Annie West - Captive in the Spotlight

Slowly she stood, pride stiffening her weary legs and tilting her chin.

‘It’s time I left.’

Where she’d go she had no idea, but she had to escape.

She had just enough money to get her home to Devon. But now she had no home. Her breath hitched as she thought of Sylvia’s betrayal. She wouldn’t be welcome there.

Pain transfixed her.

‘You can’t leave.’

‘I’m now officially a free woman, Signor Volpe, however much you resent it. If you try to keep my here by force it will be kidnap.’

Even so a shiver of apprehension skated down her spine. She wouldn’t put anything past him. She’d seen his cadre of security men and she knew first hand what they were capable of.

‘You mistake me for one of your recent associates, Ms Knight.’ He snapped the words out as if he wanted to take a bite out of her. ‘I’ve no intention of breaking the law.’

Before she could voice her indignation he continued. ‘You need somewhere private; somewhere the press can’t bother you.’

His words stilled her protest.

‘And?’

‘I can provide that place.’

And pigs might fly.

‘Why would you do that?’ She’d read his contempt. ‘What do you get out of it?’

For the longest moment he stood silent. Only the hint of a scowl on his autocratic features hinted he wasn’t used to being questioned. Tough.

‘There are others involved,’ he said finally. ‘My brother’s widow and little Taddeo. They’re the ones affected the longer this is dragged through the press.’

Taddeo. Lucy had thought of him often. She’d loved the little baby in her care, enjoying his gurgles of delight at their peekaboo games and his wide-eyed fascination as she’d read him picture books. What was he like now?

One look at Domenico Volpe’s closed face told her he’d rather walk barefoot over hot coals than talk about his nephew with her.

‘So what’s your solution?’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Walling me up in the basement car park?’

‘That could work.’ He bared his teeth in a feral smile that drew her skin tight. ‘But I prefer to work within the law.’ He paused. ‘I don’t have your penchant for the dramatic. Instead I suggest providing you with a bolthole till this blows over. Your bag is already in your room.’

Her room.

Lucy groped for the back of the chair she’d just vacated, her hand curling like a claw into the plump, soft leather. She tried to speak but her voice had dried up.

Her room.

The memory of it had haunted her for years. Ever since arriving here she’d been cold to the core because she knew that room was upstairs, on the far side of the building.

‘You can’t expect me to stay there!’ Her voice was hoarse with shock. ‘Even you couldn’t …’ She shook her head as her larynx froze. ‘That’s beyond cruel. That’s sick. ’

His eyes widened and she saw understanding dawn. His nostrils flared and he stepped towards her, then pulled up abruptly.

‘No.’ The word slashed the clogged silence. ‘That room hasn’t been used since my brother died. There’s another guest room at your disposal.’

Relief sucked her breath away and loosened her cramped muscles. Slowly she drew in oxygen, marshalling all her strength to regroup after that scare.

‘I can’t stay in this house.’

He met her gaze silently, not asking why. He knew. The memories were too overwhelming.

‘I’ll find my own place.’

‘And how will you do that with the press on the doorstep?’ He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the fireplace, projecting an air of insouciance that made her want to slap him. ‘Wherever you go they’ll follow. You’ll get no peace, no privacy.’

He was right, damn him. But to be dependent on him for anything stuck in her craw.

The door opened and a maid entered, bearing a tray of coffee and biscuits. The rich aroma, once her favourite, curdled Lucy’s stomach. Instinctively she pressed a hand to her roiling abdomen and moved away. Vaguely she heard him thank the maid, but from her new vantage point near the window Lucy saw only the press pack outside. The blood leached from her cheeks.

Which was worse? Domenico Volpe or the paparazzi who’d hound her for some tawdry story they could sell?

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on the offer of that room. Just to freshen up.’ She needed breathing space, time away from him, to work out what to do.

Lucy swung round to find him watching her. She should be used to it now. His scrutiny was continual. Yet reaction shivered through her. What did he see? How much of what she strove to hide?

She banished the question. She had better things to do than worry about that. Nothing would change Domenico Volpe’s opinion. His reluctant gestures of solicitude were evidence of ingrained social skills, not genuine concern.

‘Of course. Take as long as you like. Maria will show you up.’

Lucy assured herself it wasn’t satisfaction she saw in that gleaming gaze.

‘No! I said I can’t talk. I’m busy.’ Sylvia’s voice rose and Lucy thought she discerned something like anxiety as well as anger in her stepmother’s words. She gripped the phone tighter.

‘I just wanted—’

‘Well, I don’t want. Just leave me alone! Haven’t you done enough damage to this family?’

Lucy opened her mouth but the line went dead.

How long she sat listening to the dialling tone she didn’t know. When she finally put the receiver down her fingers were cramped and her shoulders stiff from hunching, one arm wrapped protectively around her stomach.

So that was it. The severing of all ties.

A piercing wail of grief rose inside her but she stifled it. Lucy told herself it was better to face this now than on the rose-covered doorstep of the whitewashed cottage that had been home all her life.

Yet she couldn’t quite believe it. She’d rung her stepmother hoping against hope there’d been some dreadful mistake. That perhaps the press had published a story with no basis. That Sylvia hadn’t betrayed her with that character assassination interview.

Forlorn hope! Sylvia wanted nothing to do with her.

Which left Lucy with nowhere to go. She had no one and nothing but a past that haunted her and even now wouldn’t release its awful grip.

Slowly she lifted her head and stared at the panelled door separating the bedroom from the second-floor corridor.

It was time she laid the ghost of her past to rest.

She wasn’t in the room he’d provided but she hadn’t tried to leave. His security staff would have alerted him. There was only one place she could be, yet he hadn’t thought she’d have the gall to go back there.

Domenico’s stride lengthened as he paced the corridor towards the side of the palazzo that had housed Sandro’s apartments. Fury spiked as he thought of Lucy Knight there, in the room where she’d taken Sandro’s life. It was an intrusion that proved her contempt for all he and his family had lost. A trespass that made his blood boil and his body yearn for violence.

The door was open and he marched across the threshold, hands clenched in iron fists, muscles taut and fire in his belly.

Then he saw her and stopped dead.

He didn’t know what he’d expected but it wasn’t this. Lucy Knight was huddled on the floor before the ornate fireplace, palm pressed to the floorboards where Sandro had breathed his last. Domenico remembered it from the police markers on the floor and photos in court.

Her face was the colour of travertine marble, pale beyond belief. Her eyes were dark with pain as she stared fixedly before her. She was looking at something he couldn’t see, something that shuttered her gaze and turned it inwards.