Angel Of Darkness

She was paralysed, her heartbeat quickening, colour flooding her translucent skin and then slowly, painfully draining away again to leave her paper-white. Chillingly dark eyes cut into her like grappling hooks in search of choice and tender flesh. Every tiny muscle in her tensed body jerked tight as she braced herself for attack.

‘I presume you do intend to speak, Kelda.’ The smooth, cultured drawl sliced through the thickening atmosphere and clawed nasty vibrations of threat down her sensitive spine. He was like a sleek, terrifyingly dangerous black panther about to strike.

‘Did you hear someone speak?’ she asked Jeff, planting a trembling hand on his arm. ‘I didn’t.’

She swept past Angelo and his dainty little blonde sidekick with inches to spare and her classic nose as high in the air as she could hold it.

‘Do you realise who that was?’ Jeff bleated in her ear.

‘Once upon a time, my mother was married to his father. That creep was my stepbrother. And we didn’t part on such terms that I feel I have to notice him in public.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother had been married to Tomaso Rossetti?’

Jeff was so helplessly impressed by anyone whose bank balance was greater than his father’s. ‘It wasn’t important.’

‘You just cut Angelo Rossetti dead,’ Jeff groaned. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

Sitting down, Kelda fought to still the nervous tremors still rippling through her. ‘He told me once that I had the manners of a slum child. He ought to be pleased to see how well I’ve turned out.’

Shock seemed to have sobered Jeff up. ‘My father’s into the Rossetti Bank to the tune of a million and we’re looking for an extension on the loan. I was so shattered by what you did out there, I didn’t speak either.’ Abruptly, he bolted upright again. ‘I’d better go and apologise.’

Her temples were throbbing. ‘I’m sorry...I didn’t intend to involve you—’

‘My God, you must have a death wish!’ Jeff muttered. ‘Nobody treats Angelo Rossetti like that and gets away with it.’

‘I think you’ll find that I have,’ Kelda asserted with more confidence than she actually felt.

She had gone too far. Temper and other emotions that she had no desire to examine had taken over. Did she never learn? Angelo taunted her and she still went for the bait. The teenage years might be behind her but evidently the responses weren’t. Only she could know the depth of the bitter mortification which overwhelmed her in Angelo’s radius. Nothing had changed.

Absolutely nothing had changed. In one glance she had learnt that. Angelo had stared her down with freezing hauteur and distaste. The dust beneath his feet would have inspired less repugnance. Of course he hadn’t seen her since that night...not once, not even briefly. He had gone abroad and shortly after that their parents had parted. She shuddered under the onslaught of a mess of confused emotions, none of which was pleasant.

Tonight she had reacted in self-defence as she had so often in the past. ‘Hit and run’ best summed it up, she conceded shamefacedly. If she hadn’t got away immediately, her control would have splintered and he would have seen that, caught unprepared, she was vulnerable. Naturally his hostility would be on a high again at the prospect of her re-entering the family circle with her slum-child manners and her legendary promiscuity.

But this time Angelo had been ahead of her. This time he was isolating her. She recognised the subtle brilliance of Angelo’s manipulation of her mother and her brother. How come they didn’t see it? Frankly, Tim was pleased at the idea of being part of the Rossetti clan again. Tim was always broke, always in debt. Tomaso was open-handed with money.

And Tim, like her mother, had always walked in awe of Angelo. Angelo was so clever that he had finished university in his teens. Angelo spoke half a dozen languages with the sort of fluency that made lesser mortals cringe. Angelo was so dazzlingly successful in the field of international finance that he was currently being tipped to become the youngest ever chief executive of Rossetti Industrial. Tongues that had dared to talk of nepotism had long since been silenced. Everything Angelo touched turned to gold. His opinions were quoted in the serious newspapers. Tomaso thought his son literally walked on water.

‘I must say that he was very gracious about it.’ Jeff reappeared, exuding an air of strong relief. ‘He’s asked us to join their table.’

Kelda went rigid. ‘But what about your friends?’

Jeff grimaced. ‘Don’t be so naïve, Kelda. You get an invite like that from Angelo Rossetti and you grab it. He’s got influence like you wouldn’t believe in all sorts of powerful corners—’

‘I’m sorry. I have a dreadful headache.’ Kelda stood up, her face a mask of disdain. ‘You can call a cab for me if you like—’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘Kelda...’

She was immovable. Catch her falling for a trick like that? No way would she give Angelo the opportunity to put her down in front of an audience. He excelled in that direction. Time was when she wouldn’t have had the wit to forestall him...time was when she would have waded in with both fists metaphorically flying, unconcerned by the presence of others. Suddenly she was unbelievably grateful to be a mature twenty-four, rather than an insecure, dreadfully unhappy teenager, trying to act older than she was.

Jeff was furious. She was wryly amused at the way the prospect of making an influential contact had cleared his wits and turned him off his previous insistence that he loved her and wanted to marry her. Insisting that he go and find his friends, she went home alone.

Switching on the lights in the lounge, she kicked off her shoes and switched on her answering machine. Nothing. Once there would have been at least a couple of messages. Not now...she was yesterday’s news. The Iceberg, who drove innocent married men to suicide. Her apartment would sell for far less than she had paid for it. Her bank balance was at an all-time low. She had had insurance for accident or injury but nothing to cover what amounted to being virtually unemployable. The media had turned her into a figure of hate. There had been plenty of pictures of Danny’s tear-stained, plain little wife. The wife that Kelda had not even known existed, living in the country as she did with their two young children while Danny had lived the life of a free and easy single man in the city during the week.

He had actually told Kelda that he went home most weekends to his elderly parents! With a sudden choked sound between a laugh and a sob, Kelda covered her working face with two unsteady hands. How could she have been so stupid? And how could Danny have told so many lies? For the money, she thought cynically. The true story would have made surpassingly unexciting reading. Danny had made her look like a vicious bitch, who used men up like tissues and threw them away when she got bored. And the truth...really the truth was far more pathetic, she reflected.

Here she was all dressed up in the proverbial sexy little black dress which showed off her perfect curves and endless legs and what was she, she asked herself painfully as she stared at her reflection in one of the mirrored wardrobes in her bedroom. A complete fraud! Less of a woman certainly than Danny’s poor little wife, who loved him and had borne his children and who had apparently been willing to forgive and forget from the instant he landed in that hospital bed!

What did it feel like to love like that? She couldn’t imagine it...she had never loved, only once experienced the devastation of desire...and that she never ever allowed herself to remember. It had hurt so much and so badly; she had been savaged by her own vulnerability. Deep down inside the pain was still there like an indoor alarm system. A man put his arms around her and if she felt anything at all, the alarm went off. If he makes me want him...what then? And she would go cold, inside and out.

The intercom buzzed beside the front door. It was two in the morning. With a crease between her brows, she pressed the button.

‘Angelo here...’

Kelda’s stomach clenched fearfully. She leapt back a step.

‘Go away!’ she shouted.

She heard muffled speech as if he had turned to speak to someone else.

‘Calm down, cara,’ Angelo purred.

Her lashes blinking in bemusement at the smooth endearment, Kelda let rip again, something terrifyingly akin to hysteria audible even to herself in her shrieked response. ‘Leave me alone!’

She walked away from the front door, breathing fast, and backed into the lounge where she sat down on the sofa and wrapped both arms round herself tightly. She had had a lousy evening, a lousy week, a lousy month come to that. She was not in the mood for a fight with Angelo. Dimly she had known that it would come, but she hadn’t been prepared for it to happen so soon.

It was with utter disbelief that she heard her front door open. She lurched bolt upright in genuine fear, cursing herself for not using the chain.

‘Do you think I should call a doctor, Mr Rossetti?’ a vaguely familiar male voice enquired. It was the night security guard.

‘No...I don’t think that will be necessary now that I am here. Thank you again.’

‘It’s a pleasure to be of service, Mr Rossetti.’

She heard the crackle of money changing hands and she still couldn’t move or react. She couldn’t believe that Angelo had somehow contrived to break into her very secure apartment with the assistance of the guard.

Angelo appeared in the doorway.

‘If you don’t g-get out, I’ll call the police!’ Kelda screeched at him.

CHAPTER TWO

KELDA had blocked Angelo out in the foyer of the nightclub. She had seen him and yet she hadn’t seen him. Her eyes had skipped off him again double quick, discarding the imagery as if it burned. And it did...it did. Angelo was drop-dead gorgeous.

‘My, but you’re pretty,’ she had trilled the very first time she met him at the age of thirteen, derisively scanning the near-classic perfection of his golden features and the lean, lithe perfectly balanced body that went with it. Amazingly, Tomaso had laughed. Angelo hadn’t.

And then as now, Kelda had somehow found herself still staring, after the laughter had died away. He had the slashing cheekbones of a Tartar prince, long-lashed, brilliant dark eyes and a strong aristocratic nose. The whole effect was sexually devastating. She hadn’t known what made him so disturbing when she was thirteen...but she did now.

Angelo was sinfully, scorchingly sexy. It hit the unwary like a forcefield of raw energy. The very air seemed to sizzle round Angelo and when you reached a certain age, she acknowledged, that certain age when you often embarrassed yourself with your own thoughts, you would look at a male like Angelo and find yourself quite unable to avoid wondering what he was like in bed...

A little voice inside Kelda’s head cruelly reminded her that she was not entirely unaware of what Angelo was like in bed...and instantaneously a wave of mortified heat engulfed her translucent skin. It was hardly surprising that such painful imagery should visit her now. This was the first time they had stood face to face since that ghastly, unforgettable night over six years ago.

‘The police,’ Angelo reminded her with satire. ‘Weren’t you about to call them? Or have you decided that you really can’t afford the publicity?’

As Kelda’s teeth gritted, she made a swift recovery from her unfortunate loss of concentration. ‘How did you persuade the guard to let you in here?

‘I told him you were suicidal,’ Angelo drawled softly. ‘And you probably will be by the time I’m finished with you.’

‘Get out!’ Kelda gasped. ‘Get out of my apartment!’

‘It’s not going to be your apartment for much longer.’ Angelo cast her a veiled glance of cruel amusement. ‘In the current market, I suspect you are about to suffer from a severe negative equity problem...the sale price is not going to wipe out the mortgage debt—’

‘Damn, you to hell!’ Kelda interrupted tremulously. ‘I know what negative equity is. I’m not stupid—’

‘You just didn’t manage to pass a single exam in all those years of expensive education,’ he inserted.

‘I’m thick,’ Kelda responded through clenched teeth, refusing to rise to the bait.

‘Surpassingly so,’ Angelo agreed. ‘If you had listened to me, you could have had the modelling career and the education to fall back on. As it is, you have neither—’

‘I can’t believe you actually came here just to crow!’ Kelda blistered back.

‘I want you to understand your present position,’ Angelo breathed almost conversationally. ‘If you think that your future is on the skids now, you’re wrong. Life could become so much more painful... with a little help from me.’

The assurance hung there in the pulsing air between them and her blood ran cold in her veins. She cleared her throat. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Surprised?’ Angelo sank down with innate grace into a wing-backed armchair and surveyed her with total cool. ‘I have no intention of allowing you to come between my father and your mother a second time...’

Her tongue snaked out to wet her dry lips. ‘A second time?’

‘You put considerable stress on their relationship six years ago—’

Rigid with incredulity, Kelda spat, ‘That’s a filthy thing to say!’

‘But true, and this time matters were proceeding smoothly until once again you intervened—’

Kelda was shaking. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

A satiric brow climbed. ‘Last night, Daisy asked my father to give her more time to consider his proposal, and we both know why, don’t we?’

Kelda thrust up her chin. ‘Naturally she wants to think it over very carefully. You can’t blame me for that. For goodness’ sake, she divorced him five years ago!’

‘You selfish little bitch,’ Angelo murmured with a softness that was all the more chilling than a rise in volume. ‘Daisy didn’t have any reservations until after she saw you yesterday!’

Kelda stiffened, colour flying into her cheeks. Derisive dark eyes raked over her, absorbing her sudden tension.

‘She’s afraid of losing her daughter, would you believe?’ Angelo drawled. ‘Family ties are very important to Daisy. What the hell did you say to her?’

‘Nothing that I wouldn’t say again!’ Kelda slung defiantly, although the ache of tears threatened behind her eyelids. ‘And if she is having second thoughts, don’t lay them all at my door. Your father wasn’t exactly Mr Fidelity the first time around and maybe she suspects that!’

Angelo’s striking bone-structure clenched hard. ‘I told you that there was absolutely no truth in those allegations years ago,’ he grated with savage emphasis. ‘And if you have repeated those same lies to Daisy, I’ll break every bone in your poisonously vindictive little body!’

Shocked by the depth of his anger, Kelda paled and drew back a step, but she was outraged by his treatment. No, she had no concrete proof to offer her mother on the subject of Tomaso’s adulterous affair but, the year before their parents had separated, Kelda had flung that allegation at Angelo.

And for a fraction of a second Angelo’s expression had one hundred percent convinced her that he knew exactly what she was talking about and that he was well aware of his father’s extra-marital relationship with another woman. Kelda had taken him by surprise and his complete denial of that relationship had come just that little bit too late to be plausible.

Angelo had known all right. And no doubt, Angelo hadn’t seen anything the slightest bit immoral in Tomaso’s behaviour. In his world, married men with mistresses were far from unusual. But that same knowledge would have destroyed her mother. Now, Kelda found herself wondering if indeed her mother had at least suspected Tomaso of having another woman. It was quite possible that Daisy would have kept that information to herself, rather than share it with her teenage daughter.

‘What did you tell her?’ Angelo demanded ferociously.

‘I told her nothing...not that that is any of your business,’ Kelda stressed.

‘When my father’s happiness is at stake, it is my business.’

‘I doubt if he’d thank you for your interference...and if my mother knew that you were here threatening me like this—’

‘Are you planning to tell her?’ Angelo had the stillness of a jungle cat about to spring.

Kelda wouldn’t have dreamt of telling Daisy, but she was furiously angry and she lifted a bare pale shoulder in a deliberately provocative gesture. ‘I might...on the other hand I might not,’ she said sweetly, incandescent green eyes flaming at him. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you, Angelo?’

He had gone satisfyingly white beneath his bronzed skin, his facial bones harshly set. Kelda smiled, widely, brilliantly, smugly. It really had been very foolish of Angelo to come here and threaten her. Astoundingly foolish...astoundingly out of character for so noted a tactician. One lean brown hand was curled into his fist and without warning he stood up again.

‘I came here tonight to appeal to your better nature—’

‘I haven’t got one, Angelo...not where you’re concerned,’ she said shakily but truthfully.

‘I could break you with one hand,’ Angelo savoured, eyes as treacherous as black ice on a wintry night, fixed to her with savage intensity. ‘And I will...I don’t mind waiting a little while...a very little while. And while I’m waiting, you’ll be waiting too...’

Icy fingers were walking up her unbelievably taut backbone. Angelo hated her, he really did hate her. And she knew why. It lay unspoken between them, untouched but raw. She shivered, no longer able to meet that hard, dark scrutiny. Had she gone overboard? Should she for once have kept her mouth shut? But why should she stand and take abuse from Angelo?

Her front door shut with a soft click. Shaking all over now, released from the spell he always cast, Kelda collapsed down into the nearest seat. She felt sick. He had called her poisonous, vindictive, and yet all she wanted was her mother’s happiness. Had it been selfish to make it clear that if Daisy married Tomaso again she was unlikely to see so much of her adored daughter?

But hadn’t that only been the truth? She couldn’t stand Angelo, and the savage hostility between them would be painfully obvious to both their parents. It would hardly add to connubial bliss, so naturally her contact with her mother would have to take place only when Angelo was elsewhere. Was that her fault? Was that so horribly selfish of her? Tears lashed her eyelids in a scorching surge. The memories were coming back...

Yes, she had bitterly resented her mother’s remarriage all those years ago. Had she had a chance to get to know Tomaso in advance, had she even known of his existence, maybe she would have reacted differently.

The sudden material change in their lifestyle hadn’t helped. Kelda had been parcelled off to an exclusive boarding school where her accent had provoked her classmates to pitying laughter. Her friends, her great-aunt, everything that had given her security had been wrenched away all at once. Instead of seeing more of her mother, she had actually seen less of her. Was it really any wonder that she had found it so hard to adapt?

The worst shock had been the discovery that, when their parents were abroad, Angelo was expected to take responsibility for her. Angelo ruled with an iron rod. When she was expelled from that first school for going ‘over the wall’ one night on a dare, it had been Angelo who took charge and reinstalled her in a convent day school with more rules and regulations than Holloway. It had been Angelo who took her apart when she failed her exams, Angelo who forced her to spend several fruitless vacations swotting with private tutors as bored and fed up as she was.

Tomaso had seemed to find his son’s assumption of authority amusing. When he was around, which had been rarely, he hadn’t interfered. Her mother had had a tendency to slip out of the room when Kelda appealed to her for back-up. Defying Angelo to her last gasp, Kelda had refused to work. She had frequently been in trouble at school but she hadn’t cared because for the first time in her life she had been really popular.

At sixteen, Angelo had trailed her screeching out of her first boyfriend’s car. She had sneaked out on the date, conscious that her mother would think that Josh at twenty-two was too old for her. The evening had been spent at a ten-pin bowling alley...nothing could have been more innocuous. Josh had parked his car a hundred yards before the entrance of the house on the way back. He had been on the brink of giving her a kiss...only on the brink, mind you, when all of a sudden the door was wrenched open and she was forcibly hauled out of Josh’s reach by Angelo.

‘Approach her again and I’ll break every one of your fingers,’ he had told Josh with a chilling smile. That had been the end of that, and the word had gone out on her locally. Josh had talked. Date Kelda and you tangled with Angelo Rossetti. Not surprisingly, it had destroyed her social life. Even her girlfriends had laughed and, not content with humiliating her, Angelo had told Tomaso and Daisy, ensuring that what little freedom she had had was even more severely curtailed. He had made Josh sound like a potential rapist.

Was it any wonder that she had hated Angelo? Even now, it still stuck in her throat that she had had to endure all those years of Angelo’s moralising lectures. What about his own reputation?

From birth, he had made headlines. When Tomaso and his far richer Brazilian wife had split up, Angelo had been the most fought-over little boy in the Western world. Tomaso had lost, but when his ex-wife died he had fought for custody again, this time against Angelo’s grandmother. Tomaso had won the final battle, but he hadn’t managed to subdue the explosive temperament that powered his son.

Angelo’s teenage exploits had shocked Europe. At the age of eighteen, he had inherited his late mother’s millions, and for several years afterwards he had run wild. He had lived the self-indulgent life of the super-rich playboy. His insatiable appetite for beautiful women had been notorious. His sex-life might have become considerably more discreet over the last decade but husbands still paled in Angelo’s vicinity.

As her mind threatened to leap forward to her eighteenth birthday, Kelda tensed and stopped her recollections stone dead in their tracks. She went to bed, suppressing all thoughts on the subject of Angelo’s threats...after all, what could he possibly do to her?

Dawn was lightening the sky beyond the curtains when she woke up, shivering and perspiring, an hour later. She had been wrestling with the duvet, probably crying out. The fear was still with her even in the light of day. The nightmare had been so real.

Getting up, she poured herself a glass of mineral water in the kitchen. On wobbly legs, she sank down at the breakfast-bar and stared into space. She had been allowed to throw a party to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Owing to her exams, the party had been held several months after her actual birthday. There had been two events to celebrate. Her birthday and the end of her schooldays. Daisy and Tomaso had gone out for the evening but naturally Angelo had had no such tact. Strange to think that some hours after that wretched party had started she had been desperately, pathetically grateful that Angelo had stayed home.

Before the party had started, Angelo had staggered her by complimenting her on her appearance. Ignoring her dropped jaw and looking oddly self-conscious, he had then taken himself off to his suite of rooms on the far side of the house. He had just come home after a long period working abroad and it must have been almost a year since she had seen him. After that astonishing compliment, she had actually wondered if her stormy relationship with Angelo was miraculously about to improve with his acceptance that she was now an adult.