Night Fires

‘No. You wouldn’t. I beg you…’

‘The policeman at your front door will be missing from his post for the next five minutes,’ Vitale said coldly. ‘A taxi will pull up outside. It will take you to the airport. There will be a ticket to New York waiting at the Notrheast Airlines counter.’ He paused. ‘If you care for your Mr Forrester, you will collect your ticket and get on that flight.’

The phone went dead in her hands. Gabrielle sat staring at it, then slowly hung up.

Surely, this was all a bad dream.

Except, it wasn’t.

The chalk outline of the man who’d been sent to kill her was a stark reminder that it was reality…

And that she held her lover’s life in her hands..

Slowly, as if she had aged years in the past moments, Gabrielle got to her feet and started towards the front door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Vitale house dated from the turn of the century.

Large, graceless, with endless dark rooms opening on to even darker halls, the house was Victorian in concept but completely lacking in any of the period’s charm or grace. Everything about it was somber and oppressive, from the wainscoted walls to the oversized furniture.

Gabrielle had always hated the place..

As a child, she’d clung to her father’s hand whenever they stepped over the threshold. She remembered worrying that something terrible lurked in the shadowy corners of the entrance hall, something that would make the trolls and witches who lived in her book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales pale in comparison. As she’d grown older, she’d realized that here was nothing supernatural to fear in the Vitale house.

There had been only ‘Uncle’ Tony.

And it had taken a lifetime, and what had happened on a hot night in New Orleans three months ago, to make her face the truth.

‘Uncle’ Tony was far more evil than any of the ghouls or goblins that lived in the pages of the old fairy-stories.

Now, on this sweet-smelling June day, as she sat in the window-seat of her room on the third floor of Vitale’s home, she wondered how she’ could have been so blind to the truth.

Tony Vitale was a vicious crook—there was no kinder way to phrase it.

And she was his prisoner.

She sighed as she watched the gardener weeding the roses.

She was too old to believe in fairy-tales any more,

but she knew how Rapunzel must have felt, locked in the tower with no hope of rescue. No matter how luxurious the furnishings, there was nothing more terrible than to know you were someone’s captive, unless it was to know you would remain so for the rest of your life…

And to know you had lost the man you would always love, even if he hated you.

She hadn’t wanted to believe any of it, at first. After the phone had gone dead in her hands that night in New Orleans, she’d told herself the conversation with Vitale couldn’t have really taken place. Things like that didn’t happen in the real world.

Wrong.

She’d gone to the front door, carefully opened the wrought-iron grille and peered out just in time to see the policeman left to guard her push back his sleeve and cast a furtive glance at his watch.

Seconds later, he’d stepped into the shadows, vanishing as neatly as a rabbit down a hole. And then a taxi had glided silently to the kerb, its headlights peering myopically into the wispy fog, and a terror greater than any she’d ever known had set her teeth chattering.

The truth, so long denied, had finally become irrefutable. Tony Vitale—‘Uncle’ Tony—had tried to have her killed tonight, but the attempt had failed.

James was his next target.

She’d spun on her heel towards the telephone. She’d call James at the police station, tell him…

Tell him what?

That Vitale had targeted him for death? She knew how James would react to that. The threat would enrage him. He’d rush to her side…

And Vitale would kill him.

Nobody would be able to stop him.

‘Accidents’ happened.

A speeding car, a bomb, a package in the mail— there were endless ways to do the job, and she probably didn’t even know half of them.

Wrapped in the trappings of respectability, Vitale was a powerful figure. His patronage gave him access into high places; he could do anything he wanted, and that included murdering her lover.

She had moved like a robot, stepping out into the night, slipping out of the gate and into the waiting taxi. Her ticket had been waiting at the airport, just as Vitale had promised, and she had boarded the plane without looking back, afraid that if she did she would somehow see James’s face and know she couldn’t leave him, no matter what.

Hours later, she’d stepped from the plane and into the heavy arms of Tony Vitale.

‘Don’t,’ she’d said, struggling to free herself, but Vitale had only drawn her closer to him. The mingled scents of cigar smoke and cologne had made her gag.

‘Smile for the birdie, Gabriella,’ Vitale had whispered, his cheek rasping against hers.

Flashbulbs had gone off in her eyes. Blinking, she’d stared into a dozen cameras and she’d realised they were surrounded by reporters and photographers.

‘My insurance policy, cara mia,’ Vitale had said with a laugh, curving his arm around her waist as he led her to his waiting limousine. ‘By tomorrow morning, your boyfriend won’t be able to pick up a newspaper without seeing a photograph of our tender reconciliation.’

Tears had streamed down her face as Vitale handed her into the car. ‘Why?’ she’d whispered, staring at the man she’d once felt such affection for as he climbed heavily in beside her. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Vitale’s thick brows had drawn together. ‘Are you such a fool, Gabriella? I can’t allow you to testify against me. Don’t you understand?’ An oily smile had crept over his face. ‘You will be my wife. No one can force you to testify against me—not when the stakes are so high, and your precious Mr Forrester’s life hangs in the balance.’

Gabrielle had taken a deep breath. ‘But I can’t tesity. I don’t ’t know anything.’

‘You do, cara. You know enough to corroborate Frank Lorenzo’s testimony.’

She’d looked at him blankly. ‘Frank? The man who works for you?’

He’d nodded as he settled back in the car and pulled a long, black cigar from the breast pocket of his silk suit.

‘Yes.’ Vitale had chewed off the end of the cigar and

spat it on to the carpeted floor. ‘That’s right.’

‘Is that the man you were on the phone with that time? But I told the prosecutor, I only heard a few meaningless words…’

Vitale had smiled, almost sadly. ‘Tell me what you heard, Gabriella.’

‘I heard you say—you said, “Riley refuses to come around, Frank. I want him taken care of tonight.” ’

Her eyes had met his. Suddenly, the simple words seemed to take on a darker meaning than they ever had before. .

Vitale had put his hand over hers, clasping it tightly when she tried to pull free.

‘Yes. That’s right, cara. And that night, Riley was killed. Someone put a gun to his head and blew it off..’

‘No,’ she’d said sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear this!.’

Vitale’s hand almost crushed hers.

‘The federal authorities have Frank in custody—they have for months—and they’ve offered him immunity if he’ll testify against me—and your testimony will corroborate his.’ He had stared at her for a moment and then, gradually, his smile had returned and the pressure on her hand had eased. ‘But you’re not going to do that, are you, carat You’re going to be the good girl your dear father raised you to be.’

‘Please. Tell me what you want with me. My promise of silence? You have that, I swear. I won’t tell anyone what I heard…’

Vitale had smiled broadly, and for a moment he’d looked as benign as he had years before, when she’d sat on his knee and

laughed at his jokes.

‘Your father and I were of the old country. We understood each other, Gabriella—I trusted him with my life.’

‘No,’ she’d whispered, ‘I won’t believe it. Not my father!’

‘Of course, your father,’ Vitale said impatiently. ‘ He was my bodyguard. My good friend. . He knew everything about me, and about how I felt about you..’ He’d smiled that oily smile that made her skin crawl. ‘He hoped you would come to feel the same way about me, but things don’t always work out as we would wish, do they?’