The Consequence She Cannot Deny

by Bella Frances

  ‘You can take your time. The jet is ready—the pilot will wait another hour or so. I’m sorry,’ he added, finishing whatever was in his glass and walking to the doorway.

  Coral stood in the huge unlit hallway. Above her, the chandelier’s crystal beads tittered in the chill breeze that wafted in. A shadow moved across the doorway. Raffaele stood aside as the driver from earlier entered.

  ‘Change of plan, Iannis. I will drive,’ Raffaele said suddenly to the young man.

  He strode over to where Coral stood and reached for her hand, but she wrenched it out of his grip and turned to face him.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she bit out. ‘You bastard. You are a thousand times worse than what they say about you. I can’t believe I was so naïve—but I won’t fall for it again.’

  She scrunched up her eyes, as if the very sight of him was painful. And in a way it was. The worst pain she had ever had to bear. Those lips, those eyes, every inch of his face. His smile. And inside the coldest, blackest heart.

  She stalked off in the high-heeled shoes, past the pool, through the doors and down the steps to the car. The scarlet dress filled the window in her reflection, screaming out how stupid she was, how cheap.

  She’d been used. All it had taken was a dress and a compliment and she’d forgotten every single thing she’d ever learned.

  Well, no more.

  She turned around to see him standing at the top of the steps. Then she yanked at the damned dress, gritting her teeth and letting go a scream of frustration at the zip that refused to budge. She’d rather wear second-hand clothes for the rest of her life than feel she owed him anything. She tugged and tugged until it came down past her hips. Then she stepped out of the shoes and threw them both with all her might on to the ground.

  There, in her nakedness, she stood, prouder now that she was out of his house and out of his clothes. She shook back her hair as she turned and saw him outlined in the glare of the portico light.

  ‘Keep your stinking stuff. I’d rather go naked than touch anything of yours.’

  ‘Cosa fai? Cover yourself!’ he hissed.

  He started down the steps towards her, and she saw fury and something much hotter emblazoned on his face.

  ‘Go to hell!’ she cried, facing him, unashamed.

  Then she reached into the car for her bag, pulled out her own dress and heaved it on, glaring at him the whole time, daring him to say a word. Not bothering with the buttons, she slid into the car and slammed the door. She turned her face away.

  Yes, she was proud. She could look after herself. Every time. And he would never, ever see the tears that flowed unstoppably from her eyes, or the hole in her heart from trusting too much and giving too easily.

  The driver slid into the seat and started the car. In silence they drove. In uncomprehending misery she travelled all the way across Europe and back to London. The executive jet was at her disposal, but the cream leather interior was completely empty of any chatter or cheer. Or any sign of a fairy godmother.

  She walked right past the car that waited on the Tarmac at the private airstrip. Walked past and kept walking, her huge, heavy bag battering against her back with each step. Her feet ached and she was miles from home. But she would not relent. Not even when the car purred alongside her, the window rolled down, and some faceless employee of Romano Publishing tried to persuade her to get in.

  By eight in the morning she was outside the door of her little flat in Islington. By eight-fifteen she was fast asleep in her bed and by one in the afternoon she finally felt able to get up and make a cup of tea. Her phone was glowing with messages and calls.

  That was the worst thing of all.

  Most of them seemed to be from her mother.

  How was she going to explain to her that she had made the stupidest mistake in the book? That she had jumped straight into bed with her boss and then been marched off the premises.

  She had been given the opportunity of a lifetime—the chance to work with the best in the business, to get her name known in the circles that she aspired to belong to... Yes, she’d been given all of that, but she had ground it into the dirt like the butt of a cigarette because...

  Because she’d got greedy. Because she’d wanted it all. The whole nine yards. The job and the man. And now she had nothing. Worse, she was in a minus situation—her reputation was in tatters before it had even been formed.

  She made her third cup of tea of the day and then poured it straight down the sink without even tasting it. At least she’d made an attempt to drink the other two, but nothing—not even tea, it turned out—could make her feel better.

  At six p.m. she steeled herself to read her messages and catch up on her voicemails.

  At six-thirty she texted her mother a summary of the whole sorry tale.

  At seven p.m. she opened the door and braced herself for the biggest guilt trip of her life.

  She stood back, held the door open, put her head down.

  ‘Oh, my sweet child,’ said Lynda Dahl. ‘My sweet girl. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Please, Mum, please don’t be sorry for me. I messed up. I’m so dumb and I really just want to put it behind me.’

  ‘I could have prevented this. It should never have happened this way. I nearly told you so many times but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bear the pain all over again.’

  Her mother was rambling. On top of everything else, her mother was having another meltdown.

  Coral staggered back indoors, her head in her hands. ‘Mum, just come in. We’ll talk this through. It’ll be all right. Have you been taking your meds?’

  They were in the tiny hallway, halfway to the lounge, when Lynda stopped.

  ‘Oh, my God, you think I’m having a breakdown. Did he get to you? Did he poison you against me?’

  ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’

  Coral leaned back on the wall. She needed to sit down quietly. She simply didn’t have the energy to deal with her mother right now.

  ‘Salvatore Di Visconti. That’s who I’m talking about.’

  ‘What? Yes, I met him, but it was the other one—his adopted brother, Raffaele—that I was dealing with.’

  She was exhausted. Every word took such an effort.

  ‘Raffaele?’

  ‘Yes. I was supposed to stay to photograph Salvatore and his fiancée. It’s a long story, but that never happened. I took some pictures of Kyla—she was sweet. But the men were horrible. Horrible, nasty people.’

  ‘So you met him? What did Salvatore say?’

  She looked at her mother. Looked at her under the harsh light of the little hallway—a far cry from the chandelier she’d stood under the night before. Lynda’s normally flawless ivory skin was blotchy and drawn.

  ‘I don’t know. We didn’t really get along. He took some sort of dislike to me. And the other one—Raffaele. Mum, I’m afraid we—’

  ‘Of course he did. He’d have been terrified the minute he heard your name.’

  ‘My name?’

  Her mother turned away. ‘I can’t believe that this is how you’re finding out. I’ve tried for years to protect you, and now this.’

  ‘Find out what? You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Coral. There’s no other way to say this. Giancarlo Di Visconti was your father. Salvatore is your half-brother.’

  ‘What?’

  But as her mother closed her eyes and nodded something finally settled into place, like a rock rolling into a gaping hole—harsh and heavy and immovable.

  ‘Giancarlo Di Visconti is my father? I have a father?’

  She turned around, aware of her mother’s sobs and her arms on her shoulders. Aware of her warmth but unable to feel anything.

  Suddenly the pain of Raffaele’s rejection was eclipsed b
y the knowledge that the shadowy man—the parent with no name, the father she’d never had—was Giancarlo Di Visconti.

  ‘I need to lie down. I feel sick.’

  She stumbled back to the bed she had just vacated. She sank down into the soft, still warm embrace of cotton and down. She laid her head on the pillow and clenched her eyes closed.

  She could hear her mother in the kitchen, the sound of the kettle being turned on. As if tea would fix this. She almost screamed it at her.

  Why had she never told her? Why had Lynda buried his identity so deeply, made her feel ashamed even to ask about him? Why had she shut her down at every opportunity, getting so upset that Coral had given up asking.

  Lynda came in with two mugs of tea, the steam rising like genies from unstoppered bottles.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Coral sobbed at her through foggy streams of tears.

  ‘Coral, you must believe that I only wanted to do the right thing.’

  Lynda put the tea down and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘He was married when we met. I worked as cabin crew on his private jet. I had just arrived in London. I fell for him. Everything about him. He was handsome and clever and urbane. He was ambitious and charming. Everybody loved him. I wasn’t any different from anybody else. I knew he had a wife and a young child, but he was always travelling on business, always alone. For some reason he started to chase me. I couldn’t resist. Who could?’

  ‘You could! Anyone could! You allowed yourself to be seduced by a married man, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I feel ashamed?’

  ‘I don’t want to know. You didn’t want to tell me when I asked you, over and over again. It was the one subject you glossed over. Have you any idea how it felt for me to have no idea who he was? You wouldn’t give me so much as a name or a hair colour. I wondered if I had his eyes or his nose, but you wouldn’t even let me ask the question. And he’s dead now. It’s too late. Oh, my God. I can’t take this all in.’

  It couldn’t be any worse. All those years pretending her father was some handsome prince who was going to gallop back into their lives...all those years burning a candle for him. The truth was he was no more than someone else’s philandering husband and she was the unwanted love-child. Except there had been no love. It had just been a dirty affair.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you because I was ashamed. I was ashamed of what I’d done and even more ashamed that he didn’t want me. He chose his family over us. He said he didn’t believe me. Have you any idea how that felt? To have my love trampled into the ground? To be denied like that? Not only me, but you too. He denied you. And then he offered me money to disappear.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take it? Then at least we wouldn’t have been so poor!’

  It was all she could say. She wanted to lash out and hurt. She wanted to scream and shout and stop feeling the pain that was eating her up inside. It was too much, too awful, to feel the hurt of being hated.

  ‘I was proud! Don’t you understand? It was all I had. I had nothing else. A tiny baby. No career. Nothing. He was everything I wanted. And I was sure he would come back for me.’

  All those years of poverty. She hadn’t even had her own bedroom until she was twelve. No friends round. Her mother always in tears, unable to hold down an ordinary job. Paintings that didn’t sell. In and out of hospital.

  ‘But when you wanted to go to college I knew I had to find him. And I did. At least I tried. But I couldn’t get past Salvatore. Giancarlo was ill and they wouldn’t let me meet him. I didn’t have the strength to fight, Coral.’

  Coral looked at her. Her poor mother. Pregnant by a man who didn’t want to know. Bringing up a child all alone with no one to turn to. And with the might and the wealth of the Di Viscontis so public, yet so inaccessible.

  ‘I’m sorry. I need to get my head around this.’

  She reached out and squeezed her mum in a quick hug. It was as much as she could do.

  ‘I love you, Coral. Please never doubt that I did what I thought was best for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  She sighed, comforting her sobbing mother. Soothing her and staring blankly at her tote bag on the rug, sunken and dead as her dreams.

  She thought of that horrible man, her half-brother, remembering his rudeness both times she’d met him. How he’d seemed so brutal. She thought of the home he had—the yacht, the island, the jet, the wealth.

  She thought of Raffaele.

  Raffaele who had rejected her just like the Di Viscontis. What cruel twist of fate had allowed this to happen? He had been welcomed into the family that had gone to such lengths to keep her out.

  She wasn’t a Di Visconti. That much she knew. Giancarlo wasn’t really her father. A father was someone who parented their child, not just someone who impregnated its mother. A father was someone who was there for you. Protected you. Loved you.

  Raffaele had been fathered by him—she hadn’t.

  Her mind ran back over his glacial denial and the pain tore at her all over again. Was this because he had somehow found out? That made it even worse.

  What a fool.

  How could something that had felt so right be so wrong? Had she imagined those moments when he’d seemed to let down his guard? When his eyes had crinkled and there’d been the flash of his teeth as he laughed? It had felt secret. Special. Privileged, almost.

  Explosive chemistry.

  Well, it had exploded right in her face.

  * * *

  She sobbed and slept, and sobbed and slept. Night turned into day. Still she couldn’t shake off the sick sense of injustice. What had she done to deserve it? She hadn’t asked for anything her whole life. She’d won that commission fair and square. If they’d somehow found out who she was, why hadn’t they welcomed her? She wouldn’t have hurt anyone—she’d only been trying to do her job!

  But, worse, why was she tearing herself apart when for the first time in her life she could finally put a face to the word ‘father’?

  It was shock.

  She was in shock. Nobody would believe luck could turn so bad.

  At least it couldn’t get any worse. At least she knew now who she was and the circumstances of her birth. She’d made a spectacular error of judgement, but she could recover. She could get her career back on track. There were other magazines, other publishers.

  There was no reason for their paths ever to cross again.

  If she saw something on the news about the Di Viscontis she only had to switch it off. She could do that. She’d lived her whole life oblivious to the Di Visconti family and she could settle into ignorance again.

  She and Lynda would be fine. Coral knew better than to judge her mother because, after all, was she any different? She’d walked right into the same situation. She hadn’t been thinking about anything other than her own pleasure when she’d let Raffaele into the shower.

  The only thing she had to pray for was the chance to put it all behind her. All she had to do was wind the clock back one week. To before she’d known she had this commission. Before she’d known anything about Giancarlo Di Visconti. Before she’d played right into the hands of the worst man alive.

  She’d learned the hard way that it was all about her career and nothing else. So many doors would open if she had the nerve to push them. And she would.

  Over the next few days she busied herself. She edited her website, uploading new images, and sent a slew of emails to potential employers. She went out on the streets and took pictures of cool boys and girls and began a London street fashion blog. She set up meetings with anyone and everyone who would give her five minutes of their time.

  But after two weeks all she felt was worse. Her energy still hadn’t returned. Her mother had hidden herself in her studio and tod
ay, as she trudged through throngs of people, she felt utterly and completely and desperately awful.

  What was worse was that she could hear a tiny little voice at the back of her mind—a voice that she couldn’t ignore any more. It was a voice that said there was a very simple reason for those tiny spots of menstrual blood that had stopped at just that. For the painfully tender breasts and the increasingly frequent waves of nausea that rolled through her body.

  There was a very simple reason and it was demanding her attention. Now.

  She stopped at a chemist on the high street. The automatic doors swung open and she stood aside to let a woman exit with her pram. Coral looked at the tiny baby bundled inside it and the voice in her mind got louder.

  She walked inside and immediately her eyes flipped to the shelf on the left, stocked high and wide with all sorts of sanitary products and pregnancy tests. She lifted one down and her heart began to pound in her chest. Right now this was her issue, her problem. Or not. But as soon as she did the test the problem would not be hers alone any more.

  She paid for the test and stuffed it into her leather tote, clasped it close to her chest and legged it back to her flat. Her fingers fumbled over the cellophane. She crouched over the toilet. And then she held her breath.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THERE WERE TWO things in life that Raffaele detested more than anything else. Deceit was one of them. Indolence was the other.

  He opened the email from Salvatore and looked at the latest photographs from his six-month honeymoon with Kyla in the South Pacific, and their ten-million-dollar housewarming party in Sydney. Pictures of them drinking and dancing and doing not a lot else.

  He barely glanced at the images, and bit down on the bile that had been gathering in his gut ever since that night.

  He was good at that. Forgetting the unpleasant. He had almost completely wiped from his mind the fact that their wedding had been six months ago. Six months since Coral Dahl, or Coral Di Visconti, or whoever she was had blazed into his life like a comet and just as quickly blazed out. Thanks to him.