- -
- 100%
- +
‘Always a fun read!’ —Jackie Collins
‘Quite simply the best “bonkbuster” you’ll read all year.’
—Daily Express
‘Must Read’
—Real People
‘Oozes glamour and revenge. The ultimate beach read’
—All About Soap
‘A proper guilty pleasure’
—Now
‘Fans of glamorous bonkbusters will enjoy’
—Heat
‘Victoria Fox’s glossy chick-lit novel gives Jackie Collins a run for her money.’
—Irish Tatler
‘It’s the best bonkbuster.’ —The Sun
‘Even we were shocked at the scale of scandal in this juicy tale! It’s 600 pages of sin!’
—Now
‘This debut novel is full of sex, glamour and divas!’ 4 stars
—Star
‘For a trip to ultimate escapism, take the Jackie Collins freeway, turn left at Sexy Street, right at Scandal Boulevard. Your destination is Victoria Fox’s Hollywood.’
—dailyrecord.co.uk
For Madeleine Milburn
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to Maddy, my agent and my friend, for more with every book.
To my brilliant editor, Sally Williamson, for drawing the best out of this novel, for her fabulous ideas, and for always pushing me to potential; and to the superb team at Harlequin UK: Mandy Ferguson, Tim Cooper, Nick Bates, Alison Lindsay, Donna Hillyer, Jenny Hutton, Ali Wilkinson, Elise Windmill and Helen Findlay.
To Cara Lee Simpson for her excellent notes on Power Games, and to Oliver Rhodes for his publishing prowess. To the guys at Cherish PR, especially Rebecca Oatley, Sam Allen and Shane Herrington: you make my dreams come true!
To Jo and Jeff Croot for helping straighten the plot; to Kim Young for Kevin and the Little Chasers; to Louis Boroditsky for his fantastic support; to Toria and Mark for going Bear Grylls; and to Rosie Walsh, Jenny Hayes, Vanessa Neuling and Kate Wilde for their friendship and writerly advice.
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
PART TWO
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
EPILOGUE
Endpage
Copyright
PROLOGUE I
Koloku Island, Southeast Asia, the Palaccas Archipelago
July 1, 2014
The jungle comes alive at night.
In the darkness strange shapes creep and fold. Liquid shadows are black as ink and the undergrowth moves. Things shift unseen, slipping beneath leaf-silk. The air quivers, hot and clenched. It smells of the colour green, fragrant and private; and the purple sky, glimpsed in diamonds through a trembling canopy, is bursting with stars.
There is no safe way to arrive on these shores. The water is shark-infested, the land crawls and seethes. It is a forbidden paradise set apart from the world, and it does not welcome visitors. Peril lurks in swamps. Cat snakes drip from trees. Leopards prowl with silent intent, eyes gleaming gold at the scent of the kill. On a far-off branch, the panicked screech of a proboscis monkey rips through the pregnant heat, high and taut and violent. Fruit bats clap leathery wings.
It is impossible to see in the depths of the rainforest. Dense threads thick as rope are damp and fat and scented like rot. Enquiringly they finger the skin, coiling around wrist, knee or ankle, tethering any who trespass into the sucking, clinging earth. This is no place for humans. The wilderness took over a long time ago.
Beyond a wall of jade, the beach is torn into view. Cliff shards soar, rugged and sheer, their lofty peaks silhouetted against star-crust, prehistoric and bone-sharp. Rivers thread vein-like into the slithering jungle and grottos are sliced out of the rock, interiors caked in salt. Palm trees rise like swords against the sky, a hundred feet up, maybe more. The indigo lagoon shimmers like silk, kissing the pink crust of the reef, beyond which spreads the wide, dark Aralanda Sea. Water whispers onto sand, sighing as satin over pale shoulders. It brings secrets from the far-off Pacific, drifting them onto the shore like shells, for nobody to hear and nobody to pick up.
Everything is still.
The jet appears at first like a silver comet. It is small, a moving star, but to blink will draw it into focus, its clean, light contours and the tipping line of its wings. It falls closer, glinting against the lilac clouds. Too quick it is eating up distance, eerily noiseless as it falls and falls over glittering black, reaching for the moonlit bay.
Smoke trails from the rear, dissolving into the indifferent dark. There is a flash of hot orange, close to the tail. The sky begins to growl.
With a crash the body plummets through the canopy. Profuse thickets resist its mighty onslaught, breaking the descent. Thunder blasts as the fuselage guillotines through trees. The forest shrieks. There is an explosion of birds’ wings.
The captain has a second to think before the windshield bursts and a jagged shaft breaks through, neat as a splinter, impaling him through his chest. His lungs are demolished; his breath is crushed. He is surprised. He wasn’t meant to die today. The last person he thinks of is the woman who sold him his coffee that morning in Jakarta, her light, smiling eyes and the sweetness of the liquid on his tongue. Blood spills from his mouth and he slumps forward, chin on chest, and stops living.
It is a peculiar quirk of fortune that prevents the jet from slamming into hard ground: later, those on board will realise that the forest saved their lives—and curse it for it. Instead, the stricken plane shudders through foliage, hell-bent on its manic detour, battered by rocks and the thump of knotted branch. Parts fall away. The mammoth trunk of a chengal tree severs one wing, flipping the missile. It breaks up, an eagle in the skies but down here little but haphazard pieces of fractured metal. In the cockpit the overhead panel collapses, knocking the first officer cold.
What is left carves a giant wound through the undergrowth. Despite the broken plunge, the impact is severe. The aircraft groans to an uncertain, injured rest, slashed with mud and green. The moon bathes it in light, like a pearl.
Of the seven passengers who boarded that morning, three are men and four are women. It is unclear who is left.
One is smeared with red, her face and neck sticky with salt and iron, though she cannot decipher through her terror if it is her blood or another’s.
One is trapped beneath something solid. He doesn’t know if he is alive or dead. He must be dead, he thinks, because everything is dark.
One is the first to move. She gropes into the black and detects the outline of her hand, tentative and ghostly, and knows in that moment she has made it.
Half a mile behind, the remainder of the cabin is suspended in a tree seventy metres from the ground. It hangs between moss-covered creepers and is tilted on one side, caught in a nest of fronds. The ribbons strain: they cannot hold it.
Inside, a woman opens her eyes. She can hear her breathing, fast and short, and the furious blood in her veins.
There is a final, desperate moment before somebody screams. The animal cry flies into the jungle like spitting fire, a red warning: there are survivors.
II
Szolsvár Castle, Gemenc Forest, Hungary
The same day
Nine thousand miles away, in an ancient fortress buried deep in the woodland, the telephone rings. Its chime echoes through sprawling gothic caverns, lonely and stark.
Billionaire Voldan Cane receives it.
Anticipation climbs in his throat. ‘Is it done?’ he rasps.
The voice makes him wait. Eventually, it comes.
‘Yes. It is done.’
Voldan exhales. A wheezing moan escapes where the skin between his top lip and his nose has ruptured. His bruised heart burns.
It is done.
The call is terminated. Voldan tries to smile but it is hard. The movement tugs at his ruined features, his sallow skin pitted as fruit peel. Normally he avoids his tortured image—mirrors have long been banished from these rooms—but here, in the high, arched windows of Szolsvár’s Great Hall, he catches a flash of the man he used to be: handsome, wealthy, coveted … happy.
One out of four isn’t bad.
The panes are faded and cobwebbed with age. Only Voldan’s eyes betray the depths of his satisfaction. It is done.
He backs away from his reflection and the shadows swallow him whole.
PART ONE
Six months earlier
1
New York
Angela Silvers was being fucked from here to infinity.
At least, that was how it looked. In the mirrored dressing room of Fit for NYC, the bijou latest addition to her chain of sought-after fashion boutiques, her image was fractured and repeated, chasing replicas of her naked body to vanishing point. Angela was flung against the sweat-slicked glass, her arms wide and her blood racing.
The man between her thighs was forbidden.
Noah Lawson.
Movie star, heart-throb, teenage crush—the man she wasn’t allowed to have.
Noah’s tongue circled with exquisite precision, tracing around, between and beneath, everywhere but the place she knew would ignite her like dynamite.
She grabbed his hair, tilting her hips, and gasped as fireflies swarmed in her belly, rising and rising until the world and everything in it diminished to the pure, clear pleasure of her approaching climax. Oh, how she had tried to forget him. Noah was her lover, her best friend and her constant: he was the magic in her heart.
She couldn’t help the rebellion. It had been in her since she was fifteen.
‘Keep going!’ she begged. ‘Don’t stop!’
Drawing her to him, Noah plunged deep, finally giving her what she wanted where she wanted it, and in a delicious, delirious flash she was there, slave to the surge, electric ripples tearing her apart. He kissed her lips, her neck, her collarbone, and whispered in her ear those three sweet words he saved just for her.
If only she believed them.
‘Ms Silvers?’ There was a knock at the door: a female voice, summoning her for the launch. ‘They’re ready for you. Is everything all right?’
Angela closed her eyes, throwing her head back to gasp her admission: ‘I’m coming!’
Fit for NYC was a walk-in wow-fest of everything retail could and should be.
The gallery was spectacular. Silhouetted mannequins were draped in lace and crepe. Champagne glittered on diamond plinths, embossed with the golden FNYC logo. The air was spritzed with an aroma of privacy, of secrecy, even of conspiracy. Couches sat plump as raspberries, their Milanese fabrics shimmering with hand-gilded leaf, and goblets of fizz drifted along with zingy morsels of antipasto: juicy baby figs, Parma ham as light as silk, salty pepperoncini and fleshy artichoke. The pieces were one-offs, painstakingly selected from the fiercest new collections; if not by Angela then by her trusted clique of buyers. Personal assistants were on hand to advise. Designers were commissioned for bespoke tailoring. Caskets housed the chicest of gems. Fit for NYC was set to become the shopping mecca of the super-rich.
Heads turned as Angela moved across the floor. Hers was a potent sensuality that combined feisty Italian beauty with the self-assurance and class of an elite Bostonian heritage. In a tailored trouser suit with deep V neckline and heels that put her at a fraction under six feet, Angela Silvers was bracingly attractive.
She smoothed her curls. Sex hair. Her cheeks were still flushed, her knees weak.
Already she ached for Noah, her skin dancing from his touch and his kiss still alive on her lips. Why did they have to hide? Why couldn’t he be here, at her side?
Some days Angela convinced herself to throw it all to hell and stand in defiance of her father; others, it was career suicide. Donald Silvers was a powerful, domineering man, and he would not be moved when it came to his precious only daughter: if he found out she and Noah were together, he would take from Angela the one thing she had always craved—that one day, the family business would be hers.
Her heart or her ambition … Why did she have to choose?
According to her father, despite Noah’s fame and riches, he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t from her stock. Girls in Angela’s position were expected to see and be seen with the right sort of man, to date wisely, to marry correctly.
She ignored the sliver of doubt that told her that wasn’t the only reason. Doubt that looped through a hole in her heart; a hole Noah himself had made years before.
The thing was, no one else matched up. No one looked at her in the way Noah did. No one listened, and cared, and made her laugh. No one held her hand and kissed her like it was the last kiss on earth. No one made love to her like he did.
‘I’ll call you,’ she had told him, as he’d slipped through the doors and into the night. His strong arms around her, his voice in her ear: ‘Not if I call you first …’
‘Where’ve you been?’
Orlando, the elder of her two brothers, swiped a chalice of Louis Roederer and drank lustily from it. At thirty Orlando was a polished, complacent kind of handsome, as if his looks and status were assets he had won on merit, not by chance.
‘Shouldn’t you slow down?’ Angela commented. Unable to resist stoking the fire of sibling rivalry, she added wickedly: ‘Anyone would think you were jealous.’
‘Jealous?’ He snorted. ‘Hardly.’
But she didn’t believe it. Orlando and Luca existed on the soft plush pillow of their father’s wealth like cats in the sun, safe in the assurance that they had to do very little to merit his attention. Angela, on the other hand, had had a fight on her hands since day one—and it had forced her to succeed. As the only girl and third in line to the Silvers throne, she was long accustomed to a role in the shadows. Why should a world-famous heiress to immeasurable fortune be getting involved in the tough stuff when there were more frivolous things to be doing, like getting her nails done, or partying, or visiting their private Hawaiian retreat for a week of sun and spa?
Angela didn’t give a shit about any of that. She had the balls and the brains of any man—bigger, better—and had demonstrated she could easily trounce her brothers when it came to business. Setting up Fit for NYC by herself was testament to that.
‘You’re drunk,’ she said, switching seamlessly to a smile for their guest of honour, supermodel of the moment Tawny Lascelles. Tawny was blonde, wide-eyed and sultry. She was four years younger than Angela but the gap felt wider—the way Tawny behaved in the press was naïve to say the least, snorting coke, flashing her knickers (or lack of them), creeping into cabs with married men … It hadn’t stopped her snagging contracts with Burberry, Mulberry and Chanel—and her attendance tonight was surely to make certain that Angela’s brainchild was next.
‘Tawny, how great to see you, thank you for coming …’
The model delivered a tight air-kiss, sniffed the air and moved on.
Orlando smirked. ‘Why are models always baked?’
‘Yeah, well, at least one of us is on top of our game.’
‘Which is why you’ve been AWOL for the past half hour?’
Angela conceded that her pre-party dalliance with Noah hadn’t exactly been the height of professionalism. She couldn’t help it. Snatched moments, hidden trysts, each second savoured to carry them to the next encounter, always an eternity away. Both public figures, a glimpse would be splashed across the web in a nanosecond—already rumours simmered dangerously. Noah had implored her, but still she said no.
Damn! She could not live beneath her father’s jurisdiction for ever.
‘Well?’ Orlando pressed. ‘Gonna let me in on your vanishing act?’
‘It’s none of your damn business.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Want me to tell Dad?’
‘Tell him what?’
‘You know what.’
‘I know you can fuck off.’
‘You’re a shitty liar, Angela.’
She wanted to hit him. ‘And what makes you such a saint?’
Orlando shrugged. ‘Nothing. Guess I’m better at hiding it than you.’
It had been too much to hope for her brother’s support. Only Noah had believed she could do this. Only he’d had faith. Despite the way her family had treated him in the past, Noah had been adamant that victory was in her blood—and if the men could do it, why couldn’t she? Ever since her great-grandfather had founded a modest Boston department store, through the decades growing it from strength to strength, winning had been the name of the game. On the crest of success her father had expanded into wider markets still: hotels, casinos, fashion labels; on to the Middle East, Tokyo and Singapore …
Today the Silvers brand was a worldwide lifestyle force. Angela was dead-set on running the ship one day. In the meantime, if her father wouldn’t stake her a role, she would simply go up against him. She had to prove herself one way or another.
Gianluca joined them. Together, the Silvers brothers reeked so strongly of a Harvard Business degree it settled like fog.
‘Dad’s got an announcement,’ said Luca, with his irritating I-know-something-you-don’t-know pout. Luca’s wide, thick-lashed eyes and high brushstroke cheekbones were trademarks of the family. Women went crazy for him.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Orlando took another drink. ‘He’s retiring—and you know what that means. Silvers is coming straight to me, baby.’
Luca arranged his jacket. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’m the eldest.’ He swigged. ‘But hey, don’t worry, I won’t fire you.’
Luca smirked. Then he said: ‘May the best man win.’
‘Or woman.’
‘Forget it,’ Luca dismissed, waving a hand about, ‘haven’t you already got this … sideline?’
‘Which is a damn sight more than you’ve got,’ Angela shot back.
A tinkling glass put paid to the dispute. Angela seized the platform, welcomed the sea of guests and press and recounted her journey, from a teenage summer in Paris that had ignited her passion for couture, to the first flame of her Fit for NYC idea; from the funding she’d secured—independently from her father—to the glory of this opening night. She imagined Noah next to her, encouraging her and urging her on.
When the applause died down, echoes of light still dancing from the raft of cameras, she invited her father, as arranged, to offer his congratulations.
As Donald Silvers approached, she fixed her determined gaze on his.
In spite of it all, Angela knew that he believed in her. She had never been the daughter he’d anticipated—she’d been more.
He shook her hand, equal to equal.
Now was her chance to prove it.
2
Los Angeles
Kevin Chase was watching his manager’s mouth. He noticed for the first time that it was a small mouth, the teeth crowded, and the jowly cheeks bolstering it brought to mind a yapping dog wedged between two cushions. The mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out. In the years since becoming America’s biggest solo artist—scratch that, the world’s—and the definitive pin-up for a squillion screeching tweenies (when was his fan base going to grow?), Kevin had honed the art of appearing to concentrate while actually not listening to a single word.
‘Kevin, are you paying attention? C’mon, buddy, this is serious.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself?’
Kevin slumped further into the squishy leather couch in Sketch Falkner’s downtown office and grudgingly lifted his shoulders.
‘Dunno,’ he grumbled. ‘One of those things, I guess.’
Sketch contained his exasperation and came to the front of the desk. He had been in this game thirty years. He had seen it all. As the industry’s top talent spotter and head of the board here at Cut N Dry Records, he knew how to handle his clients.
‘What in hell were you thinking?’ he encouraged.
Kevin folded his arms, stared ahead and refused to reply. His gold FNYC cap was wedged on sideways. His slouch jeans were massive, gangsta style despite his suburban upbringing, and strapped partway down his ass. He wore a white vest adorned by hefty chains, and on his feet were his cherished purple SUPRAs, one of which was jiggling up and down as if he needed the bathroom. Several tattoos were splashed self-consciously across his upper arms, the biggest depicting his ex-girlfriend, pop princess Sandi—and, as if having Sandi’s image branded onto his skin for all eternity wasn’t bad enough, the artist had given her some weird-ass dangly skirt that made it look like Kevin had a thing for chicks with dicks. His frame was slight despite rigorous gym sessions, and the wisps around his chin refused to mature beyond fuzz. The overall impression was one of a junior who had raided his big brother’s closet, or else a snowman that had melted in the sun, leaving only a jumble of clothes behind.