Power Games. Victoria Fox

been invited.

      Senator Mitch Corrigan had been invited.

      Eve spent all afternoon trying to locate the building at Veroli. She scoped Google Maps, her own GPS, hunted any scrap that might get thrown up via a search, but according to the web the house did not exist. The only clue she hit on was a record, infuriatingly brief, connecting the Veroli Estate to the Casa Rocca in Rome. Eve knew of the auction house, had once met its famous jeweller Celeste Cavalieri, and she made a note to renew the contact. Her memory of Cavalieri was of a quiet, uncertain woman, a thousand miles from herself, and she was confident she could bleed enough from her to get her story off the blocks. What had Mitch Corrigan been doing there?

      Lying back on her hotel bed, Eve tapped a pen against her teeth.

      She was onto something big, she was sure of it.

      Her BlackBerry beeped. She reached for it, taking news from her assistant of Kevin Chase’s forthcoming trip to London, and stifled a ripple of disappointment that the email wasn’t from Orlando. Why would it be? They never exchanged messages unless it was to plot their next encounter—and that had been her decision, remember?

      Eve didn’t admit the anticlimax, even to herself.

      The first time they’d fucked she had been strict on the rules: it was physical, nothing more, and she wasn’t getting into it for a boatload of emotional mush or sentimental phone calls. Orlando had laughed. Told her she was a tough cookie.

      Eve allowed herself a rare moment of reflection and smiled, thinking of him. Normally she kept Orlando in his Orlando-shaped box, there when his body was joined with hers and gone when it wasn’t. But sometimes, just sometimes …

      They had met at an industry party three years ago. The attraction had been immediate, the kind of magnetism that Eve, a born cynic, had dismissed as Hollywood garbage. She hadn’t known who he was, this arrogant man in Versace pinstripe and expensive aftershave, but it soon became apparent. He was the Orlando Silvers, successor to the empire: son and grandson to a legendary man, brother to heiress Angela. He was at the helm of one of the most powerful families in America.

      After that first time, she hadn’t expected to see him again. She had been taken aback when, a week later, he had got in touch to say he was in London, and did she want to meet? Orlando travelled as much as she did, and when they crossed cities it made sense to hook up, no strings, no commitment, just straight-up sex.

      Before long they were exchanging more than sweat and kisses. He was useful to her, accessing as he did circles she could never hope to penetrate, and she useful to him, a muscle in the UK media that could change perceptions overnight. Never did they discuss anything deeper—Eve knew little about Orlando’s life and he even less about hers. If they took other lovers it was never mentioned, if they made the mistake of falling asleep in each other’s arms it went unsaid, and they never had a dialogue that began with anything like the words, ‘So where do you see this thing going?’

      It was the perfect arrangement.

      Orlando Silvers was a stellar fuck and that was all there was to it.

      What did it matter that he hadn’t been in contact? Eve knew the clan was in Vegas; she had seen Angela pictured there at the weekend with her father. Orlando would be with them. She would ask him when they next met, and depending on Orlando’s mood he would either elaborate or tell her gruffly, ‘Business.’ After three years she had learned to read him directly, knew when to push and when to leave alone. Maybe it wasn’t so far from a real relationship after all.

      Eve swung her legs out of bed and padded to the bathroom. She stopped at the door. Just do it, she told herself. Then you’ll know. You’ll know it’s a stupid idea.

      Her eyes fell to the rim of the bath, where the little white stick stared back at her, frank and unapologetic.

      She did what she had to do, left it and returned to the bedroom.

       Crazy girl. You’ve always been careful. It isn’t anything, you’ll see.

      At the window, Eve parted the blinds. From high above the city she could see across the spires and rooftops and make out the bitten-down curves of the ancient Colosseum. The rain had cleared and tentative sunlight filtered through the clouds, soaking the amphitheatre in tender light. The bulbs in its arches were starting to come on, glowing hubs that grew against the stone with quiet, timeless dignity. In the violet sky, the evening’s first stars were beginning to appear.

      She returned to the bathroom and checked the result.

      It didn’t surprise her.

      Fishing her phone from her bag, she dialled a number.

      He picked up on the fourth ring, brusque voice announcing his name.

      Eve took a breath. ‘Hi. We need to meet.’

       9

       Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary

      The attic was exactly as his son had left it. A narrow bed was pushed into the corner, the walls cobwebbed and stained with damp. A wooden table housed a heap of dusty books. Words were crudely scratched into its surface—terrible, heartbreaking words.

      Voldan Cane read them. Misery swam in his throat.

      He had not meant to come into the attic. The space had been out of bounds since Grigori’s violent death, and Voldan knew to access it again would only spell fresh angst. Regret swilled in his stomach, bitter and black. He felt so alone.

       Grigori, my darling son … Why did you do it?

      ‘Mr Cane?’ came a fearful enquiry from the bottom of the attic stairs. Janika. Her English was poor and so they conversed in Hungarian. ‘Are you all right?’

      Voldan cawed his response, a monotone bleat: ‘Leave me alone.’

      Unfortunate that it should come out that way, like a robot, with no more or less feeling than if he were reciting a shopping list—but the point was made. Voldan no longer bothered with pleasantries. Janika got paid, didn’t she? And if she ever decided she’d had enough and went to tip him down the staircase, well fine, he would welcome it. Things could get no worse.

      He heard her scurry off down the hallway.

      Oh, my son … Voldan wheeled himself across the desolate attic room. He hadn’t counted on this compulsion to revisit Grigori’s bedroom. It was a need to be close to his boy again, to inhabit the air he had breathed, to embrace the view he had seen, and always, above all, to seek the reasons behind the tragedy.

      The reasons …

      Grigori Cane had been a sweet failure, a weakling and a misfit from the day he was born. They had known it when they’d first held Grigori away from the womb, a screaming, wrinkled infant not two minutes old, and his dark eyes portals to a soul far older than they knew. Voldan had done everything in his power to integrate his child with normal youngsters, to give him a normal life. But Grigori had not been normal. He had been special. Shy and reclusive, with a debilitating allergy to sunlight and a stammer that made him a mockery, he had been helpless against a lifetime of taunts and rejections. The son of a tycoon, he should have had everything. He should have flourished. Instead he had carried the weight of his battered soul like a cross.

      Perhaps his demise had been imminent.

      Perhaps nothing could have stopped it.

      It had been no easy feat getting up to the attic, in Voldan’s decrepit state. Janika had lifted him, her solid Hungarian haunches straining under his load. The castle was vast, Voldan and his faithful maid the only inhabitants, and his recent consignment to a wheelchair worsened matters. Janika had deposited him on Grigori’s bed while she brought the chair up—frailty an unwelcome admission for a man who had once been head of a worldwide