Caught in His Gilded World

The police had been throwing up a blockade as he’d arrived.

And Gigi had chosen to go onstage.

‘What the hell are those idiot brothers thinking?’ he snarled, and the kid jumped, but Khaled was already making his way out into the audience.

He’d fed Gigi’s name into an internet search engine this afternoon. It turned out that Gisele Valente had a charlatan for a father—which wasn’t surprising, given what she’d already told him. But what she had neglected to mention was her own role in his all-singing and all-dancing revue as the Valentes had travelled the English provinces, ripping off the punters.

A grainy photograph of Gigi aged eighteen outside court, with a physically imposing, defiant-looking middle-aged man sent mixed feelings through him. He’d seen her scars, and he knew enough of her story to know she hadn’t had it easy, but she’d purposely left out the part about her being her father’s accomplice.

It was a neat little con, and he had to wonder what she was up to now.

Although as he took in once more the faded glamour of the theatre he had to acknowledge that she’d achieved something this afternoon. The cabaret did look different to him after her presentation. She might not have sold him on the place, but her proposal had gone a lot further than all the media-manufactured ire of Paris and the bumbling excuses of the Danton brothers to bring him on side.

Speaking of which, the Danton brothers, alerted to his presence, were on his heels.

L’Oiseau Bleu had its first full house in months, according to an excitable Jacques Danton. They’d never seen anything like it.

‘Mr Kitaev, we know members of the press are in the audience, but we can’t do anything about it if they have tickets.’

Martin Danton was wringing his hands as Khaled shouldered his way along the perimeter of the auditorium.

‘Who sold them tickets?’

There was an uncomfortable to-ing and fro-ing between the brothers.

Buffoons.

Onstage an act was in full swing, involving the tank he’d seen yesterday being put to a different use. Tonight it was full of bubbling water, like a cauldron, and inside two monstrous Burmese pythons glided to and fro.

There was also a girl in there, but he hadn’t been paying it much attention, more interested in finding Gigi as unobtrusively as possible. Where the hell was she?

Impatiently he glanced at his watch. He didn’t have time for this.

His attention was diverted when he noticed one of the monsters appeared to have wrapped itself around the swimming girl and was dragging her down to the base of the tank.

‘Is that monitored?’ he snarled.

‘A handler is ready to intervene if there’s a problem, Mr Kitaev,’ Jacques Danton scrambled to assure him.

‘It looks like they are having a problem. Those snakes—what size are they?’

‘Almost three m-metres,’ stuttered Martin Danton.

‘Then they’re capable of crushing the life out of a human being.’

‘Only a small human being,’ Jacques Danton countered, ‘and Gigi is a robust girl—she’s stronger than she looks.’

Gigi?

Khaled shoved the smaller man out of his path and made his way to the stage. He was about to breach the safety rail when the swimmer broke free and shot through the water, breaking the surface to emerge gracefully from the tank, seemingly no worse for wear, dripping water.

It was Gigi, all right. Painted gold from neck to toes, with the lights strobing over her body and the music as seductive as any snake-charmer’s medley.

She was also naked.

There was an appreciative intake of breath from the audience as she struck a pose and the lights slid over her gold-painted body in what was frankly an erotic tribute.

Only Gigi posed as if she was the star attraction that she was.

From the darkness of the audience came a shout. ‘Kitaev’s whore!’

He went cold, and then something hot and virulent licked up inside him.

Gigi, instead of vacating the stage, had climbed down from her perch and begun to search the darkness for the origin of the slur.

In a moment she had gone from glorious, sensual goddess, bewitching her audience, to the sturdily game girl who had chased him down the Champs-élysées and stood up to his detractors like Liberté defending her people.

Khaled had already discovered he really liked that girl.

It galvanised him.

He vaulted up onto the stage, stepped over the footlights and strode towards her. Gigi’s expression was one of total bewilderment as she saw him coming.