up her neck and into her face. ‘M-Mr Christakis,’ she stammered out uncomfortably.
Ah, respect for an elder, Natasha noted, smiling thinly as she walked across the room to open the concealed wall safe where she kept her personal papers.
‘I didn’t expect you to come here….’
Nor had Cindy expected Leo Christakis to catch her with Rico, thought Natasha, and that was why she was embarrassed to see him again.
Leo said nothing, and Natasha winced at the dismissive contempt she could feel emanating from that suffocating silence. Cindy just wasn’t used to being looked at like that. She wasn’t used to being ignored. Embarrassment and respect changed to a sulky pout and flashing insolence, which she turned on Natasha.
‘I don’t know what you think you are doing in my safe, Natasha, but you—’
‘Be quiet, you little tramp,’ Leo said.
Cindy flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘You can’t speak to me like that!’
Natasha turned in time to watch the way Leo looked her sister over as if she were a piece of trash before diverting his steady gaze to her. ‘Got what you need?’ he asked gently.
Gentle almost crucified her, though she was way beyond the point of being able to work out why. Fighting the never-far-away-tears, she nodded and made her shaking legs take her back across the room towards him.
Cindy sent her a frightened look. ‘You aren’t leaving,’ she shot out. ‘You can’t leave. That idiot Rico panicked and phoned the parents looking for you—now they’re on their way here!’
Natasha ignored her, her concentration glued to the door Leo was presently filling up. I just need to get away from her, she told herself. I just need to…
‘You’re such a blind, silly, stupid thing, Natasha!’ Cindy went back on the attack. ‘Do you think I’m the only woman Rico has had while he’s been engaged to you? Did you really believe that someone like him was going to fall in love with someone like you—?’
Natasha hid her eyes and just kept on walking.
‘What are you but the right kind of stuffed-blouse type his silly mother likes? I did you a favour today. You could have married him still blind to what he’s really like! It was time someone opened your eyes to reality. You should be thanking me for doing it!’
Natasha had reached Leo. ‘Anything else before we get out of here?’ he asked.
‘S-some clothes and—things,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t you dare ignore me!’ Cindy screeched. ‘The parents will be here in a minute. I want you to tell them that this was all your own fault! I’ve got a gig tonight and I just can’t perform with all of this angst going on. And you need to get busy with some damage control because you won’t like it if I have to do it myself!’
Leo stepped to one side to let Natasha pass by him. The moment she closed her bedroom door, he reacted, stepping right up to Cindy. ‘Now listen to me, you spoiled little tart,’ he said. ‘One false word from you about what took place today and you’re finished. I will see to it.’
Cindy’s head shot up, scorn pouring out of her bright baby blue eyes. ‘You don’t have the power—’
‘Oh, yes, I do,’ Leo said. ‘Money talks. Jumped-up little starlets like you come off a conveyer belt. Give me half an hour with a telephone and I can ruin you so quickly you won’t see oblivion until you find yourself sunk in it up to your scrawny neck. Pending records deals can be withdrawn. Gigs cancelled. Careers murdered by a few words fed into the right ears.’
Cindy went white.
‘I see that you get my drift.’ Leo nodded. ‘You are not looking into the eyes of a devoted fan now, sweet face, you’re looking into the eyes of a very powerful man who can see right through the shiny packaging to the ugly person that lurks beneath.’
‘Natasha won’t let you do anything to h-hurt me,’ Cindy whispered.
‘Yes, she will,’ Natasha said. She was standing just inside the door with a hastily packed bag at her feet.
As Cindy looked at her Natasha twisted something out of her fingers, sending it spiralling through the air. It landed with a clink on the pale wood floor at Cindy’s feet. Looking down, even Leo went still when he saw what it was.
Her ring—her shiny diamond engagement ring. ‘That’s just something else of mine you haven’t tried,’ she explained. ‘Why don’t you put it on and see if it fits you as well as my fiancé did?’
Cindy’s appalled face was a picture. ‘I didn’t want him, and I don’t want—that!’
‘Well, what’s new there?’ Natasha laughed, though where the laugh came from she did not have a single clue. ‘When have you ever wanted anything once you’ve possessed it?’
Pandemonium broke out then as their parents arrived, rushing in through the flat door Leo must have left on the latch.
They looked straight at Cindy. They had barely registered that Natasha was even there.
Cindy burst into a flood of tears.
‘Oh, my poor baby,’ Natasha heard her mother cry out. ‘What did that Rico do to you?’
Natasha began to feel very sick again. She stared at the way her two parents had gathered comfortingly around Cindy and felt as if she were standing alone somewhere in outer space.
Then her gaze shifted to Leo standing on the periphery of it all with his steady dark eyes fixed on her painfully expressive face. ‘Can we leave now?’ she whispered.
‘Of course.’
And he was stooping to pick her bag up. As he straightened again his hand made a proprietary curl of her arm and Natasha heard Cindy quaver, ‘He’s been stalking m-me for weeks, Mummy. I went to see him to tell him to stop it or I would tell Natasha. The next thing I knew he…’
Leo closed the door on the rest. Neither said a single word to each other as they walked out of the apartment and headed for the lift. All the way down to the foyer they kept their silence, all the way out to his car. He drove them away in that same tense silence until Leo clearly could not stand it any longer and flicked a button on his steering wheel to activate his phone.
Natasha recognised the name ‘Juno’, then nothing as he proceeded to share a terse conversation in Greek.
She kept her eyes fixed on the side window and just let his deep, firm, yet strangely melodious voice wash over her as they drove out of the city and into lush green, rural England. The ugliness of her situation was crawling round her insides, the spin of once-loved faces turning into strangers as they flipped like a rolling film through her head. She didn’t know them and, she realised painfully, they did not really know her—or care.
‘Do you think they’ve noticed that you are no longer there yet?’
Realising Leo had finished his telephone conversation and had now turned his attention on her, Natasha lifted a shoulder in an empty shrug.
