Impulse (36 page)

Sylvia shook it off. It was over, the woman would live, she had to. Sylvia had found out that it was a Margaret Rutledge, the wife of a very wealthy newspaper magnate, Charles Rutledge. She had the best medical care—she’d live. Sylvia was safe; Tommy was safe. The cops didn’t know a thing.

Sylvia looked down at her two-year-old hybrid roses. She’d tended them faithfully, sung opera to them, mostly an aria from
Madama Butterfly
, and yet they weren’t as deeply red, their petals as velvety soft as she’d wanted. Of course, it was still very early in the year, but the promise she’d held for them, the awards she’d dreamed of winning at the Long Island Flower Festival—all seemed for naught now.

She looked up to see her Taiwanese houseboy, Oyster Lee, approach, a frown puckering his ageless forehead.

It was a phone call. Very urgent, Oyster told her. And when she, her own forehead puckered with a frown, took the call as she was stripping off her gardening gloves, she turned white as a sheet.

“Oh, God,” she said, and fainted.

The Bennington Hotel, London, England
April 2001

The call went through immediately.

“Hello, Merkel? It’s Marcus. I need to speak to Dominick. It’s important—
What?
You’re kidding. Don’t let him off the island! No, I know you can’t do a bloody thing. All right, get him. I’ll try to talk some sense into him.”

Rafaella was making hand signs at him, and he covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “Carlucci died and Dominick’s going to the funeral in Chicago. There’s also his wife, Sylvia, who—Hello, Dominick?”

“Marcus. You’re in London?”

“Yes, and there are two things I need to talk to you about. The first is that I’ve got Ms. Holland with me.”

Rafaella strained, but of course she couldn’t hear what Dominick was saying. Marcus’s face remained expressionless, curse him.

“If you’d just hold it a minute, I’ll tell you,” Marcus broke in. “Listen, her mother is fine. It was an overreaction. I talked her into taking a bit of time away from the island and the book, and I’ll provide her with some background information. Sorry you don’t approve, but there it is. She’s staying with me for the time being—Yes, Dominick, with me.”

Dominick stared into the phone, wishing he could see Marcus’s face, and knowing, even without seeing him, what his expression would be. Determination in that hard jawline, the usual faint amusement in his eyes. Damn him, he’d taken Rafaella! He was sleeping with her, he’d freely admitted it. And Dominick had plans for her. The moment she returned from Long Island, he’d fully intended to take her to bed. If that had gone as well as he had guessed it would, well, then he’d planned to marry her.

Just like that.

Once Sylvia was dead.

Once he was a widower, he could marry again. Coco was too old. He was sorry about that, but she was. Her years of use were nearly over. Soon he’d send her on her way. He remembered the abortion she’d had some three and a half years ago. But it had been a girl. What else could he have made her do? And she hadn’t seemed to mind. She hadn’t said much about it.

Rafaella was the perfect age. Even if she had a girl child first, she was young enough to bear him a battalion of boys.

Now she was with Marcus. Sleeping with Marcus. And there was possible danger if she stayed with Marcus. He thought of Roddy Olivier and blanched. The man was a treacherous snake. There was nothing to be done about it, and he hated to feel powerless.

He jerked back at the sound of Marcus’s smooth voice. “You what? Say that again, Marcus.”

“I said, Dominick, that I think you’re crazy to leave the island. Wait until I catch the man or men behind the assassination attempt, behind
Bathsheba.
There’s no way Lacy can guard you completely, no way at all. And you’re talking Chicago here. Who cares about Carlucci? You hated his guts for the threat he made, but now you can just—” Marcus broke off as he realized Dominick’s motive. The man was insane, certifiable, if he thought he could get away with it.

Dominick would do it. He’d lived on the island too long; he was king there, the feudal lord, the entire justice system rolled into one. He’d forgotten how very vulnerable one could be off that wretched little island. Marcus said very mildly, “You plan to see Sylvia in Chicago? Will you ask her for a divorce?”

Dominick laughed. “Marcus, you never cease to amaze me. See Sylvia? More than likely—that is, if my little wife isn’t afraid to come to Chicago. If she doesn’t show, well then, we’ll see, won’t we?”

Marcus felt helpless. He rang off, knowing Dominick Giovanni would do precisely as he wanted; he
also knew that Dominick was enraged with him for taking Rafaella. He turned to face her now.

“Well?”

She still wasn’t very happy with him, and after adding a goodly dose of jet lag, she looked ready to tear him to shreds. Her hair was limp, her clothes a wrinkled mess, but he smiled. He couldn’t help himself.

It was nice to outsmart someone like her every once in a while.

“Well, Dominick didn’t tell me to send you his love. He is, to put it bluntly, pissed. With me, not you. Like the true macho man I am, I shouldered all the blame, not even hinting that you were the one who continually seduced me. Dominick realized there was nothing he could do about it.” Marcus stopped, running his hand through his hair, making it stand on end.

Rafaella chuckled.

It was so unexpected that Marcus just stared at her.

“You’re a mess, and now you’re even more of one.”

“Go take a look in the mirror yourself.”

“I already did. You should get me a large paper bag. Now, this other thing. What is it about Dominick leaving the island?”

Marcus told her. “—he’s always hated the old man. He’s responsible for Dominick still being married to Sylvia.”

“I know all of that. He told me.”

“Maybe you don’t know this. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Now that Carlucci’s dead, Sylvia’s not far behind.”

Rafaella just looked at him. “You think he’d kill her? That’s absurd. He could just divorce her. You’re losing it, Marcus. It’s jet lag.” But of course she knew he was perfectly right. She looked around the smallish room. “You really know how to pick hotels. The lobby is infinitesimal, the staircase is really quite beautiful, to be fair about it, but this room, Marcus, it—”

Marcus said easily, “Forget the Savoy, Ms. Holland.
I want us out of sight, the essence of discretion. Just consider yourself in the enemy camp. You don’t want to be out front doing the dance of the seven veils.”

“I couldn’t even manage one veil right now.” She sighed. “Sorry I jumped on you.”

“You’re tired. We both are. You wanna sack out for a while?”

“With you, I suppose.”

“I’m too tired at the moment to do more than twitch. Which wouldn’t get me very far at all.”

“All right. I’m going to take a quick shower.”

He thought of her naked in the shower and did more than twitch. He stretched out on the bed, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. When she did, ten minutes later, he was snoring. Rafaella looked down at him and shook her head. Dead to the world.
Dead as Sylvia would be?

Rafaella shook her head. No, Dominick couldn’t be that—that corrupt. Besides, it wasn’t logical to kill his wife. But what did that matter?

Dominick would do whatever took his fancy, and there were years of resentment and hate for Sylvia.

Yes, he would kill her, without blinking.

She pulled the covers over Marcus, then slipped in beside him. She was asleep within minutes.

Chicago, Illinois
April 2001

April in Chicago could have been beautiful, the air fresh with spring, flowers bursting with scent and color. But it wasn’t. It was gray and cold and drizzling. The service was held at FairLawn at graveside. There were some seventy-five people there, mainly old men, and at least three Chicago cops, come, Dominick thought, to wish the old man a speedy trip to hell. Dominick kept his head down while the priest intoned
an epitaph that sounded far more suited to a man like Father Sabastiani than a villain like Carlo Carlucci. Carlucci’s buddies had probably paid the priest to extol the obscene old fool. The rain suddenly thickened, thudding loudly and obscenely on the coffin lid. Scores of black umbrellas snapped open. Faces disappeared. A convention of crows, Dominick thought, all come to pay respects to Carlucci’s rotted carcass.

Where was Sylvia? His wife had probably been too afraid of him to come.

He saw a flash of blond hair and tensed up. The woman turned her head suddenly and looked straight at him, and he saw that she was young, not more than thirty, and ugly as sin. But her hair was pretty, like Sylvia’s used to be, like the other women’s used to be—soft blond. Like Coco’s used to be until she’d started fooling with it. It was too light, too white, not a soft-enough blond. She’d told him she was beginning to look faded—

Where
was
Sylvia?

Frank Lacy sneezed beside him. Dominick smiled at his henchman. A man with Lacy’s credentials shouldn’t have something as paltry as a cold. But he did. Leaving the warm island in the Caribbean and coming to cold, dank Chicago had done it to Lacy. But it didn’t matter. For what Lacy had to do, he could be sneezing his head off and it wouldn’t affect anything.

The priest was finally drawing to a close. A woman, heavily veiled in black, stepped forward and tossed a singularly beautiful red rose with petals as soft-looking as velvet on the coffin. Then a man scooped a shovelful of dirt onto the coffin lid. Then the priest blessed the assembled company, rain dripping off his fingers as he made the sign of the cross. It was over.

The woman turned on her high heels, then made the mistake of looking furtively back toward Dominick. He smiled at her. It was Sylvia. He had her now.
He waved at her and she scurried away toward a big black limousine. Quickly and quietly, Dominick made his way through the tangle of black umbrellas until he reached her side at the limousine.

“Hello, Sylvia.”

She’d known he’d be there, of course. To gloat over her father’s grave. She’d been a fool to come, but how could she have avoided it? “Hello, Dominick. It is good of you to come.”

“Why? I came just to see the old bugger finally laid underground. He’s dead, and if it weren’t raining, I swear I’d do a dance right now. So, dear Sylvia, I hear from Oyster that you’ve knocked off the sauce.”

She stared at him. “That’s right. I don’t drink anymore.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. Never would she tell him that her lover had struck a woman and she felt responsible because she’d provided him the coke. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d do with that information.

“I’ve changed, Dominick. I didn’t want to be like I was. I have changed, truly.”

He just looked at her, that look that had always made her frantic with lust and fear, both at the same time. Odd, but it didn’t affect her at all this time. She looked back, waiting, tense, afraid.

“Folks don’t change, Sylvia. You of all people should know that. You’re beginning to look your age.”

“As do you,” she said, refusing to back down, to cower, even though her palms were wet with the sweat of fear.

“But with men, my dear, with men, it’s different. They become only more exciting as they get older. Of course, money is an integral part of the equation. But enough about our respective looks. Do you plan on staying long?”

“No. Goldstein will read father’s will; then I’m returning to Long Island.” She waited now, waited for
him to ask her for a divorce. That woman he was living with, that French model, he’d probably want to marry her. And try to have children. Or was the woman too old now?

She said finally, unable to wait longer, “I’ll give you a divorce, Dominick.”

“That’s certainly thoughtful of you. But a little late, I think. I wanted the divorce twenty years ago. What makes you think I’d want it now?”

She felt a shaft of fear. “I don’t know. Don’t you?”

He didn’t bother to answer her.

“How is DeLorio? And Paula?”

“He’s much the same, as is Paula. She’s disappointed me.”

“You’ll recall that you selected her. Good stock, I remember you saying.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, Sylvia cursed herself for a fool, which she was, but he looked unfazed by her words.

“Why don’t I see you to your hotel? Or are you staying at your father’s penthouse?”

She didn’t want to go anywhere with him. She turned him down as politely as she could, but she knew she could have responded like Saint Ursula and it wouldn’t have mattered. He let her go, no fuss. She nearly ran from him. Dominick smiled. She knew; she’d guessed. Sylvia was many things, rocket scientist not being one of them, but she had an odd streak of shrewdness. Oh, yes, she knew. He considered different options on the drive back to the Clarion Hotel.

Sylvia wanted to leave Chicago. She had no intention of returning to Long Island, not for a very long time, if ever.

So Oyster had betrayed her. She wasn’t surprised, not really. He was loyal, but his concept of loyalty could easily accommodate several masters. Undoubtedly Dominick had paid him well over the years. She wondered what he’d reported to her husband. She
shuddered. She was terrified of him. She’d wondered if she would still be terrified of him when she finally saw him again. Her fear was far greater than she’d expected it to be.

Samuel Goldstein came over to the penthouse several hours later and read her father’s will. Sylvia sat in that prized antique Regency chair, disbelieving. She had him read it again, more slowly this time. Goldstein obliged her. Indeed, she thought, he was enjoying himself thoroughly. He’d always hated her, taken every opportunity to speak ill of her. And of course, she’d given him tons of fodder over the years.

Carlo Carlucci had left his only child nothing. He’d willed everything to his only grandson, DeLorio Giovanni. She couldn’t believe it. She left Goldstein sitting there, left the penthouse, and walked quickly to Michigan Avenue. She had no coat, no umbrella. She was stunned and thus quite numb. Her father had left her destitute. He hadn’t even continued her allowance, leaving it to DeLorio to decide if he wished to give his mother anything. She thought of how much the mansion on Long Island would bring. Enough to keep her in her current lifestyle for a year. Things were just so very expensive now. And there was Tommy Ibsen—and oh how he loved nice things. Her father had never complained of the million a year he’d given her—even more than that the past three years.