desperate to know, to keep on listening, to find out, even though it hurt. Every word was agony.

  He focused as best he could as the past began to unravel, filling in the blanks, connecting up the dots, everything that had happened from start to finish with not a detail missed. He didn’t nod, he didn’t react, nothing. He lost track of how long Gordon spent talking, shaking at the brink of the truth, groping for words, laying out the whole sorry story—about his past, about his family, about the gang and Slink and Principal, about their altercation with the Compton crew, about Marlon coming into the lot that night, wrong place, wrong time, about how it had been a mistake and he had never meant to take the gun, he had never handled a revolver before in his life, and how even to this day the horror of those events meant he could not be sure of exactly what unfolded and who had been responsible.

  Had Principal pulled the trigger, or had he? One would have been voluntary, a tyrant bent on destruction; the other the gravest reflex of a young man’s life.

  Gordon told it as he remembered. He confessed nothing, except for the facts. He did not plead for forgiveness. He did not beg for absolution. He did not extract himself from it, or try to pin it on somebody else. He believed that it had been him that day who had shot Marlon and he had lived with that belief ever since.

  He didn’t play the martyr. He never forgot who the real victim was.

  ‘I tried to tell you,’ he repented. ‘Shit, I tried so many times. It didn’t happen ‘cause I was a coward. I was afraid.’

  Leon couldn’t look at him. ‘Of what,’ he said, his voice disembodied.

  ‘Not the law,’ he confessed. ‘Of Slink. Slink and the boys. When he brought you in on the charity gig…I mean, it was sick. I told him so. Like he wanted to play with fire or somethin’, see how close he could get before it all blew up.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Pretty damn close, I’d say,’ Leon supplied eventually.

  ‘Man, I’m sorry.’ Gordon’s voice caught. ‘I’m so sorry, man. I’m sorry.’

  It was too much to take in. So many years, so much sorrow, so long hunting the truth and in the end the truth had walked right up to his door.

  ‘All that time before we did the track,’ Leon said carefully, ‘all those years you could have said something. You could have given us that. Why didn’t you put it right?’

  ‘Put it right?’ Gordon shook his head. ‘How? Your brother died and that ain’t somethin’ that’s ever gonna be right—’

  ‘You should have told someone.’

  Gordon was resigned to his fate. ‘That’s how I justified it,’ he stated, ‘but I know that don’t mean nothin’ to you and your family. There’s no excuse. I should have said this at the start and it’s like the more time passed, the harder it got. For a while I convinced myself that I’d been done wrong, I’d been preyed upon by the wrong people and maybe to a point some of that’s true. But it don’t excuse what I did. I have to take responsibility.’

  At last Leon looked him dead in the eye. His intentions were impossible to read.

  ‘I always said that when it came to this I would tear that person’s heart out,’ he said.

  ‘Then do it.’ Gordon didn’t miss a beat. ‘If you don’t, Slink will.’

  The intercom sounded. Leon ignored it but then a harsh banging followed, rattling the door. He went to answer and found himself confronted by a young, official-looking redhead. She was wearing a high collar that obscured her nose and mouth.

  ‘Yes?’

  The woman levelled him with dark blue eyes. Something about them was familiar, very faintly, a shadow of a shadow. She was dressed in black and carrying a heavy bag. Her face was totally still and pale.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘It’s about Robin Ryder,’ the woman said flatly, in an English accent. ‘I’m afraid I need to speak with you urgently. We should go inside.’

  For a second Leon was unable to move. Something bad had happened to Robin. The woman peered past him, surprised, but only fleetingly, to see Gordon.

  ‘Really,’ she pressed. ‘It’s better if I come in.’

  Though his visitor was rake-thin, her hair a different colour and part of her face hidden from view, she looked uncannily like…

  But that wasn’t possible.

  ‘I need to see some ID,’ he said.

  Her gaze flickered. ‘Of course.’

  As she unzipped her bag and put her hand in, Leon’s suspicion was absorbed by fear. He was assaulted by images of Robin—her laugh, her lips, so that when the stranger withdrew a metal object and lunged for him, he was too slow to react. In a flash he felt the stab in his stomach, electrifying, before he collapsed.

  77

  Ivy surveyed her afternoon’s work with pride.

  Leon Sway—fastest man in the world? There was a joke; he hadn’t been fast enough for her—and now he was slumped, unconscious, against the wall. His friend the same, knocked cold by the stun gun. She hadn’t anticipated the extra weight being there but he had posed no meaningful threat, toppling towards her the instant Leon went down, imagining himself the hero before she dealt him the exact same fate.

  Could nothing stop her? She smiled, satisfied with her shrewd precognition. She had known that Robin was Leon’s vulnerable point and she had punched him where it hurt. />
  Calmly, collectedly, Ivy closed the door, kicking the flaccid bodies inside, dragging first Leon by his shoulders into the centre of the floor and then his friend. It was hard work but the thrill carried her through. She had already taken two lives; here were two more and then countless dozens to come. With every death she gained strength.

  And after a point, you got a taste for it.

  She doused Leon’s apartment in petrol, top to bottom, all across the walls and over the flammable stacked-up boxes, the odour of gasoline stringent and sour. Leon had buried himself inside his very own bonfire, she thought, gratified. The place was going to blow.

  Ivy wished she could witness the moment the men woke up, trapped in a swirling tide of furious impenetrable fire, unable to escape or breathe or see through the inferno, perishing in their skins, panicking and disorientated as they searched for an exit, only to find themselves staring hopelessly into the blank white eye of the storm…

  But she had somewhere more important to be.

  Before the final act, Ivy went to Leon and crouched, leaning to touch her lips briefly to his. They were warm. These were the lips that her twin had kissed, one of the countless things in life her sister had claimed while Ivy had been denied.

  Fuelled by a burst of hatred, she stood on the threshold and struck the match. In a rasp it caught. She threw it in as carelessly as an apple core and watched the place begin to burn.

  Coolly she walked to her car, climbed in and switched the ignition. As the vehicle moved off she detected the smash of shattering glass, smoke starting to billow from the windows. Next stop: the Palisades Grand.

  78

  The ETV Platinum Awards was the greatest occasion in the musical calendar. Since the eighties it had been renowned for a glittering array of iconic performances, provocative costumes, show-stopping speeches and scandalous wins. It was the definitive limelight for a galaxy of stars, from upcoming talent to established icons. Each year passed with a fresh dose of drama, whether that was an underdog victory, a red-carpet shocker or a dramatic host.