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I cut off the crippling thought, the dangerous memories.
Don’t go there. These two situations are not related. Edie Trouvé means nothing to you.
‘Do you know where to find her?’ I gritted out the words.
‘Not yet, but we’re working on it,’ Joe replied.
‘Good,’ I said as a strange kind of calm settled over me and the roaring fury in the pit of my stomach. ‘Work faster. I want her found.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN, the bank draft I gave Allegri’s cashier was fake?’ I stared at Carsoni’s henchman, the aptly named Brutus, my terror mixing with a bitter sense of outrage. They’d tricked me into defrauding Allegri’s casino. Already I had a debt I couldn’t pay, but that had been my brother-in-law’s debt. This felt worse. So much worse, because this debt was on me.
I’d sat down at that poker table in good faith. I’d played and I’d lost, through my own weaknesses, my own failings. I had very little else left now but my good name. And okay, the name I’d given Allegri had been a false one, but I had never intended to cheat him.
Maybe it was foolish to care about what he thought of me. But somehow it mattered.
‘You should thank me, ma petite,’ Brutus said, the husky tone, the sleazy use of the endearment and the way his beady eyes skimmed over my figure, as they had done a million times befor
e—every time he paid us a visit to collect payment of Carsoni’s interest—made me want to vomit. ‘You’re already into the boss for five million euro—why add another million to the pot?’
‘But Allegri will figure it out. He could have me arrested. Fraud is a crime. And then how will I pay back Carsoni?’ Weirdly, the thought of being arrested and imprisoned didn’t seem as bad as having Allegri despise me.
I locked the thought away because it made no sense. I was never going to see Allegri again. What he thought of me didn’t matter; it was what I thought of myself.
Up till now I’d done everything I could to honour the debts Jason had created. Maybe the path I’d chosen had been reckless and foolishly ambitious, and stemmed from a pride in my own abilities that was misplaced, to say the least; I could see that now. But I’d never meant to do something, however inadvertently, that made me a criminal.
‘Allegri’s not going to figure it out,’ Brutus murmured. ‘You used a fake ID, remember. I arranged it myself.’
They had suggested the fake ID, in case Allegri figured out my system and had me banned. And I’d gone along with it. Because I’d been naïve and desperate. Desperate enough to believe a loan shark’s bullyboy.
‘And Carsoni has other ideas about how you can pay him back now.’
‘What?’ I scrambled back as he lifted his hand to my face. The sick weight in my stomach—which had been growing ever since I had fled The Inferno early that morning or, rather, ever since Allegri had turned over his winning hand and I’d finally woken up to the terrible mistakes I had made—twisted into something mangled and ugly.
Brutus grabbed a handful of my hair and tugged me back towards him. His breath—stale with tobacco smoke—brushed my lips. I gagged and bit down on my tongue to stop myself from throwing up, my disgust now almost as huge as my terror.
He laughed. ‘Stop acting surprised. Carsoni likes you. You’re a pretty little thing. And he’s bored, waiting for you to pay up.’
My head hurt, my scalp stinging as he dragged me closer, close enough to bury his face against my neck. I struggled, trying to pull away from him, revulsion skittering over my skin like a plague of cockroaches.
He twisted his fist in my hair, his tongue touching my neck. ‘Stop acting so high and mighty,’ he murmured. ‘Your mother was a highly priced whore. Carsoni will forget about the debt if you show him the proper appreciation.’
I wanted to scream, but the scream was locked in my throat. If I screamed, Jude would come to my rescue. I couldn’t risk endangering her too. Jude had no idea of the threats I’d already faced from Brutus and his boss, but this was worse. The terror was so huge now, I was almost gagging on it. But I couldn’t let him see that. Bullies, in my experience, were only emboldened if you showed them your fear.
I struggled in earnest. He let me go and I fell back a step.
‘We’re selling the house...’ I pleaded. ‘It’s worth at least the five million we owe.’ Or I hoped it was.
I had no idea where we were going to live. But we would survive. I was young and strong and a hard worker. And so was Jude. Maybe we wouldn’t have Belle Rivière any more. The small chateau was the only place we had felt safe, or important in our mother’s life, growing up. But however beautiful this place was—the meadows and pastures overflowing with wildflowers, the river running through the bottom of the property where we’d swum as children during those long idyllic summers, the elegance of the eighteenth-century design my mother’s grandfather had built as a summer house for his ailing wife—and, however much we loved it, it was just bricks and mortar and fond memories.
My efforts to save it, my refusal to sell it as soon as Jason had incurred the debt, had only got us deeper into trouble. It was way past time I faced reality. And stopped struggling against the inevitable. Or my reality could get a whole lot worse.
The hideous truth of how much worse had my blood running cold as Brutus stepped towards me, the lecherous smirk on his face making my skin crawl.
‘Maybe it’ll fetch what you owe,’ he said, glancing around the empty library, devoid of furniture now and books, because we’d had to sell the lot months ago to service the interest on Jason’s debt. ‘And maybe it won’t,’ he added, his gaze landing back on me. ‘Either way, money isn’t what the boss wants any more.’
Fury rose up like a tidal wave to cover the fear. ‘Tough, because money is all he’s going to get from me.’
