by Victoria Fox
They departed their accommodation shortly before six. She had already seen some faces she recognised. Jax Jackson, the Olympic idol, months from London 2012. Stevie Speller and Xander Jakobson. Aurora Nash, the contact of JB’s she had met once and hadn’t liked. Brock Wilde and Fiona Catalan, Hollywood power agents. Clusters of faintly familiar British celebrities, royalty or politicians or both. All had one thing in common. They weren’t him.
‘Come on, Lori,’ said Maximo as she resisted taking his hand, ‘aren’t we meant to be a couple in love?’
‘I’ll never love you.’
‘Sure you will.’ His top lip curled. ‘You’ll learn. And if you don’t, I’ll teach you.’
JB Moreau was calm. Unlike Reuben, he had all his life possessed a capacity for peace, and the more the world around him trembled with fear or unease, the quieter his centre became, like the silent funnel at the heart of a tornado.
He did not want to see Lori Garcia. He did not want to witness her beauty and be forced to turn away. He did not want to watch her on the arm of another man. Yet sometimes life had a way of imposing the unwanted, and in doing so it revealed a new objective.
Despite the hurt she had caused him, despite everything, he could not allow Maximo Diaz to go unanswered. JB knew what he had done to her. He saw the unhappiness in her eyes.
Maximo might be father to her child, but he wasn’t and never would be a lover of women. He was a manipulator, a bully. And he had chosen to fight the wrong battle.
JB knew what he had to do. The man hadn’t known over whose threshold he stepped.
Reuben van der Meyde descended the staircase. His son raced past, arms stretched wide like the wings of an aeroplane with accompanying sound effects, the housekeeper in close pursuit.
‘Get that boy under control!’ he boomed at Miss Jensen, who nodded meekly and grabbed hold of the child’s elbow. She muttered something as they melted into the kitchen quarters. He thought he heard the kid snivelling.
Reuben didn’t have time for this. He needed to get his head down and concentrate on reaching the morning without any major hiccups.
Distilling what was at risk to a major hiccup was laughable.
‘Drink?’
JB was in the lobby with his wife. The Frenchman held out a glass of thick liquid.
Reuben nodded. He downed the poison in one. ‘Let’s do this.’
Stevie and Xander’s Jeep approached the beach, slipping into the procession of waiting glitterati snaking its way towards the giant vessel. A navy-blue and shimmering-gold VDM emblem crowned the magnificent yacht. Tiny bulbs were strewn along its enormous flanks and across the bow, beginning to glow with the fading light. Uniformed staff, tiny from this distance, moved across the decks like blood rushing through a vast, complex organism.
Xander took her hand. ‘How are you feeling?’
Stevie gazed straight ahead, cool and collected in her dove-grey Elie Saab pantsuit.
‘Focused,’ she replied. ‘We’re here for a reason, and that reason is B.’
He nodded. ‘I don’t know how far we’ll have to take it. The things we know.’
‘As far as we have to.’ The decision was made. ‘The truth sets Bibi free.’
Preparation was everything, and Aurora Nash was leaving nothing to chance.
Concealing the seven-inch hunting knife in the band of her knickers, pointing it down in the way Billy-Bob Hocker had taught her one summer on Tom’s ranch, she dropped the silver floor-length gown over her head. It rippled down the length of her body. At the ruched waist she had slivered an opening, concise as a paper cut.
She swallowed back the sickness that had been plaguing her for years.
Was murder all it was cracked up to be?
Was there really such a difference, was there really, when it came to that moment of action, that instant of do or die, between sinking a knife into meat and killing a man?
Feelings, she supposed. Compassion. Empathy.
She had neither of those for Reuben van der Meyde.
Arnaud Devereux hadn’t taken much persuading. His conscience had buckled a long time ago. By the time Aurora had arrived in Paris, it was as if he had wanted to tell her. As if he had wanted to give her van der Meyde’s private details. As if with confession came catharsis, and, perhaps, forgiveness for the part he had played.
I’m one of them. Tomorrow the truth comes out.
Sending the message had been easy. Aurora wasn’t afraid. She knew she was taking on a giant, that a nineteen-year-old girl was no match for a man in Reuben’s position—and it didn’t make the damnedest bit of difference. She had an army behind her, even if they didn’t know it. All the kids like her, the ones who had their suspicions but whose suspicions were too shadowy to pinpoint, the ones who had always sensed something was wrong but couldn’t be sure what, the ones who didn’t know and maybe never would. Tonight she was leading them all into battle.
Crossing to her waiting car, the salty breeze whipping her white-blonde hair and the sun dipping to the ocean like a final farewell, Aurora touched the reassuring contours of the weapon. She hoped that in the last twenty-four hours she had given Reuben van der Meyde a taste of the uncertainty that had hounded her for nineteen years.
Arnaud hadn’t known who her real parents were. One man definitely did. Once she had taken the information she needed, she was going to make him pay with his life.
No punishment she could inflict on Reuben would ever equal his crime.
But Aurora had always been willing to try.
Book Five
Departure
57
Reuben felt better the instant he set foot on his 400-foot-long triumph. Like a castle, his defence, it was a rock-solid reminder of his supreme wealth and influence.
And it looked bloody impressive.
‘I gotta say—’ a grinning TV exec, first on the boat, clapped him on the back ‘—she’s a beautiful thing.’
‘Ain’t she?’
‘You’re a lucky man, van der Meyde.’
‘Sixty years of luck.’
‘And sixty more, I don’t doubt.’
Guests continued to arrive, seeping on to the vessel like contagion. Reuben focused on showing them the great man they were expecting: cool, calm and unflustered, the entrepreneur who had made billions and eclipsed them all for money and power ten times over.
It was a novelty, for one night only, for these VIPs to be made to feel inferior. He had realised some time ago that they embraced it.
Obscene in its adornments, the grand saloon was a lofty half-oval space, strung with lights and filled with the tinkle of polite discourse. A marriage of classic romanticism and contemporary design, it combined gleaming wood panels, a traditional fireplace, an old ship’s clock on a conventional mantelpiece—nods to the intrepid ventures of Columbus and da Gama, notions of discovery and breakthrough—and charcoal parquet, aluminium porthole windows, a spotlit canopy and current, clean furnishings, which brought the van der Meyde vessel to the cutting-edge of modern interiors. It was a clever mix, a fusion of past and present, and typified everything Reuben imagined himself to be: integral to history and at the same time making it.
Stevie was sickened when she considered what had paid for it.
Lori Garcia was at her side. The supermodel was full of sweet conversation, innocent of the place and its evils.
‘I loved Goodbye, Vegas,’ she was saying. ‘Was that your first project with Xander?’
‘It was how we met.’
‘I saw you there at the Frontline Fashion night. Before things took off for me,’ she prompted. ‘You might not remember.’
Stevie smiled. ‘Of course I remember.’
Maximo Diaz joined them as the yacht eased from its station with a gentle tug. Severed from the shore, Stevie felt the menace of their floating island, a capsule, adrift, the clink of crystal and merry voices concealing a reality that was treacherous as the ocean beneath.
‘Let’s hope it
’s smooth sailing,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Let’s hope,’ she replied.
Aurora disliked the feel of Reuben van der Meyde’s sweaty palm in hers. She had disliked it when she had first been on Cacatra, but she disliked it more now.
‘Champagne,’ he commanded.
A dark-haired Hispanic waiter, dressed in white and oddly familiar—perhaps he’d modelled—materialised. Reuben thrust the flute of Rémy into Aurora’s hand.
She enjoyed watching him struggle, no doubt surprised she had put in an appearance in the aftermath of Sherilyn’s death, and felt like she had when she was seven and playing Squash the Bug with Farrah by the pool. Reuben was the beetle, fat on its back, lolling on a broken shell.
Revoltingly, he touched her arm. ‘We were sad about your mother,’ he wheedled. ‘Sherilyn was a wonderful woman.’
The champagne tasted like acid.
‘Thank you.’ She had to force any scrap of gratitude from her mouth. With a tight smile, all she could muster, she adjusted her stance, feeling the handle of the knife press against her skin. Security had been rigorous, but not for her. What danger could a teenage girl pose?
If only he knew.
‘Happy birthday,’ she told him, raising her glass.
Reuben raised his in return. ‘It’s gonna go with a bang.’
Enrique Marquez passed the gleaming baby grand piano, a tray of golden flutes high on his shoulder. Guests swarmed, plucking drinks blindly and without thanks, their rich, powdered faces scouting out others of their kind with practised ease, never once deigning to glance his way. Little did they know he had all their lives, each and every dirty-rich one, in the palm of his hand. Given a sniff of his intentions, they would be down on their knees and begging for mercy.
It was a glorious thought. Enrique remembered the device, buried in the engine room, and imagined for a thousandth time the instant before detonation. It was too quick. He wished it could last longer so he could savour it more.
He presented champagne to a cluster of women dripping in diamonds. Just one of those rocks would have been enough to feed his poor dead mother for a year.
Several times, he caught a flash of her hair—maybe, once, the shimmer of her gold-black eyes. He had to keep his distance. Though he looked different now, he could not risk her recognising him. It wasn’t hard to defy temptation. After all, she had taught him well.
Lori.
He glimpsed the bronze of her skin not ten feet away, the curve of her shoulder, the body he had been denied. As her male companion slid a possessive arm round her waist, Enrique’s resolve hardened, as cold and absolute as stone.
Lori abided Maximo’s touch because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, they were together. They had a child. They were passionately in love.
‘How’s your son?’ enquired Stevie. ‘He’s gorgeous, such blue eyes.’
Lori’s smile faltered. ‘He’s an angel,’ she replied. Out of the saloon’s wraparound windows she could see the retreating line of golden sand and the contours of the island they were leaving behind. ‘Do you and Xander want to have kids?’
Stevie was cut short by the appearance of her husband at her side.
‘Lori, Maximo, have you met Xander Jakobson?’
‘A pleasure.’ Xander extended his hand and Maximo shook it enthusiastically.
‘I was just telling Stevie how much I enjoyed your joint venture,’ Lori told him.
‘It was certainly the start of something special,’ he said. Stevie kissed his cheek.
Lori wished life were as simple for her. Love, marriage, a family. Stevie and Xander were so happy. How had she herself wound up embroiled in this web of unthinkable deceit?
Her gaze travelled fleetingly across the room, searching but not finding: blind to every face but the man’s who could save her.
On the shores of Cacatra, Margaret Jensen watched as the gargantuan yacht peeled silently off into the wide, blue ocean. Her brief commission to present her son at Mr V’s side was over.
She turned back to the house. Despite the balmy warmth of the evening, she shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ Ralph lifted his face to her, cute as a button in his custom-made suit.
‘No, darling,’ she lied. ‘Come on, let’s get you inside.’
Ralph clambered ahead up the white stone steps. Margaret hung back, glancing across the water at the doomed boat as it set sail on its final, gruesome voyage.
Damn Reuben!
If he hadn’t been such a selfish, neglectful user, she would never have had to resort to such desperate methods. To have a son who knew her only as a housekeeper, a whole life hidden from the public eye because she wasn’t good enough for Mr V’s billions of dollars and with that kind of money he could—and did—buy anyone he wanted.
She had been left with no choice. Mr V deserved to die. And those people …
She gulped. Those people were the reason he did what he did. They were just as corrupt, taking advantage of young women the world over. Judgement Day had been a long time coming.
Margaret entered the ghostly hall, like the house of someone who died. Ralph was shouting for her to join him upstairs, where he wanted to watch the boat from the roof because he could see it better from there.
Xander knew he was drinking too fast. Being in proximity to JB Moreau had the familiar effect. He was running hot and cold, his heart skipping. Would JB be pleased he had come? Would he greet him like an old friend? After all it had been Xander’s decision to keep his distance. JB wasn’t good for him. JB wasn’t good for anyone.
He pretended to be interested as Maximo Diaz blathered on.
‘I’d love to collaborate,’ Maximo plugged. ‘How about working something out?’
Xander knew how it went. He slugged back the last of his glass.
‘I’ll have my people call your people.’
Always better that way around.
Whoever had failed to update the guest list would be fired unceremoniously at dawn. Reuben had assumed that none of the Nash family would be present and that suited him just fine. So why had no one informed him Aurora Nash was coming?
I’m one of them.
The message haunted him. Through the smiles and laughter and autopilot salutations, Reuben was sweating like a twelve-year-old in a brothel.
If Aurora had written it, he knew his very worst fears were confirmed.
A senator’s wife air-kissed him on both cheeks. He grimaced through it.
Someone must have informed her. It was the only explanation.
As soon as Reuben found out who that was, he swore it would be murder.
Enrique Marquez deposited his tray in the galley and waited stoically while the chefs, frantically moving and yelling at one another to keep up, loaded the platters. Steam and sweat obscured their faces. Their pace was astounding and Enrique mused on the sheer futility of what he was witnessing. In less than three hours, these people would all be dead. The painstakingly prepared food would be blown to trillions of pieces, the lobster sundae and squid-ink nests returned to the depths from which they’d come. Nothing left. Carnage.
The canapés were arriving, teeny-tiny creations that had taken hours to craft but would vanish in a greedy half-second down the gullets of the wealthy and privileged. Enrique was presented with a board of smoked salmon, each paper-thin sliver arranged like a rose with a nub of slick caviar at its centre. Lifting it, he departed the bustle of the kitchen and made his way back up the narrow staircase and into the saloon.
Lori was nowhere. Enrique cursed himself for daring to look. Supposing she saw him? He had to stay low or it was game over. Fixing his eyes to the floor, he focused his mind.
The plan was perfect.
He knew this kind of vessel like the back of his hand. Van der Meyde’s yacht boasted six dinghies attached to its stern, each lowered to the water via a system of pulleys. At midnight, while van der Meyde received his gift in front of the crowd—a two-hundred-year-old bottle o
f brandy shipwrecked on its way to a king, today the most expensive drink in the world—Enrique would slip to the rear, where he’d descend the aft platform. There, he would board one of the boats, drop to the churning swell and, under thirty minutes later, as he approached the shore …
Click.
Boom.
Even if his escape were witnessed, it would be too late for them to do anything about it. Carnage. Perfection.
The two things weren’t so different, after all.
58
The girl in the cake was predictable. Reuben grinned through it: she was pretty enough, young, eager to please and entirely fuckable, but his attention was elsewhere.
‘Happy birthday to you,’ she sang husky-Marilyn-style, dressed in a corseted playsuit, the nipped-in waist an extreme contrast to the generous spill of near-escaping cleavage. These days they called it Burlesque. As far as Reuben was concerned, a stripper was a stripper.
She concluded by sending him a kiss. On an ordinary night he’d have her waiting in his cabin for their journey back to shore: a quick blow job between engagements.
People were clapping him on the back and congratulating him, glasses raised and toasted as the night moved into gear and celebrations formally kicked off. Reuben charmed his way across the saloon and towards the stage, mingling with ease as he introduced unfamiliar faces and reacquainted old ones. The consummate host was both a king and a man of the people.
Once the welcome was done, he’d find Aurora. And when he found her, he could end it.
So where was she?
Stevie was sickened by the show. It was the twenty-first century and yet performances like this still got put on. Reuben van der Meyde had smirked lecherously for the duration, crocodile eyes raking the woman’s body. Stevie sensed the dancer would likely drop her knickers soon as the birthday boy decided on an added perk. That’s what wealth could achieve. When had the world become such a sinister playground?
Dirk Michaels appeared in her vision. He was at the opposite end of the saloon, standing next to his miserable-looking wife and chewing enthusiastically with his mouth open. Stevie deposited her glass on a passing tray and moved off.
