Chapter 1
DUSK
Venice, Italy, March 14, a year previously…
Alex Milland wasthe first to arrive inThe Floating City Galleriaand immediately he went to find Maceo. The art gallery may have been small, but its position overlooking the lagoon afforded wonderful views across the city. One whole wall was glass; the rest of the walls were painted a stark white. The effect was to make the works of art hanging on them stand out. It worked.
Alex nodded to himself approvingly. He smiled to himself as he noticed a few harassed-looking but very attractive assistants scuttling around. He wondered how many of them Maceo was fucking.Dumb question,he said to himself. Maceo would have screwed themallat their first interview.
Maceo himself was in his office on the third floor. Alex knocked on the door and didn’t wait for an answer. Maceo looked up and grinned.
“Alex, how good to see you.” He got up and the two men bear hugged. Maceo, his green eyes a contrast to his dark curls and swarthy skin, studied his friend. “How are you? Really?’
Alex sighed inwardly. He would be getting this question a lot today. “I’m fine, Maceo. It’s been months since Viola died and, not that I will ever get over it, but I have to try and function. So I need this. I need to celebrate something good. The place looks incredible.’
Maceo nodded, grinning. Humility wasn’t in Maceo’s playbook. “Thanks, Alex. I admit, it does look spectacular. And you should see who we have exhibiting at the moment.” He rattled off a few names, and Alex was impressed. Some of the biggest names in modern art—he had to admire Maceo’s work ethic. He doubted anyone said no to the young man in front of him.
Young man.Alex shook his head, smiling. He and Maceo were the exact same age; Alex just felt like the grandad of their group. The club. The Midnight Club. In truth, he had always considered himself the oldest of them—except for maybe Seth. But then again, he and Seth were as close as twins. Maceo was the young puppy of the group— passionate, confident, a visionary.
Maceo gathered up a pile of papers and yelled, “Lucia!” A gorgeous blonde girl walked in and Alex smiled at her. She nodded back, friendly but professional.
“You have an intercom, Maceo. Don’t scream at me,” she snapped at Maceo, who grinned unrepentantly. She took the papers from him and, as she was walking away, she looked back over her shoulder. “I have to duck out for a couple of hours. Personal errand. Your other friends are waiting downstairs.”
Maceo hooted his delight. “Good! Come, Alex, let’s go see them.” And he bore his friend away back down the main gallery.
Orianthi Roy stoodoutside the airport arrivals, feeling lost. Lucia was late, and Ori wondered if she should hail a cab. Italy was new to her, and the flight had tired her out. Now she felt discombobulated as people pushed passed her, meeting their loved ones, loudly talking, and yelling everywhere.
“This was meant to be a break. Aquietbreak,” she muttered to herself, then felt a flood of relief as she saw Lucia waving at her. Her friend hugged her.
“God, I’m sorry, Ori. The traffic was insane. Is that your case? Come on, I’ll get you settled at home.”
Lucia drove them back into the city. Ori was surprised. “I thought it was all canals?”
Lucia grinned. “Not yet. We’re still on the mainland. Listen, I have to tell you, my boss is having his grand gallery opening tonight and so I have to work. But I have arranged for you to be on the guest list—don’t worry, it’s an invite-only thing and won’t go too late. But I would really like you to come.”
Damn it,Ori thought, but kept a smile on her face. “Love to, Luce. Listen, I can’t thank you enough for letting me stay. I just needed to get away from all the craziness back home.”
Lucia looked at her with sympathy. “I knew it was bad, Ori, but I have to tell you, you scared me when you called me the other night. What has Janek done now?”
Ori felt sick at the mere mention of his name—Tyson Janek III, congressman and her stepfather. Recently outed by the mainstream press as screwing a lot of his colleagues’ wives, he had been forced to step down, but even now was working to retake his position. The fact that he was doing it by calling in favors from people who were less than respectable didn’t matter to Tyson Janek. He didn’t care who he stepped on or who he destroyed. When he had married Ori’s mother, Ori had been ten years old and in deep mourning for the father she had lost. Ori’s mother, Kathryn, after being disinherited from her father’s newspaper fortune , had married the charming and handsome Tyson and had given birth to Ori’s younger half-brother, AJ soon after. AJ was the best and only good thing about the marriage, as far as Ori was concerned.
Almost as soon as Tyson had married her mother, he started to abuse Ori. At first, it was insidious—the odd touch here and there that could be explained away. But on the night of her twelfth birthday, her mother was asleep when Tyson came into Ori’s room. That night he raped her for the first time. That night he threatened the life of her mother, her baby brother, and Ori herself for the first time. It didn’t stop until Ori left for college. She never returned home. Tyson persuaded her mother to write Ori out of her will, leaving her penniless.
Determined not to take a penny from Tyson or touch the small amount of money her mother had left AJ, Ori worked in retail stores, bars, restaurants, diners, all to make enough to pay her rent and keep food on the table. At college, she excelled and graduated from her arts program with honors. It was only when she started to be offered places in graduate programs that Tyson started to interfere again. Suddenly Ori would be turned down or rejected for places she had initially been offered unconditionally. Tyson broke into her apartment one night and told her that she would never be free of him, that she belonged to him. When her mother died five years ago, Ori had taken the still-teenage AJ and moved away from New York, hiding out in Arizona, and putting AJ through state school.
Tyson had found them within weeks and, threatening Ori with arrest, had taken his son back to New York. Unwilling to leave AJ, Ori had reluctantly followed, knowing that as long as AJ was underage, Tyson had them.
He raped her again on her twenty-fifth birthday, and this time, he beat her too. Leaving her bleeding and bruised, he got dressed and grabbed her by the throat. “Try and leave me, Ori. Just try. They won’t be able to identify your body for weeks.”
But living in a world of terror can make the strongest person break. Ori quit her job and stayed at home for three months, not speaking to anyone. In the end, it took a concerned ex-co-worker to come find her and pull her out of the mire. Lucia had been over from Italy to see her parents, Italian immigrants to New York, and had been horrified to see Ori so depressed. She had told her then to come to Italy, to escape.
Three years after that final rape, when Tyson’s scandal erupted and the press was all over their family, AJ checked himself into a facility for depression, and Ori called Lucia. It had been her one chance to escape Tyson. Now that she knew AJ was okay and that he was safe where he was …it was time for her to look out herself.
“Hey, penny for them. We’re here.” Lucia nudged her, smiling.
Lucia’s apartment was huge. Her guest bedroom looked out over a canal and had a little balcony where Ori could sit and sketch or just sit and watch the day. She looked around the bedroom. Huge bed, vanity, en-suite bathroom. A small table and chair for her to work at. Ori smiled at Lucia gratefully.
“Luce, this is amazing, thank you”
