heavy gold watch he was wearing, and Saffron felt physically sick, realising how he had come by the money to afford such luxuries. She had ceased to exist for him as a person, if indeed she had ever done so; she was simply a marketable commodity.
His last words for Saffron as he turned away leaving her with her three armed guards were, ‘Don’t be tempted into doing anything rash. Olivia has orders to shoot if you do.’
‘And not to kill,’ Olivia warned her, grinning viciously. ‘You’ll look one hell of a lot less attractive with shattered knee-caps.’
It was impossible for Saffron to hold back her shudder of horror. Olivia’s cruel laughter was drowned out by the Mercedes’ engine firing, the paintwork flashing briefly in the sun before it disappeared in the direction she had driven with Nico such a short time ago.
It was the realisation of all her worst nightmares; a descent to hell itself, with every nerve in her body screaming in mindless panic as she fought against her desire to turn and run, knowing that to do so would be to invite Olivia’s gleeful retaliation.
As she stood there in the hot sun, all her tentative awakening emotions were gripped with the frost of reality. Desire and burgeoning love had been crushed by bitterness and a burning desire for revenge; not so much because she had been kidnapped, Saffron realised, but because of the way it had been accomplished; the ease with which Nico had insinuated himself into her life, her vulnerability towards him. He had used her, coldly, calculatingly and callously, and she would make him pay for that if she spent the last drop of her life’s blood in doing so. A raging thirst for revenge filled her, blotting out fear and panic, and making her strong enough to face the barrage of those three cold faces and three machine-guns with pride and calm.
Her anger burned with the death touch of unyielding ice, enabling her to clarify her thoughts, and use the adrenalin pumping through her veins to think swiftly and clearly. Her father was a millionaire and that fact was well publicised, which, presumably, was why they had made her their prey, but most of his wealth was tied up in his business, and even if he could raise whatever ransom was demanded, Saffron had severe doubts that she would ever be set free. She had already read her fate in the implacable eyes of her kidnappers; how many victims suffering exactly her situation had ever been released? Look at her father’s close friend. He had been kidnapped and then murdered. She was faced with two choices; either she could give in to the panic she had battened down inside herself and become a grovelling, pleading object; or she could devote her last ounce of stamina, all her mental and physical reserves in trying to outwit her captors. The same instincts which had raised her father from relative obscurity to the position he held today surfaced in Saffron; the age-old need for survival pumped urgently through her bloodstream, and without conscious volition her decision was made. As she numbly followed the direction Olivia indicated with her gun the words of an old saw floated into her mind, ‘Living well is the best revenge,’ but in her case simply living would be her revenge, and she would cling to that thought with every breath she drew. Somehow, she didn’t know how yet, she was going to live and she was going to bring to justice those who had perpetuated this crime against her; and Nico… Revenge was a heady wine and she had drunk deeply of it; deeply enough to overcome her fear, and her mind worked feverishly as she sought some avenue of escape, striving to ignore the dangerous silence and the two guns at her back as Olivia led the way to the dusty Land Rover.
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