‘Why for god’s sake? You know he doesn’t even like me,’ I pleaded.
‘He’s the only one I can trust,’ Robert replied sadly.
Ivan De Greystoke
Mayfair, London
I killed the connection and stared out of the window. So: he was dead.
The man who had the thing I wanted for so long was dead. I tried to imagine her at Barrington Manor. She must be in the Yellow Room. That would have been where the doctor had waited. He
must have insulted her as he had been instructed to do. And yet her voice had been cool as if she was fucking giving me the weather forecast. I could almost picture her. Jeans. Blouse.
Her long blonde hair in a thick plait down her back. Her mouth: as if butter wouldn’t melt in it.
Little gold digging bitch.
I had a raging hard-on.
‘Ivan,’ Chloe called from the bedroom. Her voice lilting. She had not lied. She really was the hottest cocksucker this side of the Atlantic and I’ve had enough to know. I walked to the
bedroom.
She was lying on the bed with her legs spread open. She was the kind of girl that you could have done anything to. I walked up to her. She began to play with herself, slowly inserting
her finger into her hole.
Very nice.
‘Sit up,’ I told her.
She obeyed immediately.
‘Plait your hair into a rope down your back.’
‘I don’t have a tie, you dirty aristocrat you,’ she said flirtatiously.
I went to my wardrobe, extracted a random tie and threw it at her.
She began to plait her hair. She tied it as best she could with the tie.
‘On your hands and knees.’
She couldn’t wait to comply. The tight star of her ass was just begging to be filled. I grabbed the golden plait and pulled it hard. Her head jerked back. She moaned and wriggled her ass
invitingly.
Fucking gold digger you. Then I fucking raped her, Tawny. I mean Chloe.
Tawny Maxwell
Barrington Manor, Bedfordshire
I turned away from the phone and a bright shiny glint caught my eye.
The simple gold band on my finger.
I looked down at it and a distant memory tugged. I was only eighteen. Robert and I had flown to Vegas. We stayed in the most expensive hotels. We behaved like kids. Everybody – waiters,
people in shops, random people we met, all of them thought he was my father. Again and again we had to correct them. Then he produced this ring and we got married.
It was the most awful wedding you could imagine.
The only people in that chapel were the man officiating the wedding, a heavily made-up, relentlessly smiling woman who was supposed to be helping, and a sad looking man Robert had
dragged off the street and paid a hundred dollars to witness the ceremony. Even the kiss he gave me had been chaste.
Then we had both run out laughing.
Robert drove us in a brand new, baby blue Cadillac to the desert to see the sun setting. I had never seen such a blazingly red sun before. It was so beautiful I began to cry.
He put his finger under my chin. ‘I have a plan, Tawny. It’s a great plan. A long-term plan. But you must trust me. Even when it seems as if everything is nose-diving into the deep blue
sea you must trust that I know what I am doing.’
I didn’t know it then, but he was already very ill and he knew it.
‘All right,’ I whispered, and I meant it.
Even now, when it looked as if his plan had already nosedived into the deep blue sea, I still cling to the idea that his plan would work. That in the end my life would not be completely
ruined and the things we had done become all for nothing.
I touched the gold circle. It had become so loose it spun around my finger, only my knuckle kept it from falling away. I slid it off and let my fist close around it. I clutched it so
tightly the metal dug into my flesh.
The ring was warm, but he was gone. Irrevocably. Forever. I would never see him again. See his bright eyes and hear his cackling hyena laughter. I unclenched my fingers and looked at
metal lying in the middle of my palm.
In my head a voice taunted. ‘Lies, lies all of it.’
I put the ring back on my finger and closed my eyes with terrible pain in my heart.
The Funeral
CHAPTER 2
Lord Greystoke
In My Apartment
I stood in front of the mirror, pulled the knot on my black tie up towards my throat and ran a brush through my hair. It was Robert’s funeral today and I guessed I’d be rubbing shoulders
with his little widow.
I’m not a religious man, never have been, but when I first looked into Tawny Sinclair’s bottomless blue eyes I started praying.
Praying for my fun loving, whore of a dick.