by Victoria Fox
Cosmo had left her in a pit of debt. His addiction to prostitutes—and to gambling, it transpired, and to drink, and to online sex chat rooms—had been worse than even she had suspected. Rather than the tens of millions she’d counted on, there had been a deficit.
That, coupled with Ava’s lack of work, meant she had been unable to stay above water. The bailiffs had taken everything.
Every day she was tormented by Cosmo’s abrupt demise. If only he had taken her advice and steered clear of that evil whore!
No. He’d been unable to resist. If he hadn’t gone to the Platinums that night, if he had only let it go, if he hadn’t got caught in the butchery that had robbed him of his life, he would still be here. But Cosmo would never have let Turquoise take the last word; he would never have accepted the outcome of her revenge when his reputation languished so forlornly in the gutter. His humiliation had been insufferable. All those people witnessing his private kicks, it had been vile, a worse vengeance than he or Ava could ever have conjured in their wildest fantasies…and their fantasies got pretty wild.
Ava blubbed with fresh misery. To this day she couldn’t fathom how Turquoise had possessed the nerve to execute such a heinous, despicable deed.
She had packed a box of special belongings, private possessions to keep close by.
Ava went to them now and released the cardboard flap. She fed a hand in and removed the golden crown that Cosmo had worn that night on Crete.
It glimmered.
Ava put it on and faced the mirror, her face blotchy and red.
The fat, ugly, widowed, wicked queen.
She looked at her reflection and wept.
Slink Bullion was smoking a nine-inch cigar in his mansion Jacuzzi and watching a Turquoise video on his beach-shack entertainment system. There was one smokin’ hot honey. He decided to get in touch with her management about guesting on a vibe he was toying with. Seeing as he was a single man these days, officially single, who knew what they could share?
Puff City needed an injection of something and Slink wasn’t sure yet what. It wasn’t like him, he always saw the bigger picture, but since G had walked it had been a struggle.
G-Money was now living in Australia. Word was he had made his peace with Leon Sway, and Leon, for reasons unknown, had decided not to pursue it. The guy’s house had burned down, admittedly; maybe he’d had deeper stuff on his mind. Slink hoped it would stay that way. Just because G got an attack of conscience and figured he’d come clean, it didn’t mean the rest of them should.
No wonder he had moved to another continent.
Slink grimaced as he hauled his body from the water. He extinguished his cigar at the bar, picked up his cell and dialled Principal. No answer.
Since the Platinums, Principal had been acting like a prime pussy. Slink had got his brothers out of there, away from the danger, where his comrade had run for his life like a weasel down a dark hole. Now Principal was smoking too many drugs, governed by paranoia, not eating properly, setting himself up for an early grave.
They came for me, he had told Slink through dry lips the morning after the Awards, shaking as he gripped the wheel of his truck and blindly ran a red light.
All the shit I did, man; this is payback.
Without G, without Principal, Puff City was in trouble. The way Principal was going, he wouldn’t be back any time soon.
Slink padded indoors. His hall of fame glinted back at him, wall-to-wall mounted discs and accolades. It was time for a new venture; time to shake things up.
A photograph of Shawnella caught his eye—he had stripped them down after she’d left but must have missed that one. It had been taken when they first hooked up, at a red-carpet premiere, and in it she was gazing up at him tenderly.
Slink felt a pang of regret, which wasn’t an emotion he normally gave a lot of time to.
Shawnella had hit massive with her (revised) fashion range and had secured a huge following, making her a star in her own right. Plus she was looking…well, there was no other way of putting it than damn fine. Shawnella was also dating a producer Slink had met a couple of times and had dismissed as a limp-dicked creep, but he seemed to be giving her what she wanted. Shawnella’s debut single was tipped for release in the New Year.
Snatching the picture from the wall, he cracked the frame, removed the print and tossed it in the trash. He needed to make some calls. Shawnella couldn’t go killing the Billboard 100 if he wasn’t anywhere close. That was cosmic disorder or some shit.
Occasionally Slink figured he was better off alone. He had never been faithful to her anyway. More often he wondered if the woman with whom he had shared ten years had been more vital to him than he cared to admit; and a little of him—scrap that, a lot—missed her.
Gordon Rimeaux stayed in LA until the end of the summer, recovering from the fire.
It took a while. He was suffering from smoke inhalation, a chronic cough, shortness of breath and headaches that lasted for days.
They kept him in hospital. They told him that if he had got out of the building sooner and left Leon behind, he would have escaped unscathed. As it was, for the first forty-eight hours it had been uncertain as to whether or not he would even survive.
In the fall he headed for Australia. Old friends lived by the coast and after staying with them for a month he decided to make a go of it, buying a modest place from which he could watch the ocean. He had to figure out the next stage of his life, but whatever it was he knew it had to be thousands of miles from Puff City.
Gordon spent a lot of his time outdoors, learning to surf, swimming and chilling on the beach. People stared at his burns but he didn’t let it bother him. He grew his hair, lost weight, and with each day that passed resembled G-Money less and less and grew into the man he might have been had he never taken the gun from Principal thirteen years ago.
Yet though Gordon’s body bore the scars of the fire, burns that were pale and smooth in taut patches across his arms and legs, and a sensation of weight bearing down on his chest, he felt lighter and clearer than he had since he was eighteen.
A lifetime he had carried it. Letting it go was like surfacing for air.
He had fully expected Leon to press charges. When Gordon regained consciousness it had been to the bloody aftermath of the Platinum Awards, during which the same terrorist who’d ignited Leon’s place and left them for dead had opened fire at the Palisades Grand. Movie star Cosmo Angel had died, shot three times in the head. Scott Valentine had lost his leg. Countless others had been injured. It took several updates and explanations for him to piece together the picture. Yet Robin Ryder, the assassin’s target, had survived.
Leon had visited him at the ward. He had stayed at Gordon’s bedside for an afternoon.
‘All the evidence has gone,’ Leon had offered. ‘It went in the fire.’
Gordon had waited for more. None came. He didn’t need to say it. What happened had happened, one life in exchange for another.
Before he left, Leon had put out his hand. Gordon had taken it.
And the past was laid to rest.
Wednesday morning and Gordon stepped on to the beach. The sand was bright and hot beneath the soles of his feet, the water as he met the tide cool and crisp.
He looked out to the horizon, waded in and started swimming.
Jax Jackson was clubbing at Hollywood’s Rieux Lounge when Turquoise’s new single blared out over the sound system. The throngs went wild, hands in the air, bronzed arms moving in time to the music. Jax cringed, gritting his teeth.
‘You wanna buy me a drink?’ yelled one of the brunettes he was with. She came in so close he could smell her cheap perfume. She bit a cherry-red lower lip.
Jax was glad of the excuse to get away, even if secretly he was bitter at having to purchase refreshments. Since losing his title his entourage had drifted away, not to mention the dollars evaporating as sponsorships and contracts dwindled to oblivion. Last week he had been forced to sell the Lamborghini. It
had been the only time in his life that he’d cried.
Reluctantly he signalled to the barman. The guy smiled in acknowledgement when he recognised him but Jax noticed he didn’t offer any freebies.
‘All the vodka you’ve got in the house,’ he announced magnanimously, proving a point. He was still Jax Jackson, wasn’t he? He was still the freaking Bullet. ‘Shots.’
Looking slightly confused, the barman obliged. Jax waited for someone to come up to him, ask for an autograph, beg for a photo, anything. They didn’t.
He scowled, able to taste defeat on his tongue as if he’d had it for lunch that very day. So often he replayed the chapters of his collapse: how Leon had draped the US banner across his shoulders as he ran his lap of honour; how the victor had knelt to the track and kissed it, the flag fluttering in the breeze; how Jax himself had slumped on the track in a fist of anguish so raw and enduring that an official had had to come prod him to make sure he hadn’t undergone a cardiac arrest; how he’d crawled to his feet, the crowd yelling messages of support, and he’d turned his sweat-drenched face to the ranks and heckled something offensive while flashing the bird. Maybe that had been it…the final nail in the coffin.
It had been that volunteer’s fault. She had spelled the beginning of the end, because if it hadn’t been for her insisting on sucking him off he would have won that day and he would still be the record holder. He would still be a god. If she hadn’t begged to break his record with her tongue then he might have actually broken it when it counted.
Man, that was deep—maybe he should become a philolosophiler or something. Phililosopher. He’d never been sure how to say that word.
It wasn’t as if his hip-hop venture was proving all that lucrative either. So far it had been a total disaster. His first video ‘Bulletproof’ had been laughed off YouTube. He winced, recollecting the comments it had spawned. Loser! Joker! Freak! This guy should stick to the other track—oh, wait, he’s crap at that, too…
The drinks came and reluctantly Jax handed over his AmEx, hoping the barman might clock the name and decide the order was on the house. No such luck.
Jax scoped the crowd for his people but they had got lost in the masses. He couldn’t much remember what they looked like anyway, had only picked them up a week ago, the sort of taggers-on he’d never previously have entertained but now had no one else to hang with.
Normally on a night out he would be able to spot Cindy’s blonde crop, but his PA had checked out as soon as she’d uncovered the volunteer blowjob. It was hardly as if it were the first time Jax had sought pleasure elsewhere. Who did she think she was, his wife? But it was the hurt, she’d claimed, of the stopwatch record: Cindy had thought that was just between them, it was her record as much as his, and he had ‘whored it out elsewhere’. Jesus. Women.
Jax was a bachelor, born and bred; he was better off without them.
He downed four shots in immediate succession. They scorched his throat, lighting him up, making the rest of the night doable.
The Turquoise track ended. Jax spotted a pair of tits at the end of the bar and sidled over. ‘Want one?’ he asked, proffering the shots like a sex pest selling sweets. The girl glanced warily at him before moving away.
Jax took another shot. A headache was flourishing behind his eyes.
He had beaten his stopwatch record; he had done the hip-hop thing…What was left?
Retirement? No freaking way.
Jax might have lost his title, but he was sure as shit getting it back.
Rio de Janeiro was three years away and Jax damn well didn’t intend to be driving a clapped-out X-plate SUV for the rest of his days.
Leon would have to kill him to get his hands on Olympic gold.
‘Hey, baby, I thought I’d lost you.’ The brunette from earlier joined him at the bar, seizing a drink. She wound her arms around his neck and steered him towards the bathroom.
Why not? Jax thought, depressed. There was nothing else to do.
Robin Ryder looked up at the London high rise. It was raining. Grey sleet drove against the building’s smashed windows and mottled brickwork; behind her the relentless traffic droned, no beginning or end, a constant forbidding soundtrack. It had taken weeks for her to summon the courage, and now she was here it was like stepping into a dream.
Inside, she mounted the steps to the seventeenth floor. Dressed in a hooded sweater and jeans, she prompted no remark or attention. Robin had imagined this place so often, but never like this. The sliding door to the life she might have had.
Always in her mind it had been full of love, a caring mother and father, a safe home that for whatever reason had rejected her and left her to die. Seeing it now, this wasn’t and never had been the case. She had been the one who’d been spared. Her abandonment had been her saviour. No such mercy for Ivy.
A woman police officer met her at the top of the stairwell.
‘Hi,’ she said kindly. ‘I’m Jo. I was the one who found your mother.’
My mother.
She had visited Hilda’s grave—the woman in the photograph that Ivy had sent. Robin had wanted to feel something, knew that she should, but the tears hadn’t come. She had carried the idea of a mother with her ever since she could remember, and she still did. Hilda Sewell solved no puzzle, no enigma; no mystery that Robin had thus far missed out on. Simply, she was a stranger.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Jo.
‘I’ve had twenty years to get ready,’ Robin replied. ‘I hope so.’
Along the platform they came to flat 39B. Across its broken door, a tape reading CRIME SCENE—DO NOT ENTER rippled in the draught.
Jo lifted it and gestured for her to go in.
‘One rule,’ she advised. ‘Look but don’t touch.’
The flat could have been a museum, peppered as it was with ancient, dust-caked artefacts and the smell of age and rot. So this was it, the home she had craved for two decades. Cold. Dark. Steeped in sadness and regret.
Despite Ivy’s rampage and the malice that had coursed through her veins, Robin couldn’t help but wonder how much this life had contributed to such an outcome. Partly she understood her sister’s vendetta. The way Ivy had seen it Robin had been freed.
She wished it hadn’t wound up this way. She wished she could have known her sister; that they might have been close. She wished things hadn’t ended how they had.
She realised how fortunate she had been, left in a park bin to die.
‘Do you want to see the bedroom?’ Jo asked gently.
Robin forced herself to go in and to face the images and obsessions of her own shrine. She took it in and told herself it was better to confront it, to remember it, because whatever she imagined later would be worse than the reality.
None of it could detract from or negate a career that was tipped to grow. It couldn’t take away the family she had found, not through blood or obligation but through choice: the precious people in her life, Polly and Barney and Matt, Sammy and Belle…
And her boy.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
Robin turned. She nodded. ‘I think so.’
Leon Sway took her hand. ‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘She’s never coming back.’
Ivy had been shot dead, executed by a raft of military that hadn’t been quick enough to prevent her destruction but had been able to stop it before more lives were lost. Afterwards they had pronounced her crusade a kamikaze mission. She had known she would die. Her sole purpose was to take her long-lost twin with her.
At that, she had failed. She’d come close, but she had failed.
Ivy had tried to take Leon, but he was a survivor. He was brave and beautiful and miraculous.
He had run his heart out that night, proving it to his brother, to her, to the world…but most important, to himself.
Leon was her life, her light, her saviour.
He squeezed her hand in his. ‘What do you say we get out of here?’
She brought it to her mouth and kissed it.
At last, she was home.
A fortnight later, the sun woke Leon as it streamed through the blinds of his and Robin’s Caribbean retreat. He turned to her, angelic in her sleep, her dark hair over her forehead, her lips slightly parted and her smooth back exposed by the fallen sheet at her waist. He traced his fingers across her shoulders, softly kissing her neck.
Contentedly, she moaned, and he climbed from the bed before she woke up. After the year she’d had, she needed to rest. St Barts was the vacation they needed.
Leon tied a towel around his waist and stepped on to the balcony. Sparkling ocean and gleaming sand stretched before him, the sunshine warm on his back. In the harbour, boats came in to dock, blue and red and bright, coarse ropes being thrown to land and tied with salty hands. There was so much life in the world, and now he was part of it.
Forgiveness had set him free. Forgiveness of Gordon and of Puff City, forgiveness of their crime and its concealment, acceptance of what had happened and a promise to move on—that was what had cut him as loose as the vessels bobbing on the water, wide green sea spread to a distant horizon, waiting to be crossed, an adventure at his fingertips.
Marlon had helped him that day. Leon was a level-headed guy, he didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or anything like that, but he did believe that he had not been alone on that run to the Palisades Grand; that something or someone had been driving him on.
He would never be so arrogant as to suggest he knew the answers. He didn’t. But Marlon had looked out for him in life, and so he had done the same in death. They were brothers. Death didn’t get in the way of that.
Leon inhaled the ocean air. His lungs contracted painfully; he hadn’t yet been able to return to training, and with Rio on the cards he had to get back on the circuit. Three years he had to keep widening that gap. The title he’d earned wasn’t one he was prepared to give up.