Power Games

by Victoria Fox

  Joan didn’t reply, but was gratified when Trey released a low growl in the back of his throat. Sketch’s stooped figure melted away.

  It was bad, but while the priest went droning on she couldn’t help going over the lyrics to her forthcoming single: ‘You brought me right out of the wings, boy, and made me step into the light. All it took was a leap of faith, boy, and now I know I’m right …’ Cut N Dry had advised her against the use of ‘boy’—they said it wasn’t ‘age-appropriate’. Age-appropriate her ass! Joan had slapped that concern away. They hadn’t a leg to stand on when it came to telling her what to do.

  One image of Kevin pinned her with its stare. It was a still from one of his videos. He had mounted a white tiger and was flexing a pea-small bicep. His expression seemed to say: Thank you. After all, she was doing it for him, and for the Kevin Chase he might have become.

  Joan accepted her cue. She stepped forward, stopping at the grave to release a sob. Elegantly she pressed a tissue to her nose, and with the other hand threw in Kevin’s beloved debut album sleeve, Untouched, along with Trey’s studded-diamond collar. The priest dipped his head. The fans sobbed to the sky.

  Goodbye, son.

  It wasn’t meant to end this way, but Joan accepted the cards she’d been dealt. While Kevin was alive, she had taken her place in his support act; now he was dead, she took her place on his stage. It was a stage they had both worked for and she was darned if she was letting it go.

  Finally, Joan Chase possessed the celebrity she had always wanted.

  Three hundred miles away, in a bar on the Las Vegas Strip, Dino and Carmine Zenetti watched Angela’s procession unfold on TV.

  Carmine popped the cork on a magnum of champagne.

  ‘An’ there it is,’ he said, filling the flutes, the signet on his pinkie twinkling as bubbles crawled up the sides. His sometime girlfriend, a big-breasted lounge singer called Mufti, kissed him on his cheek. Carmine looped an arm round her waist and grinned lustily. ‘All tied up.’

  Dino’s Cristal tasted sour. As images of Angela appeared onscreen, interspersed with those of her mourning brothers, he thought of her soft mouth and big eyes and the sexy curve of her hips, and, despite what his father said, would trade in this eventuality, however profitable, with one night in bed with a lady like that.

  ‘You wanna go celebrate in private?’ Mufti asked Carmine, brushing her tits against his arm and batting her eyelashes suggestively.

  Trouble was, thought Dino, there were no ladies like that.

  ‘Gimme a minute, baby.’ Carmine drank, satisfied. ‘Somethin’ tells me you and me are gonna have a lot to celebrate for a lot of years. Ain’t that right, son?’

  Dino mustered an answering smile. Just as everything else that had been decided in his life, there his father was at the helm, the eternal orchestrator.

  He drained the champagne and held his glass out for another.

  Tawny Lascelles’ mourners gathered in Central Park, where a plaque was being unveiled—GREAT BEAUTY SHINES FOR EVER—alongside a replica of her iconic pose on last summer’s cover of Vogue. Fashionistas from around the globe huddled to pay their respects, designers and models, photographers and stylists.

  All were troubled not just by Tawny’s premature demise, but also by the idea that anyone as ravishing as she, indeed as them, could be mortal in the first place. Death was terribly unglamorous. If it had to be done, it should unfold in some serene setting, like Snow White in her glass box in the middle of an emerald-green glade—not crashing into a horrible sea in the depths of night, never to be seen again.

  JP Baudin, Tawny’s personal assistant of five years, lit a candle and held it up to the plaque. It felt like he was appealing to the Virgin Mary.

  Tawny had been no virgin, and she had certainly been no saint.

  It was a terrible thing to concede but, since Tawny’s vanishing, JP had been liberated. He had started to see his friends again. He had been to visit his family back in France and hadn’t had his superior barking commands down the phone every twenty minutes. He had rescued a floundering relationship with his actor boyfriend.

  Of course he had been shocked, and sad, and all the rest of it, but now, suddenly, his life was his again. He hadn’t even realised he’d lost it in the first place.

  Minty Patrick stood next to him. For her, the sorrow was genuine. Tawny hadn’t always been the easiest person to work with, but she had been a friend. Minty suspected that Tawny hadn’t had any real friends—she’d had a tough start in life and it was no wonder she’d found it hard to open up. She had used the only power she felt she had and turned it into a commodity: her body and her beauty were, she believed, her only assets. If only she had seen the world differently.

  In the crowd, Minty identified a clutch of Tawny’s old boyfriends, some one-time lovers, others month-long fixtures.

  She thought it strange that her last boyfriend wasn’t here: the guy they had talked about that day in Milan, the Vegas croupier. Minty hadn’t liked the look of him. There had been something she didn’t trust, and it seemed she’d been right, if he couldn’t be bothered to turn up on a day like this.

  She thought it strange, but then she wondered no more about it.

  In Washington, the procession following Mitch Corrigan’s empty casket was a dismal one. Draped in the American flag, the coffin was shouldered by four soldiers in uniform. Melinda, his widow, led close behind.

  She clasped her two children to her, smoothing their heads and whispering not to cry: admittedly this was advice she neglected to take herself. Surely a person only had so many tears? She had been crying for weeks, some days in ragged bursts that could only be sustained for minutes at a time; others a prolonged moan that went on for hours. Hadn’t she run dry? When would it stop?

  Maybe never. Since Melinda had found her husband’s diaries, there would never again be anything to smile about.

  Supporters lined their path, holding aloft banners for Mitch, fans of his movies and advocates of his politics. If only they had known his true nature.

  But then Melinda hadn’t known it either, had she? And she was his wife. It was the definition of a sham marriage: two strangers, unable to talk, unwilling to communicate, embroiling themselves in a web of deceit.

  Melinda wasn’t just mourning her husband. She was mourning a lifetime of misunderstandings, a decade of regrets, the industry that had fucked him to the point of no return; the catalogue of mind-altering shit Mitch had pumped into his system over the reckless Hollywood years and the delusions he must have suffered as a result.

  She mourned his incapacity to share them with her.

  When they had first met, it hadn’t been an easy ride. He’d had affairs. Taken drugs. Drunk himself into a pit. Before finding stability in government, Mitch had been a drifting soul, hyped after his years in LA but now with nowhere to go. Melinda had stood by him through that.

  And how had he repaid her?

  A husband who thought she was … Who believed she had been …

  It was a joke. A bad punchline.

  Why, Mitch?

  He had told her why. The diary went on to describe the growing distance between them, her suspicious behaviour and her reluctance to answer questions about where she had been …

  Aliens didn’t invade me, honey. Try the guy next door …

  The president came to offer his condolences. Melinda was aware of cameras on them the whole time, and wished this circus could be over. It meant nothing. Her husband wasn’t even in that coffin. They were giving it pomp and circumstance because it wasn’t about burying Mitch; it was about burying the episode. They were doing it so that tomorrow the world could turn over with a clear conscience. The bodies were on the ocean bed, but their souls were here with their families.

  It had to be good enough.

  It wasn’t.

  Leith Friedman attended a night-time vigil for Jacob outside their San Francisco office. Despite being a key player, he kept to the back of the crowd an
d declined to speak when invited. He prayed that after Jacob’s memory was interned, the ordeal would be finished.

  He didn’t dare believe it.

  To his immense relief, the Russians had backed off. Just like that, their contact had stopped. Leith couldn’t explain it—surely now was the time to storm in, to push the settlement to signature. For some reason, they hadn’t. They’d disappeared.

  Leith didn’t care for the reasons. All that mattered was that they stayed that way. Lesson learned. Never again was he playing with that kind of fire.

  The CEO of a multinational electronics corporation took to the podium to speak of Jacob’s ‘considerable flair’ and ‘infectious charm’. Leith’s palms were hot. Would he always have this menace dancing at his back?

  He could not let it ruin him. Maybe the Russians had found a better offer elsewhere. Maybe they’d had an attack of conscience and decided to leave him be.

  It sounded as false to Leith’s ears as any dwindling hopes of recovering Jacob, but it was as good as he was going to get.

  It was an uncertainty he would have to live with.

  Orlando Silvers sat between his mother and brother on the back seat of the Mercedes. Today’s parade running through Angela’s hometown was for show: a public appeasement. The family had done their grieving in private and it had nothing to do with anyone else.

  He wondered if the Zenettis were watching. He hoped they were making the most of their victory because it wasn’t going to last. The time for gloating was over.

  There was no loyalty in this business—Carmine Zenetti had proved it. It was dog eat dog, every man for himself, and Orlando would take no prisoners.

  The car stopped and Isabella climbed out.

  ‘We have to tell her,’ said Luca. ‘It has to be soon.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ said Orlando. ‘The Zenettis are dead men.’

  Even if he had to do it with his bare hands.

  Orlando wasn’t just a man scorned. He had lost it all, and from that point the only way was forward, fuelled by certainty that there was nowhere further to fall; there was no risk left because there was nothing more to let go of. Orlando had lost his sister, his baby and the woman he loved. It made him powerful beyond his imagining.

  Carmine Zenetti had picked the wrong battle.

  Orlando hoped that wherever the women had wound up, however it had finished, Eve and Angela had been together and had found some comfort in that.

  He hoped it had been the three of them, in the end.

  99

  Day 63

  The pain was worse than the pain she had heard about—different, integral, her insides ripping, the sting and pull as her baby fought free in smashing waves that broke against an invisible shore. Eve crouched, her knees spread; she used her muscles in the way she’d been told, and when the urge overcame she gripped and pushed, filling the cave with stark and brutal sounds.

  The rain came furiously. By the time Angela returned to the clearing, Eve had gone.

  Angela called her name. It sounded spooky in the answering quiet. She looked between the trees, searching for a shape. The trees glared back, an immovable army. She listened, but heard nothing except the pit-pat of rain and the humming, sticky air.

  ‘Eve!’

  She shouted louder this time. A horrible sensation slipped over her, as if all of nature had turned. The jungle itself—not the creatures in it or the dangers it carried, but the leaves and the shrubs and the mud and the fibre of it—was against her.

  One sound picked its way through: a rattling hiss.

  Close. Right at her back.

  Angela’s heart fell to her toes.

  Alone in the glade and soaked to her skin, she turned.

  The baby’s head engaged. Eve screamed. The pain was incredible—sharp, stabbing jolts chased by seconds of drawn-out torture as if her stomach was on a stretching rack. She grabbed a knot in the rock, strained against it and howled as long and loud as she could, as if the agony might retreat if she frightened it hard enough. She was going to pass out. She was going to die.

  I can’t do it.

  The admission was a relief. A firm foothold. She knew it now—she could not do this, not in a cave in the middle of the jungle. She could not do it.

  She’d die. It had been a long time coming. It would be better for her baby, this way. They would go together; what kind of life would this be anyhow?

  But her body didn’t agree. It forced her into a final, awful thrust and then in a warbling gush she felt the baby spill out. She waited for its cry but nothing came.

  Luxuriously, slowly, the snake seeped from its branch.

  Angela froze. A flick of a black forked tongue as it wound, silent, oil-smooth. The body, secured at the tail, was winding and slinky, led by the bullet of its head.

  Two amber eyes locked on her fear.

  The reptile rose up, streaked with lethal diamonds, and prepared to strike.

  Her child’s first whimper was the sweetest sound she had ever heard. Groping in the darkness, her fingers closed around Angela’s knife. She cut the cord.

  Collapsing, Eve held her baby in her arms. She could make out its tiny, perfect features: eyes screwed tight, lungs bursting, crying to be alive, this tiny distillation of human will. Its head rested perfectly in the palm of her hand.

  A girl.

  Her daughter. A beginning. This was where it started, the two of them together.

  She had to get out of here, find Angela and get help.

  Spilling tears of happiness and surprise and amazement, Eve crawled towards the mouth of the cave and the bright window of rain.

  The growl stilled her in her tracks. It was deep in the throat, and savage: a half mewl, half roar.

  Eve stopped, her breath raw. She knew straight away what it was.

  This was no cave.

  It was a lair.

  Behind her, two yellow eyes gleamed in the dark.

  The snake bit in a flash, tensing and releasing like a coiled spring, striking her on the arm.

  It didn’t hurt. It felt like a puff of air, quick and silent.

  Angela dropped to her knees. The wound began to bleed; two fang-points seeping steady red.

  Don’t panic.

  She was aware of her beating heart, channelling the venom through her body: her veins, arteries and all the tiny capillaries that kept her alive, calmly under attack.

  How quiet a death sentence could be.

  Get out.

  Somebody was talking.

  Move. Stand up. Get out.

  The voice was her own, inside her head, but distant, like a stranger’s. Her brain felt diluted, a sponge between her ears, waterlogged and useless. Her arm was numb.

  The trees turned to water, thin and drizzling. She could not feel the rain. Her vision started to blot.

  She staggered up and started to run.

  Eve backed out of the cave. The leopard followed, huge paws padding the ground. Its body was supple and exquisitely marked, the tail long, its end pricked and tipped with black.

  Eve was close enough to see the flecked gold eyes, the broad, smooth plane of the animal’s nose, and the tiny pores from which coarse whiskers sprang. Behind, in the entrance to the den, two cubs emerged.

  Run fast. Run now.

  But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t break away.

  She held her daughter tight.

  The leopardess yowled, a haunting, primitive cry, and bore its canines. Razor teeth were gigantic and blade-sharp, the jaws flawless and powerful.

  Lowering onto its haunches, the cat braced its muscles, ready to pounce.

  She roared again, this time louder. Birds scattered from trees. The animal’s cry reverberated through the jungle, into the sky, shaking the roots in the earth.

  Eve did not back away.

  She did not scream.

  She pulled her daughter to her beating heart and thought: You’ll have to kill me before you take what’s mine.

 
Angela stumbled to the beach. The coast shivered and shook in the rain.

  She clutched her arm. She searched for life, for anyone—and, in the distance, by the caves, made out the blotch of her group: two men and one woman. She could not remember their names, these people she had lived and died with before today—random people, foreigners, family.

  She fell, the sand coarse on her knees, the rain coming fast, mingling with the threads of blood that escaped her wound. Crawling, she tried to call but no sound came out. There were others with them. More people than there should have been. Her group was approaching a second group: dark forms, naked, spikes in the sand.

  She tumbled down to the shore, the sky reeling.

  White froth rushed in. She fell again, and this time she could not get up.

  She turned her face to the ocean, and heard her name, called from afar, from out on the water …

  ‘Angela …’

  She knew that voice, from a life long ago.

  ‘Angela …’

  Seawater rushed up and stung her eyes. She bled tears from them, for all that was lost and all that would never be found again.

  ‘Angela!’

  There were such things as angels. She saw his face and closed her eyes.

  100

  Noah knew who she was, of course—but the figure on the beach looked nothing like Angela Silvers. Half naked, her hair long and scorched by sun, her skin dark brown, her clothes torn, and she was thin, so thin, just a bundle of sticks.

  He thrashed through the shallows, scooping her up as she fell. Her eyes were half shut but when he looked into them he knew he had come home. He bent his head and kissed her lips; they were dry and cracked, tears carving clear lines down her mud-streaked face, but these were the only lips, the only face, he ever had or ever would want to kiss. A sound escaped her but he could not make it out.

  Across the beach, a trio of figures advanced. Noah recognised them as Jacob Lyle, Mitch Corrigan and Celeste Cavalieri. They walked unsteadily, jungle children. Jacob’s beard was thick and matted. Mitch was half the man he’d been. All were changed, Noah could see it: not just physically but at some core, central pivot.