gambling and alcohol addictions before they’d boarded the flight. And so Vegas had not quite turned out to be the fresh start Charlene O’Connor had hoped for. She soon found herself stuck in a cramped prefab on the wrong side of the Strip, working the dive bars, only for Ray to drink and gamble away her earnings. Life was no different from how it had been in London; in fact it was worse. And then of course there was Ray’s son, Ellie’s new surrogate step-brother. His name was Tom. Tom Black.
*
With the traffic finally dispersing, Ellie looked down at her YSL python hobo bag on the passenger seat and chewed her glossy lip tremulously. Unzipping the inside pocket, she glanced at the small newspaper cutting she had kept of Loretta and her surgeon husband, with mixed emotions. She was still debating whether or not to show Vin. She knew it would only resurrect terrible memories for both of them and she had no desire to spoil the evening they had planned. But she didn’t like to keep secrets from her husband. All those years ago, she had made a promise she intended to keep; one where she swore she would always tell the truth, no matter what. She owed him that much. Truth was, she owed him everything.
Pulling up outside the Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon restaurant in Covent Garden, Wesley switched off the engine.
‘Mrs Scott,’ he gave an impeccably gracious nod as he opened the car door.
Ellie momentarily stared at the grainy image of Loretta Fiorentino – a woman who had inadvertently changed the course of her life – before screwing it up into a tiny ball and dropping it into the gutter as she stepped from the Bentley.
As far as she was concerned, it was the best place for it.
CHAPTER 6
Ibiza. A hedonist’s paradise; a twenty-four-seven party island where the young and beautiful flocked in search of sex, drugs and debauchery. The kind of decadent place where anything went. The kind of place Tess Scott had been looking for.
Tess grinned enthusiastically as she looked out into the busy crowd of party-goers; topless girls parading around in outrageous costumes that barely covered their modesty, half-naked bodies drenched in sweat writhing up against each other, painted faces gurning in time to the relentless beat …
‘Makes Boujis look like Sunday school,’ she remarked to Allegra, as a dancer wearing gold pasties on her nipples and an enormous feathered headdress shimmied past. Allegra raised an eyebrow and they both collapsed into a fit of giggles. Tess had heard that some pretty risqué stuff went down in Ibiza; live sex shows, boat parties that turned into all-night debauched drug orgies, and frankly she couldn’t wait to discover whether the rumours were true. She was so over the whole London Sloane scene; there had to be more to life than getting trashed on Treasure Chests in Mahiki on a Friday night. Besides, right now, the further she was away from London the better. Her parents were practically suffocating her, trying to run, and ultimately ruin, her life by insisting she finish her A-Levels before going off to university, Oxford ideally. Just the thought of it bummed her out big time. Fact was, she had absolutely no intention whatsoever of attending university, Oxford or otherwise. After all, her family were loaded, like, seriously stacked. It wasn’t as if she needed to work, at least, not right now. Right now, she just wanted to have fun while she was young and free of responsibilities. Ultimately she would eventually settle down and marry someone rich or famous anyway. Then she’d knock out a couple of sprogs and no doubt end up having to sacrifice whatever career she’d carved out for herself, rendering all those years of studying a complete and utter waste of time and effort. That’s not to say that she lacked ambition; quite the contrary, just not the kind her parents approved of. Being famous; that’s what Tess Scott aspired to. She was already fairly illustrious among the cliquey West London party set as it was, but now she wanted to cast the net a little wider, and the idea of having her every move documented by the likes of Heat and HELLO! magazine was the pinnacle of such aspirations.
‘Come on, babes,’ Tess grabbed Allegra’s arm, forcibly pulling her in the direction of the stage, where two go-go dancers were spinning tricks on the poles. ‘Let’s show these amateur bitches how it’s really done.’
The MTV party was in full swing now, sweat-drenched bodies bouncing and moving in unison as if they all shared the same heartbeat. Tess, looking every inch the rich, beautiful socialite that she was, jumped up onto the stage and started writhing provocatively around the pole to a pumping Rhianna and Drake remix. As she wrapped herself around the pole, indulging the rampant exhibitionist within her, she felt an intense pair of eyes upon her and was pleased to note that they belonged to an attractive looking dark-haired dude, standing left of the stage, sipping champagne. Conscious of his lingering eyes burning holes in her skin, she ramped up the raunch factor another notch, furiously snaking and gyrating her hips, shaking her tight little booty in an over-exaggerated manner that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a particularly salacious gangsta rapper’s promo.
Like what you see, huh babes? Well, get a load of this!
‘Shit, girl,’ Allegra said, wide-eyed, as Tess, pumped up on adrenaline, jumped off the stage, her curtain of lustrous honey-blonde hair swishing behind her. ‘When did you learn to pole dance?’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, babes,’ Tess shot back cryptically.
‘Another mojito?’ Allegra shook her glass.
‘You really need to ask?’
Making her way to the bar, Allegra Kennedy-Ling attempted to suppress a slight pang of jealousy. Tess Scott was her best friend; she had known her since junior school and they had practically grown up together, but she was also an insufferable show-off, made worse by the fact that whatever she seemed to put her mind to she excelled at. Tess’s recent appearance in Tatler magazine had launched her already sizeable ego into a whole new stratosphere and had seen her swanning around London as if she were the Next Big Thing.
‘How come she gets her mugshot in Tats?’ Calista Clinton, a mutual ‘friend’ had remarked sourly, poring over Tess’s pictorial debut in the fashionable society glossy one afternoon over a skinny soya latte in Shoreditch House.
‘She probably blew the photographer,’ Poppy Fox had chipped in, somewhat uncharitably, given her own dubious reputation.
‘Who hasn’t she blown?’ Calista rolled her eyes, dunking her biscotti in her froth and simulating a blow job with it. They had all collapsed into fits of giggles, Allegra included, if a little sheepishly.
‘Pretty impressive stuff,’ the dark-haired guy approached Tess with a raised eyebrow and a smile, handing her a glass of champagne, which she took with a breathtaking sense of entitlement. She raised her glass, automatically slipping into flirt mode. The dude was older, but he was still pretty hot.
‘Where’d you learn to dance like that?’ he fixed her eyes with his own just long enough to build a flicker of tension between them.
Tess gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘It’s in the genes.’
She was pleased with this response; she thought it made her sound sexy and mysterious.
The stranger held his hand out. ‘Marco. Marco DiMari.’
‘Tess.’ She shook it vigorously. Daddy had once told her that a person’s handshake was indicative of their personality; Marco’s was hard and fast – promising. On closer inspection he didn’t disappoint either, even if Tess did suspect that he was the wrong side of thirty. Tall and dark, he had a well-defined jawline complete with designer five o’clock shadow and an ice-white smile that appeared almost luminous under the fluorescent lighting of the club. The shirt was expensive, definitely Prada, and the cufflinks real diamond. She had seen enough up close in her life to be able to tell the difference.
‘So, you’re Italian?’
‘Si,’ he grinned. ‘You like Italian men?’
‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’