The Perfect Escape

by Claudia Carroll

  A light breeze caught the fine, silk curtains that draped provocatively from the vast dome-shaped bed, lifting them in a ghostly manner, and, finally satisfied that all was to his exacting standards, Tom made his way down to the master suite below and showered quickly but thoroughly in the lavish, marble and sandstone floored en-suite bathroom, anxious to admire himself in his new, custom-made Tom Ford suit. Only the best for his imminent guest.

  Stepping into a fresh pair of white Calvin Klein briefs, he spritzed himself liberally with Grey Vetiver and slid into a crisp, white Richard James shirt that he’d picked up on Savile Row. Enjoying himself now, he slipped on a pair of flawless gold and diamond Cartier cufflinks, pulled on the midnight-blue trousers and single breasted jacket, and added a thin black silk tie. Alluring and glamorous, it was the perfect blend of American minimalism matched with Italian class. Seductively whispering (rather than screaming) wealth and sophistication, it suggested the wearer was a no-nonsense kind of guy who knew his way around the boardroom and the bedroom, the kind of suit that stopped women dead in their tracks. The kind of suit Tom Black liked.

  Surveying his masculine, gym-honed reflection in the full length Venetian mirror, he resisted the urge to say aloud, ‘the name’s Bond … James Bond,’ grinning childishly as he ran his thumb and fingers across his well-defined jawline, forgetting himself. For a moment he felt a flutter of excitement, a brief transient state of happiness that was swiftly replaced with one of sharp guilt as he thought of Jack … of Loretta … of her.

  Tom forced himself to smile at his reflection. How he would do it all so differently given the chance again. Introspection; waste of fucking time that was. He knew he was a prime candidate for therapy, a psychiatrist’s dream; but who needed a shrink to tell them what a fuck-up they were and pay for the privilege? Screw that. He adjusted the lapels on his five-hundred dollar shirt in the mirror; his thoughts had begun to coast towards the moribund and he distracted himself by examining his features. He might be what society deemed ‘middle aged’ – a term he despised – but he sure as shit didn’t want to look it. All that ageing gracefully bullshit was for people who couldn’t afford to look good, or worse, for those who’d already given up on life. He was neither. In a bid to bolster his withering ego, he told himself that after tonight, after he’d done what he knew he had to do, he would find another playground; start again while he still had the looks to get by. He’d go younger this time; the younger ones were so much easier. They were less demanding, more malleable, easier to please and deceive. They didn’t yet possess that haunted expression, one that spoke of broken hearts and shattered dreams, of wasted years and bitter disappointments. These days, when he looked into the eyes of women of a certain age he found himself having to look away. Sometimes it was too much like looking into a mirror.

  Tom pulled a white-tipped Marlboro Light from a soft pack on the table and lit it with a vintage 1973 Cartier lighter, a little agitated. Inhaling deeply, he felt the knot of tension in his gut ease a little as the nicotine hit his system, caressing his blood vessels into submission. He’d kicked the weed years ago but tonight he needed something to take the edge off. She would be here soon.

  Extinguishing his cigarette in a Lalique glass ashtray, he made his way to the lower deck to sluice with mouthwash and top up with Grey Vetiver. Pride; it always came before a fall. No wonder it was one of the seven deadly sins. It had prevented him from following the path of true happiness his entire life. Tonight though, he knew he would need to remove the mask once and for all, lay his soul bare, finally tell her what he should have told her all those years ago. Then it would be over.

  The unmistakable sound of footsteps along the jetty caused Tom to look up, and with a rapid heartbeat, make his way back up to the top deck, conscious of each step his hand-stitched Italian loafers made.

  As the figure came into view, Tom’s eye was immediately drawn to the outstretched hand and the .9 mm Glock it shakily held, the metal glinting malevolently in the last of the sun’s fading rays as it pointed directly at him. Registering surprise and confusion, his heart beating aggressively beneath his pristine suit, he felt a violent surge of adrenalin flush through his system, loosening his joints to the point of collapse.

  ‘Well, well,’ he heard himself say as the sharp cracking sound of the gun discharging split the balmy, almond-scented air; only it did not sound like his voice at all, it was the voice of a stranger, low and detached. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you …’

  CHAPTER 1

  ‘Mmm, looks delicious,’ Ellie Scott murmured appreciatively as she looked down at the eggs Florentine that had just been placed in front of her by a smiling, if a little harried-looking waitress. Lindsay, her PA, sitting opposite her, nodded enthusiastically as she threw her copy of the Daily Mail down onto the table and carefully pulled out a large document from her new Chloe Marcie tote. Ellie’s dance school was due to open in less than two months and there was still so much to organise. Just looking at the to-do list brought her out in a cold sweat.

  ‘Any news on a venue yet?’ Lindsay tentatively asked, between mouthfuls of her eggs Benedict.

  ‘Linds, I’ve been on to every estate agent in London,’ Ellie gave a despairing sigh as she swished her long, honey-highlighted hair from her face, wondering if it was too early for a quinoa-vodka Bloody Mary; it was practically one of your five-a-day.

  ‘… And? Any luck?’

  Ellie momentarily abandoned her knife and fork with a clatter. She felt like crying.

  ‘Something will come up,’ Lindsay reassured her boss brightly. After all, Ellie’s husband was synonymous with luxury estates all over the world. Surely if anyone could pull a few strings for his wife it was her billionaire business tycoon, a man who made Philip Green look like Del Boy Trotter from Only Fools and Horses.

  Truth was though, Ellie hadn’t actually told Vinnie about the collapse of the venue, at least, not yet. This was exactly the kind of situation she had hoped to avoid; running to her husband at the first sign of trouble.

  ‘I’m viewing a place after lunch,’ Ellie lied in a bid to put an end to the conversation. ‘In the meantime, I think we should just carry on with the plans as discussed, get everything organised so that as soon as a new venue is found, it’s all systems go.’

  It had taken the best part of eighteen months to source and secure the Soho venue that Ellie had planned to transform into her flagship dance studio, so it had been a bitter blow to have been gazumped at the last minute. Now she had less than eight weeks to find another venue and turn everything around or she stood to lose a lot of money, and more importantly, face. This dance school was her life’s dream. Her childhood ambition of becoming a professional ballerina had long since passed, fate had put paid to that some years ago, but this school was a chance to give something back; allowing other girls, talented girls like she’d once been, to achieve what she herself wished she could have, if only life had taken a different path.

  ‘And—’ Lindsay scanned her to-do list for the umpteenth time in case she’d missed anything important, ‘—while we’re still on the hunt for a new venue, we should think about drawing up a guest list for the opening night, and then there’s the …’ she had gone into full efficiency overdrive now, but Ellie had stopped listening. Her concentration had been broken by a commotion taking place at the front of the restaurant. A waiter was busy ushering a female wearing the darkest Dior shades and a vintage Pucci headscarf through the doors and away from a swarm of paparazzi that had gathered outside like locusts.

  ‘OMG! Don’t turn round, but you are never going to believe who’s just walked in …’ Lindsay’s jaw was practically swinging on its hinges, ‘only Miranda Muldavey.’

  ‘Nooo!’ Ellie hissed. ‘But she lives in LA.’

  Lindsay tapped her copy of the Daily Mail with a chewed fingernail and gave a conspiratorial nod. ‘It says she’s back in London, come to see her family apparently, you know,’ she leaned in towards her boss, ‘befor
e the trial starts.’

  Miranda Muldavey was bona fide Hollywood royalty, a global icon who had regularly graced the covers of glossy magazines and newspapers the world over. Or at least she had been, until she had made an ill-fated decision to go under the knife and been left a butchered mess.

  Miranda’s sensational story had brought Hollywood to a standstill. Overnight, one of the most celebrated actresses on the planet had been reduced to little more than a freak sideshow, a figure of ridicule and pity, her career – and face – in tatters.

  Of course, the rumour-mill had practically spun into overdrive with such force that you could see smoke. This was the ‘handiwork’ of a cosmetic surgeon. But whose?

  ‘And she was so beautiful as well,’ Ellie sighed. ‘Just goes to show that you should never mess with what’s God given. But then again, I’m not an A-list Hollywood actress. All that pressure to look half your age and have the body of a teenager …’ Ellie glanced over at the lone, hunched figure, hiding behind her oversized shades as she perused the brunch menu. ‘To her credit, she’s remained very dignified about the whole thing – even if she’s a virtual recluse now.’

  Lindsay raised a sardonic eyebrow.

  ‘… More’s the pity really.’

  ‘So, does the paper drop a hint on who the culprit is?’ Ellie asked. Miranda’s story had been the source of much dinner-party debate during the past six months. Even Vinnie had shown an interest in it.

  Lindsay thumbed her copy of the Daily Mail, ‘not exactly, though interestingly, there is a story right next to it about Doctor Ramone Hassan, you know, the celebrity surgeon who’s always on those before-and-after TV shows? It says here that he’s due to fly back to LA from his holiday in Santorini in a few days’ time, just as the trial begins …’ She widened her eyes, continuing to read aloud. ‘“Dr Ramone ‘Ramsey’ Hassan, one of the most successful and celebrated – not to mention richest – plastic surgeons on the planet, a man who has helped countless Hollywood actresses turn back the clock, seen here with his new wife, Lorena, looks relaxed as he holidays on the picturesque Greek Island of Santorini.”’

  Ellie looked up from her plate.

  ‘Let me see that,’ she said, taking the paper from her PA’s grasp. She looked down at the grainy paparazzi shot of an older-looking, dark-skinned man standing on a boat, his unsightly paunch visible over the top of his tight Speedo briefs, but it was the woman next to him that caused her to drop her fork in alarm and her heartbeat to gallop like a racehorse inside her chest. Draped over a sun lounger with a champagne flute in one hand and a thin, white cigarette in the other, was a Dolce & Gabbana bikini-clad woman with pneumatic breasts that were struggling to free themselves from the miniscule triangles of fabric that strained to conceal them. Wearing a matching turban and blowing cigarette smoke from her enormous, plumped-up lips, it was unmistakably her. Loretta Fiorentino, or Hassan as she now was. The press might’ve misspelt her name, but it was her alright. Ellie would never forget those eyes; as dark and soulless as a shark about to attack.

  ‘Well, well, well. Loretta,’ she murmured underneath her breath, transfixed by the surgically enhanced face of a woman she hadn’t seen in over two decades – and was all the better for it.

  ‘Ellie … Ell-liiee,’ Lindsay’s voice cut through the fog of her thoughts with all the subtlety of a meat cleaver.

  Ellie suddenly stood.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got to run, Linds,’ she said, snatching up her iPhone from the table. ‘I’ve got this appointment … and I promised Tess I’d see her before she flies off to Ibiza.’

  ‘OK, but before you go …’ Lindsay held up the mock invitations, head cocked to one side in apology. ‘What do you reckon; the red or the black?’

  ‘Black,’ Ellie said as she leaned in to kiss Lindsay on both cheeks, throwing her Chanel Caviar bag over her shoulder in a deft swoop. ‘Let’s play it safe.’

  Ellie pasted on a smile as she left the café. The press clipping had thrown her. Loretta Fiorentino was someone she had hoped never to have to think about ever again. She was part of a past that Ellie had long ago buried and had no plans to resurrect; at least not in this lifetime. The news story had said that ‘Lorena’ and her husband were at the end of an extended honeymoon and were imminently due to head back to LA, potentially making a brief stop off in London first, ‘if the mood takes us.’ Ellie hoped it wouldn’t. In fact, she hoped they’d get on a one-way plane back to LA as soon as possible and stay there permanently, because if Eleanor Scott knew one thing, it was that wherever Loretta Fiorentino was, trouble was never far behind.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘Cazzo imbecilli!’ Loretta Hassan jabbed at the picture of herself in the paper with a long pointed red fingernail. ‘The press, they are fucking idiots!’ she screeched, incredulous, her Italian accent thick with protest. ‘I mean, for the love of God they are journalists! Journalists! And they cannot even spell my name correctly!’ She slammed the offending paper down onto the silk Versace sheets, causing Bambino, her white teacup Chihuahua, to yelp in alarm. ‘The British press,’ she hissed, ‘they are the worst in the world – Lo-rena,’ she elongated the name contemptuously from her collagen-filled lips, as though it were poisonous. ‘Who the fuck is Lo-rena?’

  ‘My darling,’ Ramone ‘Ramsey’ Hassan, Loretta’s husband of two months, rolled off his wife’s naked body with a sigh. ‘You must not upset yourself,’ he said softly, patting her hand like a child. ‘You have not long recovered from your operation. It is not good to put your body through so much stress, not at your ag –’ Loretta shot him a fierce glare and he wisely refrained from finishing the sentence.

  ‘Do you not realise what this means, you stupid man?’ she snapped, snatching the offending newspaper up again and waving it in front of her husband’s weary face.

  ‘You see how they have positioned us next to the Muldavey story? This is not an accident, no?’ her eyes narrowed into menacing slits. ‘You must get onto the lawyers as soon as possible! We’ll sue their sorry asses to kingdom come!’

  Furious, Loretta threw back the fine silk sheets. Swinging her short but slim coffee-coloured legs over the edge, she began to pace the room.

  Ramsey, smarting a little from the ‘stupid man’ comment, watched her stalk the length of the palatial master suite, her delicate feet leaving imprints in the cream Persian rug.

  ‘Come back to bed, Loretta, darling,’ Ramsay sighed. He had neither the emotional strength nor the energy to calm her down today, especially after the aggressive sex session they’d just had. He was exhausted.

  Though he was at great pains to disguise it from his new wife, Ramsey was feeling the pressure of his impeding trial. The super-injunction he’d managed to take out against the actress speaking out had afforded him a modicum of protection, for now at least, but such tremendous stress was beginning to take its toll on his health. In recent weeks his headaches had reached the point of being unbearable and the heart palpitations he was increasingly experiencing were giving him great cause for concern. He had never felt worse.

  Ignoring him, an incensed Loretta, newspaper in hand, flounced out onto the enormous patio. The view was without doubt as arresting as any she’d seen before and for a moment it was all she could focus on.

  Villa Adonia was situated on a sequestered and tranquil section of the western tip of the picturesque Greek island of Santorini. Perched on a cliff top with a horseshoe-shaped beach below, private and completely secluded, it enjoyed exceptional 360-degree views of the crystal clear Aegean sea and was by far the most exquisite hideaway on the entire island.

  ‘Merda, fa caldo! It’s hot!’ Loretta purred, allowing her Missoni kaftan to slide from her shoulders to the floor, exposing her naked, olive-skinned flesh. It had to be tipping one hundred degrees at least.

  Loretta had turned heads from an early age. She possessed a magnetic beauty; all large brown eyes encased in dark lashes, luscious thick lips that seemed to part naturally in an overtly sexual p
out, and an abundance of thick, jet black hair that tumbled down her back in corkscrew curls. But it was Loretta’s body that was her greatest asset. When, at the age of fourteen, it met with puberty, she became the talk of Naples.

  The young Loretta spent her days behind the meat counter of her father’s store, dreaming of escaping the slums of Naples to Hollywood, where she would become a star of the silver screen, just like her idols, Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren, and Greta Garbo. After her father was tragically shot dead in a bungled robbery and her mother followed him to the grave less than two years later, there was nothing left to prevent her from pursuing her dreams. Loretta had quickly decided that the fastest, most effective way of getting to the top in Hollywood was to screw her way there, and as a result, it was not long before she got a break starring in a string of low-grade adult movies, ultimately going on to marry the director – a man she neither loved nor particularly liked – at just eighteen years old. Naïvely, Loretta saw her foray into the soft porn industry – and her marriage – as a stepping stone to achieving her lofty ambitions. But the union was a disaster, and just eighteen months later she was left penniless and pregnant. Disillusioned but still determined, Loretta had made the decision to abort her unborn child and vowed never again to fall foul of a man. The next time she married – and she had no doubt there would be a next time – she would make sure it was for the right reasons: money; bags of it.

  Although it had been a strategic move on her part, seducing and marrying one of the richest plastic surgeons in Hollywood, Loretta did care about Ramsey in her own unique way. He was perfect husband material and she planned to stay with him for as long as it suited her, which she estimated to be somewhere around the five to seven year mark, give or take, figuring this would be long enough to entitle her to a generous slice of his substantial wealth; and possibly the Tuscan house, if the judge was having a good day. Love was not part of Loretta’s repertoire. As far as she was concerned, love was a losing game played by fools. And Loretta Fiorentino was nobody’s fool.