and would have fallen if Nico hadn’t grasped her arm, but she shook him away with a gesture of bitter loathing, masking the pain aching through her, using the agony of his deception to transmute pain into anger.
Her low, husky, ‘Don’t touch me,’ vibrated with horror and despair, and again the girl laughed mockingly. ‘Ah, Nico,’ she said contemptuously, ‘you have spoiled all her pretty dreams. She thought you wanted her for herself, but in reality all you wanted was her father’s money. How quickly do you think he will pay the ransom?’ she continued. ‘He had better not take too long, Rome badly need funds if we are to buy the equipment we need to…’
She broke off, gasping with mingled anger and pain as Nico left Saffron’s side to grasp her wrist, swinging her round to face him as he said in a cold, even voice, ‘Guard you tongue, Olivia!’ His warning glance encompassed both her and Saffron, and Saffron felt her blood turn to ice water in her veins as Olivia tossed her head and remarked callously, ‘What for? There are ways of making sure your little friend never gets to repeat anything she overhears, or have you lost your dedication to our cause, my friend? This is the second day we have made a rendezvous here.’
Nico’s shrugged, ‘I was delayed,’ obviously didn’t please her, and her thick dark eyebrows snapped together in a frown, her voice dangerous as she looked at Saffron. ‘By that?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Nico…’
‘I was delayed in Rome,’ Nico elaborated, his face tightening as he rounded on her, saying softly, ‘Try to remember that I am in charge here, Olivia, and that it is not for you to question my actions. Now, get the girl into the Land Rover, we have already spent too long here.’
‘Come.’ The muzzle of the machine-gun rested in the vee of Saffron’s tee-shirt. ‘Pretty but soft,’ Olivia commented, lips drawn back over sharp small teeth. ‘Look how she shakes! This gun is very sensitive,’ she told Saffron. ‘The trembling of your body is enough to…’
‘She is no use to us dead, Olivia,’ Nico pointed out with deadly calm. He had changed so much Saffron barely recognised him. Gone was the indolence, the warm smile and easy charm, and in its place was a forbidding menace that struck a chill right through her bones. His features might have been cast in bronze, every movement weighed, every thought calculated.
‘Not dead, perhaps,’ Olivia agreed, gloating over Saffron’s pale face, ‘but her papa will still pay well for his daughter, even if we mutilate her a little. You did well to choose her, Nico, let us just hope for her sake that her father cares as much for her as you say. We have read about you in the papers, Saffron Wykeham,’ she told Saffron, ‘of your affairs and your father’s money. We heard you were coming to Italy and laid our plans carefully. Nico told us it would not be hard for him to gain your trust; you have a weakness for handsome men.’
‘Stop wasting time, Olivia,’ Nico instructed. ‘Get her back to the farm. I have to take the Mercedes back, and send the telex off to her father. We should see results pretty quickly. Now remember, when you get up to the farm everything should appear normal. It’s bound to be checked out.’
‘When will you be back?’
Saffron saw his eyebrows rise at the aggression in Olivia’s possessive question.
‘I don’t know. It all depends how long it takes.’
‘And her?’ Olivia demanded, jerking her gun in Saffron’s direction.
‘Just stick to the plan,’ Nico told her. ‘No rough stuff, there’s no point…’
‘Because you don’t want anything to spoil her soft skin?’
Suddenly Saffron realised that Olivia was jealous of her. What was the other girl’s relationship with Nico? Were they lovers? The twisting pain in her stomach stunned her. Surely the knowledge of his deceit should have killed for ever whatever she had felt for Nico. It had done so, she assured herself fiercely; the pain she felt was the result of her shock.
‘Her skin is of no interest to me apart from the price we can put on it,’ Nico said carelessly. ‘You should know that. You should also know that we’re going to have to supply proof to her father that she’s still alive, which is why I don’t want a hair on her head harmed—at least not for now. I’ll take the shots of her when I get back.’ He glanced at the heavy gold watch he was wearing, and Saffron felt physically sick, realising how he had come by the money to afford such luxuries. She had ceased to exist for him as a person, if indeed she had ever done so; she was simply a marketable commodity.
His last words for Saffron as he turned away leaving her with her three armed guards were, ‘Don’t be tempted into doing anything rash. Olivia has orders to shoot if you do.’
‘And not to kill,’ Olivia warned her, grinning viciously. ‘You’ll look one hell of a lot less attractive with shattered knee-caps.’
It was impossible for Saffron to hold back her shudder of horror. Olivia’s cruel laughter was drowned out by the Mercedes’ engine firing, the paintwork flashing briefly in the sun before it disappeared in the direction she had driven with Nico such a short time ago.
It was the realisation of all her worst nightmares; a descent to hell itself, with every nerve in her body screaming in mindless panic as she fought against her desire to turn and run, knowing that to do so would be to invite Olivia’s gleeful retaliation.
As she stood there in the hot sun, all her tentative awakening emotions were gripped with the frost of reality. Desire and burgeoning love had been crushed by bitterness and a burning desire for revenge; not so much because she had been kidnapped, Saffron realised, but because of the way it had been accomplished; the ease with which Nico had insinuated himself into her life, her vulnerability towards him. He had used her, coldly, calculatingly and callously, and she would make him pay for that if she spent the last drop of her life’s blood in doing so. A raging thirst for revenge filled her, blotting out fear and panic, and making her strong enough to face the barrage of those three cold faces and three machine-guns with pride and calm.
Her anger burned with the death touch of unyielding ice, enabling her to clarify her thoughts, and use the adrenalin pumping through her veins to think swiftly and clearly. Her father was a millionaire and that fact was well publicised, which, presumably, was why they had made her their prey, but most of his wealth was tied up in his business, and even if he could raise whatever ransom was demanded, Saffron had severe doubts that she would ever be set free. She had already read her fate in the implacable eyes of her kidnappers; how many victims suffering exactly her situation had ever been released? Look at her father’s close friend. He had been kidnapped and then murdered. She was faced with two choices; either she could give in to the panic she had battened down inside herself and become a grovelling, pleading object; or she could devote her last ounce of stamina, all her mental and physical reserves in trying to outwit her captors. The same instincts which had raised her father from relative obscurity to the position he held today surfaced in Saffron; the age-old need for survival pumped urgently through her bloodstream, and without conscious volition her decision was made. As she numbly followed the direction Olivia indicated with her gun the words of an old saw floated into her mind, ‘Living well is the best revenge,’ but in her case simply living would be her revenge, and she would cling to that thought with every breath she drew. Somehow, she didn’t know how yet, she was going to live and she was going to bring to justice those who had perpetuated this crime against her; and Nico… Revenge was a heady wine and she had drunk deeply of it; deeply enough to overcome her fear, and her mind worked feverishly as she sought some avenue of escape, striving to ignore the dangerous silence and the two guns at her back as Olivia led the way to the dusty Land Rover.
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