‘Yes, you did.’ She said it without a hint of uncertainty. ‘It bears all the hallmarks of one of your lot.’ Not said nicely and not meant to be. ‘Vendetta is your middle name. Or should be. The only thing I don’t understand is why I wasn’t taken out at the same time.’
‘Work on it,’ he suggested. ‘You may, with a bit of luck, come up with a half-intelligent answer.’
She turned away, hating to look at him, hating that look of cruel indifference on his arrogant face. This was their daughter’s life they were discussing here! And he could sit there looking like—that!
‘God, you make me sick,’ she breathed, moving away, arms wrapping around her tense body as she went to stand by the window, gazing out on the veritable wall of security now cordoning off the property: men with mobile telephones fastened to their ears, some with big, ugly-looking dogs on strong-looking leashes. A laugh broke from her, thick with scorn. ‘Putting on a show for the punters,’ she derided. ‘Do you honestly think anyone will be fooled by it?’
‘Not you, obviously!’ He didn’t even try to misunderstand what she was talking about, his mockery as dry as her derision. ‘They are there to keep the media at bay,’ he then flatly explained. ‘That foolish nanny was supposed to be trained on how to respond to this kind of contingency. Instead she stood in the park screaming so loud that she brought half of London out to find out what was the matter.’ His sigh showed the first hint of anger. ‘Now the whole world knows that the child has been taken. Which is going to really make it simple to get her back with the minimum of fuss!’
‘Oh, God.’ Sara’s hand went up to cover her mouth, panic suddenly clawing at her again. ‘Why, Nicolas?’ she cried in wretched despair. ‘She’s only two years old! She was no threat to you! Why did you take my baby away?’
She didn’t see him move, yet he was at her side in an instant, his fingers burning that damned electrical charge into her flesh as he spun her around to face him. ‘I won’t repeat this again,’ he clipped. ‘So listen well. I did not take your child.’
‘S-someone did,’ she choked, blue eyes luminous with bulging tears. ‘Who else do you know who hated her enough to do that?’
He sighed again, not answering that one—not answering because he couldn’t deny her accusation. ‘Come and sit down again before you drop,’ he suggested. ‘And we will—’
‘I don’t want to sit down!’ she angrily refused. ‘And I don’t want you touching me!’ Violently, she wrenched free of his grasp.
His mouth tightened, a sign that at last her manner towards him was beginning to get through his thick skin. ‘Who else, Nicolas?’ she repeated starkly. ‘Who else would want to take my baby from me?’
‘Not from you,’ he said quietly, turning away. ‘They have taken her from me.’
‘You?’ Sara stared at the rigid wall of his back in blank incredulity. ‘But why should they want to do that? You disowned her!’ she cried.
‘But the world does not know that.’
Sara went cold. Stone-still, icy cold as realisation slapped her full in the face. ‘You mean—?’ She swallowed, having to battle to rise above a new kind of fear suddenly clutching at her breast. She had banked on this being his doing. Banked on it so much that it came as a desperate blow to have him place an alternative in her mind.
‘I am a powerful man.’ He stated the unarguable. ‘Power brings its own enemies—’
But— ‘No.’ She was shaking her head in denial even before he’d finished speaking. ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘This is family stuff. I know it is. I spoke to them on the—’
‘You spoke to them?’ He turned, those predator’s eyes suddenly razor-like with surprise.
‘On the phone.’ She nodded, swallowing as the terrible sickness she had experienced during that dreadful call came back to torment her.
‘When?’ His voice had roughened, hardened. He didn’t like it that she had been able to tell him something he had not been told already. It pricked his insufferable belief that he was omnipotent, the man who knew everything. ‘When did this telephone conversation take place?’
‘A-about an hour after they t-took her,’ she whispered, then added bitterly, ‘They said you would know what to do!’ She stared at him in despair, her summer-blue eyes suddenly turned into dark, dark pools in an agonised face. ‘Well, do it, Nicolas!’ she cried. ‘For God’s sake do it!’
He muttered a violent curse, and was suddenly at her side again, hard fingers coiling around her slender arm, brooking no protest this time as he pushed her back into the sofa.
‘Now listen …’ he said, coming to sit down beside her. ‘I need to know what they said to you, Sara. And I need to know how they said it. You understand?’
Understand? Of course she understood! ‘You want to know if they were Sicilian,’ she choked. ‘Well, yes! They were Sicilian—like you!’ she said accusingly. ‘I recognised the accent, the same blinding contempt for anything and anyone who is not of the same breed!’
He ignored all of that. ‘Male or female?’ he persisted.
‘M-male,’ she breathed.
‘Old—young—could you tell?’
She shook her head. ‘M-muffled. The v-voice was m-muffled—by something held over the m-mouthpiece, I think.’ Then she gagged, her hand whipping up to cover her quivering mouth.
Yet, ruthlessly, he reached up to catch the hand, removed it, held it trapped in his own in a firm command for attention.
‘Did he speak in English?’
She nodded. ‘But with a Sicilian accent. Let go of me …’
He ignored that. ‘And what did he say? Exactly, Sara,’ he insisted. ‘What did he say?’
She began to shake all over—shake violently, eyes closing as she locked herself onto that terrible conversation that had confirmed her worst fears. ‘“We h-have your ch-hild,”’ she quoted, word for mind-numbing word. Her fingers were icy cold and trembling so badly that he began gently chafing them with his own. ‘“Sh-she is s-safe for now. Get S-Santino. He will know wh-what to do. We w-will contact you again at seven-th-thirty …”’ Dazedly she glanced around the room. ‘What time is it?’ she asked jerkily.
‘Shush. Not yet six,’ he murmured calmingly. ‘Concentrate, Sara. Did he say anything else? Did you hear anything else? Any background sound, other voices, a plane, a car—anything?’
She shook her head. ‘N-nothing.’ No sound. Only the voice. Not even the sound of a child crying— ‘Oh, God.’ She whipped her hand out from between his to cover her eyes. ‘My baby,’ she whispered. ‘My poor baby … I want her here!’ She turned on him, holding out her arms and looking lost and tormented and heart-rendingly pathetic. ‘In my arms …’ Her arms folded and closed around her slender body, hugging, hugging as if the small child were already there and safe. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned. ‘Oh, God, Nicolas, do something. Do something!’
‘OK,’ he muttered, but distractedly. ‘OK. It will be done. But
