Chapter One
THEY’D come to kill her.
Two years of working on the seedier side of the city had honed her senses and taught her to keep herself sharp. She watched and she noticed—and she’d noticed them. A small group of men drinking too much, although she knew that would please Joe, who always hiked his prices when the punters were too drunk to notice. From her vantage point on the stage, she’d seen the notes changing hands, the bottles of whisky, the empty glasses and the glazed eyes but she’d just kept on singing, her voice pouring honey and whipped cream over anyone who bothered to listen. Ignoring the sick feeling in her gut that warned her that her time had finally run out, she sang about love and loss, knowing that the lonely men who frequented Joe’s Bar knew far more about the second than the first.
And so did she.
It was an existence far from anyone’s dreams but Jessie had stopped dreaming when she had been five years old.
‘Hey, doll!’ A man seated near the stage leered at her and waved a note. ‘I fancy a private performance. Come over here and sing that song on my lap.’
Without missing a beat, Jessica backed away from him, flung her head back and belted out the final verse of the song with her eyes closed. As long as she had her eyes shut tight she could pretend that she was somewhere else. She wasn’t singing to a crowd of leering men who had given up on life, she was singing to a packed stadium or opera house—to people who had paid the equivalent of a month’s rent just to hear her voice. In that same fantasy she didn’t have gnawing hunger pains in her stomach and she hadn’t mended her cheap gold dress a hundred times. But most of all, she wasn’t alone.
Someone out there was waiting for her.
Someone was going to pick her up from work and take her home somewhere warm, cosy and safe.
The song ended. She opened her eyes. And saw that someone was waiting for her.
Several men, but they weren’t from her dreams—they were from a dark, terrifying nightmare.
And she knew that they’d come for her. Fear had shadowed her every step for so long that she felt worn out with anxiety—tired of looking over her shoulder.
The last warning she’d received had been a physical one, leaving her with bruises that had kept her home for a week.
But this time they weren’t here to deliver a warning.
Feeling her mouth dry and her heart pound, Jessie reminded herself that she had a plan.
And a knife tucked in her suspender belt.
He sat in the back of the room, the darkness allowing him a rare moment of anonymity in a life lived in the spotlight. The previous night he’d walked the red carpet with a starlet on his arm. His business had made him a billionaire before he was thirty and he enjoyed the privileged existence of the super-rich, but his life had once been lived in places like this—surrounded by drunks, violence and the ever present threat of mortal danger. He’d grown up here—almost been sucked under by the greasy underbelly of society until he’d finally dragged himself, by sheer grit and determination, into a different world.
Another man might have chosen to lose those years, but he hated pretence of any sort and he carried the damage without apology, amused that the visible scars had proved as attractive to women as his dark, murky past.
Nothing aroused a woman’s interest more than a bad boy, Silvio mused, knowing that if they’d been able to see inside his soul they would have run a mile. He was well aware that the women he mixed with liked the idea of danger, but not the reality. He also knew that the girl on the stage lived danger with every step and every breath.
He couldn’t believe how far she’d sunk and he identified an emotion alien to him—guilt.
It was because of him that she was living this life.
His tension mounted as she moved in time to the beat, the subtle slide of her hips causing the man closest to him to lose his grip on his drink. The shatter of glass on the floor was a familiar sound and barely drew a glance from those around. Or maybe they were too numbed by the anaesthetising effects of alcohol to react.
Silvio sat in perfect stillness and the whisky on the table in front of him remained untouched.
The glass was no more than a prop. Knowing what was to come, he couldn’t afford to dull his senses. He also knew that whatever you escaped from today would still be waiting for you tomorrow, and he wasn’t in need of a pause button.
He was a man who faced his mistakes, and he was facing one now.
He never should have left her.
No matter how difficult things had become between them, no matter how deep her hatred of him, he should not have walked away.
The girl moved gracefully across the stage, seducing the audience, raising pulse rates and hopes in equal measure, her melting dark eyes and glossy mouth promising everything.
He’d watched her grow up. Seen her evolve from child to woman and nature hadn’t just been generous in bestowing her gifts; she’d been lavish.
And Jessie exploited those gifts as she sang with passion and feeling, her incredible voice sending a tingle down the length of Silvio’s spine. Watching her sway, he felt himself grow hard and the power of his response angered him because he’d never allowed himself to think of her like that.
He set his jaw, reminding himself that the chemistry they shared was a forbidden thing. Something neither of them had ever pursued and never would.
She was singing a ballad now, a slow, sultry rebuke to some man who had broken her heart, and he narrowed his eyes, knowing that she wasn’t singing from experience. Jessie had never allowed a man anywhere near her heart.
She’d shut herself away emotionally when she had been a child. Only her brother had been able to penetrate the defensive shield she put between herself and the world.
Changing his mind about the neutralising effects of alcohol, Silvio reached for his glass. He downed it in one mouthful, his gaze never shifting from the girl on the stage.
Her ebony curls tumbled over her bare shoulders, the tantalising curves of her gorgeous body enhanced by a gold mini-dress that skimmed across the top of her incredible legs, leaving virtually nothing to the imagination.
Which was presumably intentional.
If a man had been searching for gold and discovered Jessie, he would have died happy.
The whisky burned his throat. Or was it the anger? Was this really what she’d done with her life in his absence? It took extraordinary will power to prevent himself from dragging her off the stage and hauling her out of there, away from the greedy eyes and lecherous minds.
But he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. This was the last time, he promised himself. The last time she was standing on that stage.
The barman approached, but Silvio refused the offer of another drink with a faint shake of his head, his ice-cold gaze shifting from the girl to the group of men hovering around the table near him.
He knew every one of them, and he knew the danger she was facing.
He’d made a mistake, he thought grimly, thinking she’d be better off without him. When she’d ordered him out of her life, he should have ignored her. But it had been impossible to defend himself from her accusations because everything she’d said to him was true.
Silvio’s mouth tightened, aware that he’d chosen the worst possible night to re-enter her life. Tonight was the third anniversary of her brother’s death.
And he was responsible for that death.
Knowing she had no time, Jessica didn’t waste any of it changing. Less than a minute after she’d slipped into the tiny cupboard that Joe laughingly called a dressing room, she was out of the door again, a thin cardigan covering the gold dress, trainers on her feet instead of heels. Her feet were crying from the vicious bite of the cheap shoes but she’d taught herself to ignore the pain. Her feet always hurt. Everything hurt. Tonight was no different.
Her heart was thundering, her palms were sweating but she forced herself to focus, knowing that if she let the fear swallow her now, it would all be over.
And she owed this to Johnny.