Leave the place where his wife had given him his only son, and in doing so had perished in childbirth? Leave the place where, twenty years later, Grigori had flung himself from the Great Hall mezzanine and splatted to his death? The ghosts here needed him. He needed them.
They were all he had left. His family.
After all, it was Voldan’s own fault he was in this state. After Grigori died, there had been nothing to live for. His purpose had evaporated. His heart had ripped. He had attempted to follow in his son’s footsteps and the results had been disastrous.
Deformed like a monster. Paralysed like a corpse.
And now he was trapped in this devil-sent machine, left with the use of only the thumb on his right hand. He was unable to speak save for a croaking voice box.
From the turret Voldan could see woodland, a blanket of green that stretched to the horizon. Grigori had returned here during the last few months of his life, scarcely leaving his room, refusing to eat or drink or accept visitors.
‘I am a failure, Father,’ was all he would say. ‘I do not deserve to live.’
Voldan’s thumb twitched on the arm of his wheelchair. When he thought of his son he was filled to the brim with a restless injustice. He had been robbed.
Turning to go, he almost didn’t see it. From darkness, a glimmer of light …
Voldan looked, and looked again.
If the wheelchair hadn’t become stuck in the groove between two floorboards, he might never have found it. ‘Janika!’ he yelled—at least it felt like a yell, even if it did come out in that wretched, miserable, bionic drone. ‘Janika!’
‘I am here, Mr Cane!’ The maid came rushing up the stairs. She was middle-aged, with a frizz of mouse-brown hair, a flaccid chin and a sagging bosom. Seeing him stranded lopsided in the furrow, she hurried over, flapping her arms like the wings on a nesting turkey. ‘Oh, Mr Cane,’ she cooed, righting him. ‘What happened?’
The floorboard was loose. Voldan felt it give beneath the wheel. That was what had caught him. The monotone was back:
‘There is something under the floor,’ he said, the words betraying none of his excitement. He had thought he knew every inch of his son’s domain, but no, here was more. Something Grigori had tucked away, kept to himself, a parting secret.
Something he had wished his father to find.
Janika removed the floorboard with a sturdy grunt. Inside was a wooden box.
‘Lift it,’ Voldan demanded. Janika did as she was told. ‘Open it.’
Darkness fell across the turret window. Clouds brooded and in the distance came the first rumble of thunder. The lid prised open.
Janika tilted the box so that Voldan could see its contents.
He didn’t understand. ‘Who are they?’
Janika removed one of the photographs. It was a picture of a woman. Across her face was streaked a giant red cross. The red was smeared, turning to brown.
Blood?
The maid extracted another. This one was a boy. It bore the same red mark.
Angela Silvers and Kevin Chase. What had they to do with his son?
‘The rest,’ instructed Voldan electronically. ‘Empty the rest.’
There were five more: seven in total.
Journalist Eve Harley … Model Tawny Lascelles … Investor Jacob Lyle … Senator Mitch Corrigan … and Celeste Cavalieri, the jeweller.
All defaced by that same blood cross: the mark of Grigori’s plague.
‘What is this, Mr Cane?’ Janika whispered.
Voldan’s eyes hardened. On the back of each photograph was scrawled a single word. BITCH. LIAR. THIEF. FRAUD.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, already tasting on the tip of his tongue the sweet, sticky nectar of revenge. ‘But I intend to find out.’
Las Vegas
‘Angela Silvers! Just as pretty as I remember, hey, Don?’
Carmine Zenetti, casino boss and hotel magnate extraordinaire, greeted them in his palatial office above the Parisian. Angela remembered him from her childhood—a squat, stout man with a black monobrow and hands like bear paws. She knew her father hated being called Don. Her father knew she hated every minute of being here.
‘No need to remind me,’ Donald said amiably, as he accepted a cognac and they were encouraged to sit. The panorama looked out on the dazzling Strip, where in the spring sunshine tourists milled amid the peaks and spires of the replica city. Giant billboards screamed news of the hottest show in town while glittering hotels ushered through the next bout of spenders. The air was charged with the sharp tang of money.
Angela refused her drink. She had no appetite. Since her father’s revelation in Boston, she had barely let a thing pass her lips.
‘I gotta say, I’m glad you finally came around.’ Carmine smiled fatly. ‘All these years there I was thinkin’ we were meant to be, but you had me wondering there for a time …’ Carmine waggled a heavily jewelled finger at her father, one of a handful of people in the world who was permitted to do so, and chuckled. ‘But now you see it makes the best kind of sense. Zenetti and Silvers, united for the future.’
Angela clenched her fists in her lap.
‘But hey,’ went on Carmine, eagerly rubbing his palms, ‘what are we waiting for? I know the guy you’ve really come to see.’
Another, younger, man stepped into the room.
‘Meet Dino, my eldest.’ Carmine clapped him on the back. ‘Dino, you remember Don Silvers … and this, of course, is the gorgeous Angela.’
There was a long silence.
Dino was like something out of a catalogue—coffee hair, twinkling eyes, and a stacked body that was suited to perfection. He was an ad for mob fashion, gold rings glinting on his fingers, collar crisp, jacket pressed. Angela guessed he was in his thirties, indisputably handsome but so far from her type that even in a radically different context she could never have considered him a match.
It didn’t matter who Dino Zenetti was. He wasn’t Noah.
Her heart sank. How am I going to tell him?
She played out her defence, each claim more ridiculous than the last.
We can still see each other; it won’t change a thing. Dino means nothing to me. I’m doing it for the business, a transaction, no emotions, I swear …
Even Noah Lawson’s boundless patience wouldn’t stretch that far.
‘Aren’t you kids gonna say hello?’ Carmine boomed, breaking the tension with a guffaw. ‘I tell ya, Donnie, this is like being back in the sixth grade!’
‘Good to meet you,’ said Dino, in a gravelly husk. He put out his hand. Angela shook it. She said nothing. Every instinct recoiled. It wasn’t too late, she could still back out of this; she could still change her mind.
‘I guess you two’re gonna want to get t’know each other, huh?’ Carmine thrust a glass into his son’s hand and supplied a wink. Their conspiracy filled her with horror. She wanted to run, never stop and never look back, until she reached his arms.
If only that was all there was to it …
‘I want you to listen carefully,’ her father had said that