‘No. You wouldn’t. I beg you…’
‘The policeman at your front door will be missing from his post for the next five minutes,’ Vitale said coldly. ‘A taxi will pull up outside. It will take you to the airport. There will be a ticket to New York waiting at the Notrheast Airlines counter.’ He paused. ‘If you care for your Mr Forrester, you will collect your ticket and get on that flight.’
The phone went dead in her hands. Gabrielle sat staring at it, then slowly hung up.
Surely, this was all a bad dream.
Except, it wasn’t.
The chalk outline of the man who’d been sent to kill her was a stark reminder that it was reality…
And that she held her lover’s life in her hands..
Slowly, as if she had aged years in the past moments, Gabrielle got to her feet and started towards the front door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Vitale house dated from the turn of the century.
Large, graceless, with endless dark rooms opening on to even darker halls, the house was Victorian in concept but completely lacking in any of the period’s charm or grace. Everything about it was somber and oppressive, from the wainscoted walls to the oversized furniture.
Gabrielle had always hated the place..
As a child, she’d clung to her father’s hand whenever they stepped over the threshold. She remembered worrying that something terrible lurked in the shadowy corners of the entrance hall, something that would make the trolls and witches who lived in her book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales pale in comparison. As she’d grown older, she’d realized that here was nothing supernatural to fear in the Vitale house.
There had been only ‘Uncle’ Tony.
And it had taken a lifetime, and what had happened on a hot night in New Orleans three months ago, to make her face the truth.
‘Uncle’ Tony was far more evil than any of the ghouls or goblins that lived in the pages of the old fairy-stories.
Now, on this sweet-smelling June day, as she sat in the window-seat of her room on the third floor of Vitale’s home, she wondered how she’ could have been so blind to the truth.
Tony Vitale was a vicious crook—there was no kinder way to phrase it.
And she was his prisoner.
She sighed as she watched the gardener weeding the roses.
She was too old to believe in fairy-tales any more,
but she knew how Rapunzel must have felt, locked in the tower with no hope of rescue. No matter how luxurious the furnishings, there was nothing more terrible than to know you were someone’s captive, unless it was to know you would remain so for the rest of your life…
And to know you had lost the man you would always love, even if he hated you.
She hadn’t wanted to believe any of it, at first. After the phone had gone dead in her hands that night in New Orleans, she’d told herself the conversation with Vitale couldn’t have really taken place. Things like that didn’t happen in the real world.
Wrong.
She’d gone to the front door, carefully opened the wrought-iron grille and peered out just in time to see the policeman left to guard her push back his sleeve and cast a furtive glance at his watch.
Seconds later, he’d stepped into the shadows, vanishing as neatly as a rabbit down a hole. And then a taxi had glided silently to the kerb, its headlights peering myopically into the wispy fog, and a terror greater than any she’d ever known had set her teeth chattering.
The truth, so long denied, had finally become irrefutable. Tony Vitale—‘Uncle’ Tony—had tried to have her killed tonight, but the attempt had failed.
James was his next target.
She’d spun on her heel towards the telephone. She’d call James at the police station, tell him…
Tell him what?
That Vitale had targeted him for death? She knew how James would react to that. The threat would enrage him. He’d rush to her side…
And Vitale would kill him.
Nobody would be able to stop him.
‘Accidents’ happened.
A speeding car, a bomb, a package in the mail— there were endless ways to do the job, and she probably didn’t even know half of them.
Wrapped in the trappings of respectability, Vitale was a powerful figure. His patronage gave him access into high places; he could do anything he wanted, and that included murdering her lover.
She had moved like a robot, stepping out into the night, slipping out of the gate and into the waiting taxi. Her ticket had been waiting at the airport, just as Vitale had promised, and she had boarded the plane without looking back, afraid that if she did she would somehow see James’s face and know she couldn’t leave him, no matter what.
Hours later, she’d stepped from the plane and into the heavy arms of Tony Vitale.
‘Don’t,’ she’d said, struggling to free herself, but Vitale had only drawn her closer to him. The mingled scents of cigar smoke and cologne had made her gag.
‘Smile for the birdie, Gabriella,’ Vitale had whispered, his cheek rasping against hers.
Flashbulbs had gone off in her eyes. Blinking, she’d stared into a dozen cameras and she’d realised they were surrounded by reporters and photographers.
‘My insurance policy, cara mia,’ Vitale had said with a laugh, curving his arm around her waist as he led her to his waiting limousine. ‘By tomorrow morning, your boyfriend won’t be able to pick up a newspaper without seeing a photograph of our tender reconciliation.’
Tears had streamed down her face as Vitale handed her into the car. ‘Why?’ she’d whispered, staring at the man she’d once felt such affection for as he climbed heavily in beside her. ‘Why are you doing this?’
Vitale’s thick brows had drawn together. ‘Are you such a fool, Gabriella? I can’t allow you to testify against me. Don’t you understand?’ An oily smile had crept over his face. ‘You will be my wife. No one can force you to testify against me—not when the stakes are so high, and your precious Mr Forrester’s life hangs in the balance.’
Gabrielle had taken a deep breath. ‘But I can’t tesity. I don’t ’t know anything.’
‘You do, cara. You know enough to corroborate Frank Lorenzo’s testimony.’
She’d looked at him blankly. ‘Frank? The man who works for you?’
He’d nodded as he settled back in the car and pulled a long, black cigar from the breast pocket of his silk suit.
‘Yes.’ Vitale had chewed off the end of the cigar and
spat it on to the carpeted floor. ‘That’s right.’
‘Is that the man you were on the phone with that time? But I told the prosecutor, I only heard a few meaningless words…’
Vitale had smiled, almost sadly. ‘Tell me what you heard, Gabriella.’
‘I heard you say—you said, “Riley refuses to come around, Frank. I want him taken care of tonight.” ’
Her eyes had met his. Suddenly, the simple words seemed to take on a darker meaning than they ever had before. .
Vitale had put his hand over hers, clasping it tightly when she tried to pull free.
‘Yes. That’s right, cara. And that night, Riley was killed. Someone put a gun to his head and blew it off..’
‘No,’ she’d said sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear this!.’
Vitale’s hand almost crushed hers.
‘The federal authorities have Frank in custody—they have for months—and they’ve offered him immunity if he’ll testify against me—and your testimony will corroborate his.’ He had stared at her for a moment and then, gradually, his smile had returned and the pressure on her hand had eased. ‘But you’re not going to do that, are you, carat You’re going to be the good girl your dear father raised you to be.’
‘Please. Tell me what you want with me. My promise of silence? You have that, I swear. I won’t tell anyone what I heard…’
Vitale had smiled broadly, and for a moment he’d looked as benign as he had years before, when she’d sat on his knee and
laughed at his jokes.
‘Your father and I were of the old country. We understood each other, Gabriella—I trusted him with my life.’
‘No,’ she’d whispered, ‘I won’t believe it. Not my father!’
‘Of course, your father,’ Vitale said impatiently. ‘ He was my bodyguard. My good friend. . He knew everything about me, and about how I felt about you..’ He’d smiled that oily smile that made her skin crawl. ‘He hoped you would come to feel the same way about me, but things don’t always work out as we would wish, do they?’
She’d stared at him. It was impossible. Her father wouldn’t have wanted her to—to…
‘No,’ she’d insisted. ‘It’s a lie..’
‘He wanted you to live a safe, secure life, Gabriella—the kind of life I can provide. I will honour his memory by treating you with courtesy,’ he’d said, breathing out a cloud of cigar smoke that hung in the car like a pall. ‘My housekeeper will chaperon us until our wedding arrangements are completed.’
Gabrielle had shaken her head wildly. ‘I won’t do it!’
‘Would you prefer to see your Mr. Forrester dead?’
Three months had passed since then, three months of living locked within this ugly house except when Vitale chose to take her out of it. He seemed to get a special pleasure out of exhibiting her in public, as if she were a prize specimen he’d collected on a hunting trip. The tabloids recorded her every move and their attention pleased Vitale.
‘Smile for the birdie’ became his favourite expression whenever he saw a camera.
After a while, she suspected he arranged for the reporters and photographers to show up when she stepped out the door. She knew the reason: he was drawing her ever more deeply into his web, branding her so firmly as his that she would never be able to escape, even if she were foolish enough to try.
Not that she would.
James’s life hung in her hands,
As for the rest—it hurt to admit that her father had known what Vitale was, had in some way been part of Vitale’s criminal empire, but she had to accept the past.
‘Face it squarely,’ James had said, ‘and then you can put it behind you.’
That was what she was doing… but there was a part of the past she didn’t want to forget, that she would never forget, and that was James and how much she loved him.
She dreamed of him at night, lying in the huge four-poster bed in her room, restless against the satin sheets hand-embroidered with her initials. She thought of him when the limousine rolled silently along the city streets and she saw lovers walking arm in arm on the pavement.
James, her heart would sigh silently, James.
Where was he? What was he doing? Did he hate her? She knew he must; Vitale had explained to the press that she had come back to him unexpectedly—‘A joyous reunion’ was how one tabloid had described it—after a foolish misunderstanding.
Thanks to his sly use of the media, a myth was growing up around her.
It was as if America had fallen in love with someone a little soiled and sordid. It wasn’t a new phenomenon: there’d always been a place in the public heart for women of tarnished virtue.
A tabloid dubbed Gabrielle ‘The Silent Princess’ and other papers picked up the designation, describing in gushing terms her cool beauty and her refusal to respond to questions, dwelling with relish on the arrangements for the forthcoming marriage between her and Vitale. Her photos showed her wrapped in sable or mink, jewels gleaming at her ears and throat, Vitale’s obscenely large diamond on her finger.
Gabrielle had difficulty recognising herself in the pictures. She’d lost weight, and the woman the cameras captured was a hollow-cheeked stranger designed by Vitale. Her long hair was caught in a demure chignon, her make-up was lavish and impeccable as he demanded. Only her eyes were familiar. She wondered if only she could see the terrible sadness in them.
She started at the sound of a heavy-knuckled knock at the door. She knew it was Vitale. But he’d said a meeting would keep him late at the office, and she had looked forward to the extra time without him.
‘Gabriella?’ The door opened and he stepped into the room, smiling as he saw her. ‘Ah, cara, there you are.’
He sounded jovial, the charming fiancé returned from his humdrum nine-to-five job, delighted to find the woman he loved at home.
But the picture was warped. His ‘job’ was hardly the nine to five kind. She despised him.
And where else would she be, when he kept her a virtual prisoner?
Gabrielle slipped from the window-seat and faced him. ‘Of course I’m here,’ she said coldly. ‘You’ve given my jailers orders that I not leave this house without you.’
Vitale laughed. ‘Such nonsense. I’m concerned for your welfare, cara. A man in my position has many enemies, you know that.’
A terrible weariness gripped her. They had been through all this a dozen times before, she at first demanding freedom of movement, then pleading for it. But he was never going to allow her any. She knew that, just as she knew there was no way out of this nightmare she was living, and she was suddenly tired. So tired.
She crossed the room and sat down at her dressing-table. It was, Vitale had told her proudly, Louis XIV— or had he said Louis XV? Not that it mattered. She hated it; it was as elaborate and overblown as everything else in the velvet cage that was her bedroom.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, picking up a comb and running it through her hair. The comb was made of tortoiseshell, trimmed in eighteen-carat gold set with tiny sprays of diamonds, and not a day passed but that she thought about snapping it in half. ‘You said you would be late today.’
Vitale walked up behind her. She flinched as his meaty hands settled on her shoulders and he smiled at her in the mirror.
‘Is that the warmest greeting you can manage for your fiance, Gabriella?’ His hands slipped to her throat and he tipped her head up, watching her reflection in the mirror. ‘Surely you can think of something more cordial?’
A sour taste filled her mouth. She swallowed, then swallowed again. Vitale had kept to his promise so far: he hadn’t touched her intimately, or even tried to.
But she felt his eyes on her all the time, moving over her body like snails, leaving slime wherever they touched.
She had learned that the best defense was to remain silent in the face of his taunts. But logic often gave way to the need to strike out. Her verbal blows were weak, but sometimes they struck home. Such moments were worth any risk.
‘You aren’t my fiance,’ she said calmly. ‘You’re a killer and Iwish you were dead.”
His hands closed around her throat. ‘Watch that mouth of yours, cara’ Her heart leaped as she felt the distinct pressure of his thumbs against her windpipe.
She looked at him in the mirror.
‘Go on,’ she said softly. ‘You’d be doing me a favour.’
Their eyes held, and then Vitale laughed and his hands fell to her shoulders again.
‘Why should we quarrel, cara? You know better than to speak your poison outside this house.’ He looked at her, the expression on his face suddenly sly. ‘Have you read the paper today?’
She shook her head wearily. ‘No. Why? Is there something in the columns about the jewels you bought yesterday? I don’t want them. I told you…’
He smiled. ‘You should keep up with the news, Gabriella. There’s an item about your Mr Forrester.’
Her heart tumbled. She knew what would happen if she expressed too much interest; it had happened before, just after she’d come here. Vitale had dropped a hint about James and how he’d reacted to learning she’d fled to New York, and when she’d begged him to tell her more Vitale had laughed and walked away.
Sound casual, she told herself, but when she spoke she could hear the tension in her whispered words.
‘About James?’
‘ He’s left Washington. ‘He quit the prosecutor’s office.’ He waited, and then he smiled. ‘I’ll bet you can’t imagin
e where he’s living now.’
She stared at him, praying he couldn’t hear the beat of her heart.
‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Where?’
Vitale grinned. ‘New York. Isn’t it amazing what a small world we live in, Gabriella?’
James. James was here, in the same city.
‘Do you want to know more?’ He laughed. ‘Then again, it’s not very interesting, cara. I don’t want to bore you.’
Oh, God. He was playing with her. He was tossing out the bait, and if she leaped too quickly he’d reel in his line and that would be the end of it.
‘Do as you wish,’ she said carefully, despite the race of her heart.
Vitale laughed again. She felt breathless, thinking at first she’d passed the test. But she hadn’t. When he spoke, she knew he’d tricked her.
‘Good,’ he said with a smile. ‘Then we won’t waste time talking about things of no importance.’ He bent and put his lips to her hair, and she shuddered. ‘In two weeks’ time you’ll be mine, cara mia,’ he whispered. ‘You will not shudder in my arms. Not if you wish your Mr Forrester to remain healthy. Do I make myself clear?’
Gabrielle nodded.
‘Bene..’ His hands slid from her and he stepped back. ‘We’re going to the opera. Dinner first, at the place in the Village. Wear the white gown and the rubies. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour.’
She nodded, sitting stiffly and watching in the mirror until he’d left the room, and then she slumped forward and buried her face in her hands.
What had he been about to tell her about James? Any little bit of news would have been wonderful: to someone dying of thirst, even a raindrop was welcome.
And Gabrielle was dying. ‘
She was dying of sorrow.
‘Smile, Gabriella.’ Vitale’s voice hissed in her ear. ‘This is not a sad opera—looking at you, one would think this was the last act in Camille.’
Gabrielle straightened in the box-seat and consciously rearranged the expression on her face. She hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening on stage—opera had never been among her favourite things, and tonight James’s teasing words kept coming back to her.
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