Temptation Island (62 page)

There would be before tonight, and after tonight, and nothing would ever be the same again. In the eleventh-floor washroom of LA’s Palisades Grand Arena, on the most televised event in the entertainment world calendar, vengeance was their apocalypse.

Ivy carved a painted fingernail, danger red, into the print, gouging a nub of plaster.

IF NOT VICTORY, REVENGE!

Victory had never been hers. But revenge? Revenge was in her blood.

From inside the stadium she could hear the muted thrum of beats and the united roar of the fans. Ivy closed her eyes, imagining the cries were for her, urging her on, baying for the carnage she was about to unleash. She released her breath slowly, tasting salt and iron, her tongue flicking across the split in her lip where she had bitten too hard in anticipation.

Three women.

Each was here to claim the spotlight. Each was an international superstar, a glittering icon with the world at her feet. Robin Ryder, UK talent-show sensation, the rags-to-riches sweetheart rescued from oblivion. Kristin White, global pop phenomenon with the voice of an angel, who had ditched the princess act after tragedy struck. And Turquoise da Luca, America’s number one female vocal artist and now tantalising toast of Tinseltown.

One of them was going to perish.

At the mega-event better known as the ETV Platinum Awards, Ivy Sewell was concerned with one target and one alone: her twin. The hated sister, born identical and torn towards an opposite fate, who had claimed everything Ivy herself should have been, who had snatched it all from her grasp, who had turned her back and slipped so seamlessly into a life of opulence and glamour, forgetting where she had come from or what had gone before.

A party of girls entered the washroom, gossiping as they gathered at the mirrors to apply their lurid glosses and paint. Silent, Ivy pressed her ear against the door, listening with interest as the name of her twin was carelessly tossed about. How gorgeous, how talented, how inspirational …
how dead.
Once they were gone, she clicked the lock and stepped outside, meeting her reflection, the flesh ghostly, the mouth cruel, the crimson hair a blood river that hung limply past both shoulders. Ivy was slight, and pale, and didn’t look at all like an assassin but for the empty, blank, inhuman regard with which she appraised her own twisted image; she looked like a woman who might otherwise have been beautiful.

Ivy shoved the bag into the trashcan, forcing it down with her fists. Later, when it was discovered, they would know how clever she had been. In it lurked the disguise she’d worn, the slacks and sneakers and the orange T-shirt with its Burger Delite! logo emblazoned across the front … a whole person, just like that, folded away in a sack. Four months she had endured, but four months was nothing compared with a lifetime. She had needed it to gain their trust as a dedicated employee, to be accepted as quiet, harmless, reclusive Ivy, so that when the time came she could walk straight through, unquestioned by security, her arsenal slung over her shoulder as if the bag contained nothing more than the towel she needed for her evening swim. They would remember how she had kept herself to herself, didn’t speak much, never joined the others on a Friday night; how there was something odd about Ivy Sewell, something
not quite right
, though no one knew enough about her to say what.

As the lid snapped shut, quick as a trick in disappearing the evidence, Ivy stared indifferently at the hands that would carry out this great execution. Wrists pale and brittle, like branches in winter; the fingers thin. She could feel the weight of her armoury concealed against her body: the solid, smooth contours as cold and steely as her purpose.

Only when the bullet entered would it be over. Only when that flawless skin was ruptured, that smile erased, that heartbeat frozen, one and the same as hers and yet a universe apart, would it be finished: one life in exchange for another. Ivy had waited to claim the recognition she had been denied; at last she would be important, she would be headlines, she would be coveted, she would be talked about. Oh, she would be talked about.

She had suffered and her twin had survived. Tonight, their roles would be reversed.

A rapturous cry erupted in the arena. The show was beginning, the stage lit up to welcome the players, the kings and queens of twenty-first-century music, the alphas and the studs and the bitches and the beauties in their hundred-thousand-dollar gowns, diamonds glinting, cameras flashing, beats throbbing: the countdown to Ivy’s resurgence.

Why?
they would cry, grieving the wreckage as TV crews and news anchors and the horrified leer of the world’s media turned slavering to the scene.
She didn’t seem the type …

Ivy closed her eyes. The letters were emblazoned on her lids, bright as fire.

IF NOT VICTORY, REVENGE!

The curtain was up. And now it was show time.

PART ONE

One year earlier

1

Robin Ryder was seeing stars, weightless and electrified as she flew towards the raging sun of her orgasm. Fuck the wardrobe her stylist had spent hours perfecting; fuck the producer’s countdown mere minutes away; fuck everything except this glorious, glittering fuck.

‘Does that feel good?’ the man breathed, gripping her waist and pulling in deeper. Robin, on top, ground against him; the slippery, yielding leather of the seat was soft and sticky beneath her knees, and she threw her head back to moan her reply.

Backstage in the VIP suite, ahead of a live Saturday night broadcast of
The Launch
, she was riding this guy as if it were the last ride of her life. What she was doing was reckless, it was sinful, but Robin had never been able to play by the rules. She was a judge and he a contestant; it was all kinds of wrong and yet all kinds of right. RnB tunes filtered through the music system, and at the bar an empty magnum of Krug nestled on a bed of ice. As Robin held tight she decided she would definitely, oh
definitely
, be putting him through this week.

‘I’m there,’ she cried, ‘don’t stop, I’m there!’

‘Me too,’ the guy choked, driving in hard. ‘My God, you’re so fucking hot.’

The throne-like chair was a prop, used in the early stages of the show: when a judge liked what they saw they hit a lever, prompting the seat to rush forward on a pair of rails. Robin had proved a hit during auditions, where her inclination to back everybody had her getting motion sickness every ad break. After all,
The Launch
was where she herself had begun: now she was the nation’s darling, drawn from obscurity,

a rough diamond polished through song. Robin had risen to fame through the very show she was tonight judging.

The public loved Robin’s voice, raw and sensuous, somewhere between pain and deliverance. They loved how she wore her heart on her sleeve. They loved her guts, and her honesty. They loved her story - that she’d been hurt and wanted to seize her dues. Over twelve months Robin had soared to a dizzying stratosphere, invited to every party, on to every red carpet, booked for every event. Her gift was undeniable and her smile lit up a room.

‘Do you want it?’ the contestant was panting, his sweat-slicked six-pack glistening in the half-glow. ‘Right there, do you want it?’ He was this year’s favourite, tough guy with the voice of an angel – and a heavenly body to match.

She came in a crash, an exploding galaxy of dazzling confetti as she writhed on the brink of paradise. Sex was Robin’s release. It enabled her to feel that warmth, that closeness, without risk of being wounded. You got what you came for and you left. She didn’t get why people wanted to stick around afterwards anyway; she had never understood this sleeping-in-each-other’s-arms thing. She’d got this far alone and she didn’t need anyone else.

‘That was amazing,’ he groaned, cradling her, kissing her over and over as she gasped through the aftermath of her climax.

She had barely had time to fling a shirt over her nakedness when the door opened. Robin didn’t know which happened first: the contestant’s face dropping as fast as his pants had ten minutes earlier; or her attempt to dismount disastrously striking the switch that jolted the chair meteor-quick towards their visitor like some sort of warped sacrificial offering.

‘Oh,’ said their caller as Robin scrambled to conceal herself. Instead of a mortified exit (which would have been the polite thing), he stood there, an infuriating grin on his face.

Light flooded the room. ‘Shit, man,’ gabbled the contestant helpfully. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

‘Do you mind?’ she raged, so mortified she couldn’t bear to turn round.

‘Sure.’ She could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Perhaps I should come back later.’

*

It was a miracle she made it through the show without punching him.

Leon Sway, Olympic sprinter, was guesting on tonight’s panel. Since the summer Games had decreed him a World Personality, the athlete was hotly in demand for every broadcast going. Leon was mixed race, with close-cut black hair, strong cheekbones and an all-over movie-star look: it was little wonder he had been gracing billboards across the globe with a ream of sponsorships and modelling contracts; and now here he was making a star appearance on the adjudicating
Launch
line-up – what the hell did he know about music?

‘I’ve been a fan of yours from the start,’ Robin told a quivering choirgirl after an impressive rendition of Adele. ‘That was a brilliant performance; I really felt it. Well done.’

‘Sure that’s not all you felt?’ came the murmur from her neighbour, just loud enough for her to hear. She tried not to scowl – either that or turn to Leon and chuck her glass of water in his face. It wasn’t in Robin’s nature to wish for the ground to open up and swallow her whole, but tonight had to be the exception. As the acts ran through their numbers and the board delivered their verdicts, she tried not to dwell on what parts of her anatomy might have been unveiled before they’d even been introduced – not easy with Leon’s supercilious bulk to her left, interspersed with a hot flash of shame every time she recalled his untimely intrusion.

‘Do you think she can win?’ asked a producer mogul who had been tagged as her ‘rival’ on the show. ‘With those nerves I can’t see her pulling off any live gigs.’

‘This is a live gig, isn’t it?’ Robin snapped. She could sense Leon staring at her. Why did he have to be such a smug, full-of-himself …? Ugh, she couldn’t even think of the word.

‘Well, yes …’

‘I absolutely believe in her,’ commented Robin, battling through her disgrace. ‘This is where I got my break and it took me time to grow, of course it did. If she were cutthroat at this point you’d be tearing her apart for being difficult to work with. Which is it going to be?’

The arena shouted its approval. Robin’s image filled the screens on either side of the stage, the people’s champion: she was petite, her hair chopped short but with a trademark sweep still long enough to obscure her eyes, which were cat-like and aglow with dramatic make-up. Hers was a cautious demeanour that belied the tough, attitude-fuelled work that had made her name: Robin’s music spoke of more years lived and more experiences earned, and had consequently secured her the first ever talent-show-spawned album to be nominated for – and win – a Brit Select Award. The victory had made Robin Ryder, at just nineteen, the hottest thing on the UK scene. She believed in putting everything into her art, the offering up of her heart and her soul, because for a long time she had imagined that both those things were damaged beyond being any use to anyone.

When the time came for
that
contestant to take the spotlight, she grimaced. Leon couldn’t resist fixing her with a stare throughout the entire introductory VT.

‘It wasn’t for me,’ he judged afterwards. ‘It kinda felt like you were distracted.’

‘I disagree,’ put in Robin. ‘For me it was a very focused, determined performance.’

Leon turned to her. ‘Are you complimenting his performance?’

The blush threatened to engulf her. ‘Sure,’ she managed, the double entendre squatting resolutely between them. ‘I am.’

‘Focused
and
determined – that’s how you like it, then?’

She returned his glare. ‘Who doesn’t?’

The host, confused, went to ask another panellist their view.

‘It seemed like he had something else on his mind,’ Leon steamed on before he could, ‘something more interesting than being up on that stage. Don’t you feel that’s an issue?’

‘Whatever drives him is fine by me,’ she replied stiffly, knowing that every word she uttered was laced in innuendo. ‘After all, what would a
sprinter
know about vocals?’

It was a cheap shot, she ought to know better, but humiliation had forced her into a corner. A blood-hungry cheer erupted and she could all but hear the producers salivating.

‘Well, he is the bookies’ favourite,’ supplied the mogul.

‘Not just the bookies’ … right, Robin?’ Leon joked, a crescent-moon dimple appearing on one side of his all too slappable face. His insinuation was obvious. There was a horrible silence. Robin’s cheeks flamed. She tried to think of something to say and nothing came. She was so angry she could scream. This was
live TV
!

‘Ex
cuse
me?’ she spluttered.

But the host moved on, instructed to sever it at the point of maximum speculation.

Afterwards, everyone assured her that it hadn’t sounded that bad. Robin wasn’t stupid. It would be all over the papers tomorrow thanks to that insufferable
bastard
Leon Sway! The contestant looked hopefully at her as she fled: that was the end of him.

Her car took her straight to Soho’s Hideaway Club, where she found scant solace in ordering the strongest concoction she could find. Her band met her there.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, before Polly, her bassist, had a chance.

Polly was American with a peroxide-blonde beehive. ‘All right,’ she said as they settled in a booth. ‘But just to say—’

‘Don’t say anything.’