The Contract (Nightlong #1) (14 page)

I wanted to rewind the day and put myself back in Paris, back in bed, maybe even back to when it was just us playing silly games instead of all this difficult love stuff.

“Call ahead, Sexton.”

“Will do.”

Sexton rolled the privacy wall up but it wasn’t hard to hear what he was saying on the loud bluetooth telephone.

“When was the last time Gillian used the facilities?”

“Before you and I got properly together. Don’t you read the gossip columns, sweetheart?”

“No, why?”

“Apparently I have a mysterious new lady friend.”

“What?”

“I took out an injunction so you’re never pictured, but that doesn’t stop them from printing sentences with the words alleged, possible or assumed.”

“I despise your world,” I blurted, “it’s so fucking stupid!”

“Yes, I know,” he said coolly, like this sort of stuff was what he was used to dealing with.

I thought back to what Ayda said about his grief and wondered if his complete indifference was what was really wrong with him.

“Isn’t she angry?”

“A little. Her parents have wanted to know when we’re setting a date for years. They’ll no doubt be mightily disappointed when it turns out she’s only interested in the muscle-bound gardener who won’t bring any money into the pot whatsoever.”

“Fucking stupid,” I gritted out.

The privacy screen rolled down and Sexton announced, “We’re in.”

“Good, we’ll go in the back way. You can deal with the luggage.”

“Fine.” Sexton rolled the screen back up, perhaps sensing we needed a moment.

The skyline of London showed itself on the horizon as we left the countryside and drove back to the city. I wanted to be anywhere else than back in London, which didn’t feel safe, or welcoming – not anymore.

“The attic didn’t have…” I paused, my mind working, my memory kicking into gear, “…all the computers… it was just bodies up there. Didn’t they use computers?”

“Someone has stolen my business from me, Ciara,” Dante said calmly. “Stealing is one thing, but killing my staff… people I handpicked, people I liked and spent hours of my time with, that’s another thing. Someone has to pay for this.”

“Who would do this? Who’s been sending threats?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know.”

“You do know. You know something. You just won’t tell me, as per usual. Quite frankly, I am tired of this.”

He slammed his fist against the car interior and cracked one of the wooden veneers. “Ciara, you knew what I did… you knew from the start!”

“What start? Six years ago was the start and I’ve only known about your
job
for a couple of months. Are you forgetting that your job is exactly what kept you from me all that time?”

“It wasn’t just that… but yes, I was afraid something like this would happen. I was terrified in fact.”

He held his head in his hands and rather than say anymore, I decided to keep quiet for the rest of the journey – even though he’d basically just put a dozen people’s deaths on my conscience. This felt like it was all my fault… for trying to set him free. I’d ruined the status quo and he was right… this was on me.

AT the hotel, we checked in via the VIP channels so we wouldn’t be seen in reception and before long we found ourselves in the sanctuary of our suite.

A few minutes passed in silence before there was a knock on the door and Dante looked through the spy hole to see it was Sexton.

Our driver brought in our luggage from a trolley and left the trolley outside while he came into the room, shutting the door behind him. He brought out a gun from inside his pocket and handed it to Dante.

“I’ll hang around tonight. Don’t worry, it’s quiet. No functions or anything. Shouldn’t be difficult to spot a nefarious rogue if such a person does pass through the lobby.”

How could Dante put our safety in the hands of a man pushing sixty? It wasn’t fair and I didn’t believe Sexton, the cool, calm gentleman would kill for us if he had to. He was too nice for all that.

Sexton left the room and as soon as the door was shut, I blurted, “You’re just going to let him stay up all night, scouring the hotel are you? He’s too old for this.”

“Don’t be fooled, Ciara. He’s one of the best in the business. I wouldn’t entrust your safety with anyone else.”

“Whatever. I’m running a bath.”

While I was swimming in the tub, I watched him shed his clothes and stuff them in a plastic bag, tying the handles tight so none of the stench from them could escape. He tossed the bag in a bin not big enough, stuffing them deep inside. I’d already tossed my own clothes in a bag which I’d left outside the hotel room door for laundry to come and process during the night.

As he showered with his back to me at the other side of the wet room, I didn’t know what to think. I’d known there was a dangerous aspect to what he did, but I’d tried to ignore it.

He once told me that even his best employee, a guy known as Fortress, wasn’t even half as talented as Dante. Had the team suffered since Dante began leaving them to their own devices? In the absence of Dante, had a series of mistakes cost them their identities, then subsequently their lives?

If the team had been receiving threats, why didn’t he get them out right away? He had a responsibility to those people. Why didn’t he get them out?

Maybe because he couldn’t. There was
no way out
.

He left the shower in silence, walking out of the room with a towel around his waist, still dripping wet. He couldn’t look me in the eye.

I heard him in the room, unzipping his laptop bag, taking out his equipment. He was no doubt trying to hook up the security footage from the house, see if he could spot who’d entered and taken out all of his people.

“FUCK! FUCK!” he cried.

“What? What?”

“My laptop’s been remotely wiped. I can’t believe… I don’t understand!”

I wished we’d stayed in Paris. I wished we’d left for Australia or somewhere two months ago. In some respects, I began to wish I’d never thrown myself at him.

But then I’d have missed out on the greatest love of my life.

He was everything.

He came back into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid, head bowed.

“Somebody wiped the footage on the motherboard too. I have nothing. It’s all gone.”

“How could someone do that… calmly kill twelve people, then have the nerve and the time to delete the security footage, too?”

“I don’t know,” he groaned, scratching his hair, “but it had to be a hired hit. The footage cut out right before the shootings. I doubt whoever took our equipment did so alone. There was boxes of it… files… heavy hard drives, backups… different phones and all kinds of stuff. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out how it got out where they were… who it was who killed them… why. I only know if they took all our stuff, there’s someone now out there… masquerading as my operation, and I have to find out who. It’s the only way I’ll know.”

I swallowed hard, rolling up in the bath from my reclining position. “What good is that going to do you? Let’s just go. What if we’re next, Dante? We could be next!”

“I need to make a call…”

He left the room again and I heard ringing as he tried to get through to someone. It seemed to ring for a long time before he left a message: “Dad, it’s me. Call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent.”

I swallowed hard.

He made another call but this time, the person answered. “Mum! Good! You’re there…”

I didn’t hear what she said, but I heard what he said.

“Yes, something’s happened, but not to me.”

“I’m glad you’re well and… yes, they’re lucky to have you…”

…

(She rambled a lot.)

“Look Mum, will you call Dad and make sure he’s okay… yes, I know… but he despises me… just call and check he’s alive, then text me that he is, okay? Yes, yes… I love you. I’ll tell her you said hi.”

I’d briefly spoken to Collette over the phone. She knew Dante and I were engaged to be married but he didn’t want us to meet yet in case she asked too many questions.

I heard Dante pacing the room after that and I remained quiet. I really didn’t know why he couldn’t just let it all go. The guilt must have been weighing down on him, but at the end of the day, he hadn’t held a gun to those people’s heads keeping them in their jobs… he’d just gone away for a weekend break, something we’d been doing more and more of recently. His team was killed for reasons unknown. It seemed as plain as day that we could get ourselves killed trying to find out why this had all happened.

He came back into the bathroom after a few minutes, his eyes red. He knelt by the side of the bath and rested his head on his arms.

“Help me,” he said, and I wrapped my arms around him. “What do I do?”

“We could go back to Paris in the morning?”

“What if someone knows who I am, Ciara? What if someone knows? I operated behind a smokescreen… but now, someone might know I’m the fixer. They took all the equipment, remember?”

I nodded slowly and lifted his face, holding his cheeks. “Okay, so we can’t go back home to Paris. We have to run.”

He cried in my arms and I sobbed with him. So many presents he’d given me had no doubt been lost in the explosion earlier… and other treasures were locked up back in Paris.

He was right though, what really mattered existed just between us two.

We sobbed for those souls, because it didn’t seem like anyone else had – or would.

We sobbed because everything in our little Paris flat meant more than we could say and yet we knew we had to turn our backs on it all.

The honeymoon period was well and truly over.

I WOKE WITH A START in our hotel room at the Four Seasons. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to put thoughts of that house out of my mind, but I couldn’t. I sat up in bed and drank some water, laying back down to find sleep. Dante beside me breathed evenly undisturbed, but I was wide awake and knew I wouldn’t sleep again. I slid out of bed and walked to the windows, peering down on the dormant city lit by dull stars and streetlights.

“Ciara…?”

“It was a dream. Go back to sleep.”

I heard rustling and before I knew it, he stood behind me, his arms around my shoulders. Lips against my nape. Naked body pressing to my naked skin.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his chin resting in the crook of my neck.

“No. It’s not just the house and the bodies… it’s something else.”

“What?”

He turned me to face him and I looped my arms around his waist.

Clearing my throat, I dared to look up into his eyes. “It’s what you said about you being behind a smokescreen… people not knowing the fixer’s real name or face. If your clients and enemies never saw you or your face, it has to be someone who does know you that did that to your team. It can’t be coincidence that you’ve been running like clockwork for a decade and soon after we get together, this happens.”

“I know,” he said in a tired voice, “but the people I allow to wade the small pool of my confidence are very few, believe me.”

“Or maybe someone did slip up.”

“The one thing we know for certain is that the only factor which recently changed is me spending more time with you. There has to be something in that. I’ve been doing this for over ten years and never has anyone slipped up in all that time. I train my people with military precision.”

“This could be connected to Daltrey, what do you think? Two epic disasters. A decade apart, granted… but… both seem unexplainable.”

“Both cases do have that in common.” He placed a kiss in my hair and his deep voice cut through the silence of the sleeping hotel when he said, “Ciara, always astute, always. It’s what I love most about you… it’s what makes me susceptible to you.”

I stepped closer to his warm body and pressed my cheek against his chest, holding him tighter behind his back, stroking my hands up and down his glorious body.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“Let’s get back in bed,” he sighed.

He walked me to bed and under the covers, I shut my eyes and rested on his chest, listening as he told me: “One of my people could have turned. It is possible. That’s all it takes. One. One person. Now, given I went through all the bodies and found all my team members dead, I have to admit that it’s unlikely anyone turned… given they’re all dead. All of them.”

“So who else knows about your job? Apart from me and Sexton… wait, did Ayda know?”

“She didn’t know specifics, no.”

“Who else does, then?”

“A friend of mine, Teddy Rayworth… but he wouldn’t. I don’t think he would risk it. He’s a leading barrister. There’s no way he’d compromise his position by doing something like this… stealing my operation is not something that would appeal to him.”

“Could he have sold you out, though? But to whom?”

“We’re very old friends, Ciara. True, we don’t speak as often as we should, but we were at school together. There’s no way on earth he would do this. He was as horrified as I was when Daltrey died. He wouldn’t sell me out… no way.”

“So what about Gillian?”

“The
Daily Mail
recently pictured her sailing on a yacht in Cannes, apparently trying to get over me. She’s been there all this week, all last week. She sent me some unsavoury emails after it was reported I have a mystery woman but our arrangement was never legal or binding and never even had a leg to stand on. If you knew the press like I do, you’d know they create banquets out of brunches, trust me.”

“Who might have sent you those threats? Have you got any enemies? Who did you piss off really and truly?”

Dante stroked some strands of hair out of my face and whispered, “You shouldn’t bother your head with all this.”

“I want to help, though.”

“I know. However, I’ve already thought all this through.”

“Well it’ll help me to see everything from your point of view. Two heads and all that might throw up something you haven’t thought of yet.”

“Okay, okay…” He relented.

I got comfier in his arms and prepared myself to hear what he had to confess…

“Well… let’s say… the current Prime Minister James Wexler might not be in power today if I hadn’t blackmailed a few people in the press. A couple of journos were planning to leak a story about him… not a made-up story, but nonetheless a sort of embellished version of something that could have really happened. A hilariously embarrassing account of university tomfoolery that would have damaged his campaign at the time. Given how unpopular Wexler has become since getting the top job, you could say any number of people are my enemy. The list could be endless. I’ve pulled off loads of deals of the same ilk, Ciara.”

“What was the story about? Out of interest…”

“Wexler was part of a club in his university days… a club which invited members to join if they passed initiation exercises… including sleeping with a married woman, spreading cum on a professor’s sandwich and other things, but most notably, experimenting with Class A drugs and partaking in orgies.”

“Oh god.”

“There was a big chance Wexler was involved. He was rumoured to be a part of the club and someone out there had a rap sheet of the tests members had to pass. With no photographic evidence of him carrying out or passing his initiation, only hearsay and a ledger of his membership fees paid… you’d think he would be safe from recrimination, but people in politics can’t afford to air their laundry, it’s why there are people like me.”

I stroked my hands through his chest hair and looked up into his eyes. “Surely anyone you’ve crossed would try to destroy your business, not steal it? I know how long and hard you all work… it’s not easy work, is it?”

“Unless the thief knew there was just one client on the list so high-profile, having just that asset alone would be worth all this hassle.”

“Roman Sinclair, of course.” This all started because of Roman Sinclair and his huge, record-breaking deal.

“Who knows about us and Paris?” I asked, going onto my next line of questioning.

“Only Sexton… and the reason you always travelled alone in the past on the Eurostar while I flew was because my flight paths are always doctored. Nobody knew I was meeting you in Paris all those weekends, it’s why I felt much safer with you there.”  

“I see.” I snuggled into his arms tighter and took a deep breath. “Where are we going to hide?”

“We’re not, Ciara. We’re not going to hide.”

“But you said…”

“Go back to sleep, I’ll tell you the rest in the morning.”

WITH our room service breakfast spread across the bed, both of us wearing the provided hotel robes, he said, “Now, do you promise not to get angry with me?”

Dante knew I had a fiery, Irish temper. He’d witnessed it the night I cut open my arm. A white scar still laid there on my arm, yet to disappear – a constant reminder of what made him realise how desperate to be in his life I was.

“How can I promise anything when I don’t know what you’re going to say… neither of us can know how I’m going to react, Dante.”

He took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving out a long sigh. “Six years ago I took you out of that dominatrix den, but you weren’t the first girl I found like that.”

He avoided my eyes and I already didn’t like what he was saying because him avoiding my eyes meant he was trying to conceal his shame.

“What?”

“It’s a long story.”

I tried to slow my heart by taking deep breaths but it wasn’t working. “Sounds like you should have told me all this ages ago and now it’s going to hit like a sledgehammer, isn’t it?”

“Depends on your outlook, I suppose.”

I glared. “Don’t use that tone with me, you know you’ve done something wrong. Look, it’s in your whole demeanour.”

He sat still, facing away from me. I couldn’t digest what he was saying. Was I just one on a long list of sordid conquests? I didn’t… couldn’t comprehend not being special to him.

“It was different with you, Ciara. I swear. A few hours spent with you and I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else touching you. I never put any of the others up in a house… never gave them my fidelity. At the same time, I was ashamed and feared you’d be disgusted by all my secrets… and I… I was scared I’d lose you. It’s why I kept you at a distance for so long. Not only was our arrangement so enjoyable and consuming but it kept my secrets at bay, too.”

“The longer you refrain from telling me the whole truth, the angrier I will become.”

He tried to touch me and I flinched right away from him, moving off the bed to walk around.

“Okay. I told you about Lord Barlow? You remember?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Go on.”

“Part of his will included inheriting his business. It’s been in the family for almost a century, an age-old business which services many of London’s elite.”

“You mean, prostitutes?”

“No.”

“Then, what?” I asked, sounding angry, biting my nails – a filthy habit of mine he was always telling me off for.

“It would be much simpler to show you.”

“I don’t want to know. I already hate everything you’re saying.”

“I understand, but to inherit the money, I had to promise to keep the business alive too. It’s part of the bargain. I never would’ve been able to buy Dad out without Barlow’s money.”

“So that’s why your father hates you,” I retorted, “because you got all this ill-gotten money from his brother-in-law and then stole his legitimate business out from under him?”

Dante stood and appeared enraged, holding a pointed finger at nobody. “My father drinks. He drinks more because of Daltrey, but he has always drunk too much. I did him a favour. The people now running Import Clothes are doing a better job than he ever did. I have always been the best at sourcing people.”

I bowed, with a sneering smile. “Why, thank you.”

“Ciara, don’t,” he sighed.

“Well you’re taking your time to get to the point–”

“It’s an underground club, top secret, for the elite men of London. It’s like Cohésion but men can choose how they want to be dominated; it’s a place for them to lose their inhibitions and keep their sanity. It’s different, it’s ordered, it’s regimented. There are rules.”

“Rules, hmm? Now I understand. You inherited a BDSM club… you live and breathe the lifestyle. Well, fuck you.”

“Don’t say that–”

I was mostly angry he’d kept this from me.

“So the men get all their vile fantasies fulfilled, yes? Whatever they ask–”

“Yes!”

I sat myself down slowly, lowering onto the mattress. “You recruited girls like me for this club of yours?”

“I did. Except I wanted you just for myself.”

“What sort of life do they have?”

“The best life.”

“I need to see it.”

“I was hoping you would agree. It won’t seem as bad then.”

He tried to move towards me but I shook my head, turning my back on him to look out of the hotel room windows. I couldn’t bear to have his hands on me, not right then.

“Just say what you’ve got to say, Dante.”

“Ciara, promise not to get mad.”

“I can’t promise that! Stop asking me!” I flung around to look at him and he was biting his nails, something he never, ever did.

“As well as Teddy, Sexton and my parents, there’s one other person in my life that knows I do this.”

“Who?”

“A woman.”

I sniffed, not surprised in the least. “What’s her name?”

“Shay Lawrence. She runs my other business and has run it for over twenty years. She ran it when Barlow was still alive.”

Shaking my head, disdain leaked from my tongue with the words, “An older woman.”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s not. You ditched her, obviously.”

“It wasn’t like that. She was a friend and then… Daltrey died. I was good for nobody.”

“So what does this mean?” I really hated when he didn’t get straight to the point.

“She runs the club and Teddy is a member of my club. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Pressing fingers to my temples, I demanded, “Just say it.”

“I could plant you in there. Concoct some story. You could… scope the possibility it was one of them.”

“How do we know they’ll spill the beans? That’s if there are any beans to spill.”

“I don’t know. I only know that placing you inside my club might be the safest thing for the both of us right now. With your picture kept out of the press, how will they know who you are? Cleo Patrick is a nobody. They’ll never find anything on you. I made sure of that. I’ve never told anyone about you, I swear. Nobody but Sexton knew about you for six years, until you arrived in Elstree.”