Wicked Ambition (24 page)

The boy looked happy to be addressed. ‘Of course, Ms da Luca,’ he replied, straightening.

‘It’s a bit awkward, actually—’ she laughed, throwing her best charm offensive ‘—but I seem to have left something in Mr Angel’s suite…He’s at a function tonight and I’d check with him myself but it’s right across town.’ She’d scoped Cosmo’s plans and he was safely out of the way: after filming he had been on such a high that she suspected a great deal of alcohol would be involved, creating the perfect stage for her intentions.

The boy’s face flickered. ‘I’m afraid I’m not authorised to access Mr Angel’s room, or any other in the hotel.’ He looked genuinely disappointed. ‘I’m sorry.’

She smiled warmly. ‘Don’t worry, I completely understand.’ Looping a twist of hair over one ear, she frowned. ‘It is a shame, though. My mom gave me that necklace before she died, and if it isn’t there I don’t know what I’ll do. Do you think I ought to check it hasn’t been stolen? What’s your protocol for that? If it has that’d be terrible, because I can’t think of anyone who’s been in my space except the hotel staff…If I could just get in and retrieve it there’d be no need for any fuss; you know how these things can get out…’

The boy thought for a moment, before withdrawing a card from below the desk. ‘All right,’ he decided, without much conviction. ‘If you’d like to come with me?’

Upstairs the boy swiped her in, waiting dutifully outside as though Cosmo’s suite were sacred ground and stepping one foot over the threshold would turn him to ash.

Turquoise moved quickly. In the master suite she dug out the equipment, concealing it within a framed picture and casually calling out, ‘Here it is!’ Cosmo’s quarters were insanely
grandiose, a gilt-edged four-poster bed draped with linens and a giant marble bathroom boasting an oval Jacuzzi, in the centre of which was an extravagant Grecian font with a naked cherub pirouetting on top. Tucked beneath his bed she saw a briefcase. She shuddered when she thought what toys it might contain. Was it the same supply he had produced with her?

When she emerged the boy was relieved, quickly pulling the door and scoping for the billionth time that they hadn’t been rumbled. Turquoise attached a delicate gold crucifix she’d brought in her pocket and breathed a thankful sigh.

‘Thank you so much.’ She beamed. ‘I’ll be sure to pass my compliments on to the manager. Am I glad to get this back!’

‘You won’t say what for?’ the boy asked worriedly.

‘Of course not,’ she reassured him. ‘It’s our little secret.’

Retrieving the footage was risky. Next morning Turquoise slipped down for a prompt breakfast, knowing the staff would tend to Cosmo’s room when he finally surfaced for his.

She waited in a lounge of plush velvet sofas for the help to come up. Did it really require six maids to do the job? The women flitted in and out of his space with fresh towels and bed sheets, all fussing to lead the charge for their Most Important Guest. She hadn’t banked on there being so many, but soon began to detect a rhythm to their work, how they disappeared in twos and threes to replenish supplies and at points left the room unattended as a remaining couple chatted over their carts. When several wandered off
to manage other rooms, she spied her opening and slid unseen into Cosmo’s chambers.

She was in and out in less than twenty seconds, and resumed her seat in time to give a returning maid her friendliest smile. Her heart was pounding so violently she thought her body must have been shaking with the force.

Would she have what she needed? There was every chance that after his event Cosmo had returned alone and slept like a baby—but there was also the chance that he’d drunk too much and nailed fifteen hookers in one night. Given that Turquoise had waited in the bar till past midnight and still seen no sign of him, she was banking on it.

Back in her room, she took a call from Donna. Running through pleasantries was torture and she hung up as quickly as possible, promptly loading the device into her laptop.

A blank video popped up. Frantically Turquoise activated it, praying she hadn’t messed up, and within seconds a blurred image of an empty room flashed to life on the screen. She forwarded through to his return until finally, to her intense relief, the deed began.

Cosmo was with four women, stumbling in ahead of them and leaning against the closed door with the undisputed bully-rights of the jailor. The quality was better than she had expected and she saw Cosmo’s smile fade: on the way over he would have been the supreme charmer, the movie star these working girls felt blessed to entertain, and only now would he reveal what he truly was—a tyrant. At a guess the youngest was a minor but it was impossible to be certain. What was certain was the striking resemblance they all bore to Turquoise herself. She imagined the brief Cosmo had supplied: tall, dark hair, olive skin, green eyes…Some
were curvier than others but the common denominators were clear.

First Cosmo instructed them to undress. There was no sound but Turquoise would know that voracious expression anywhere. As the girls were commanded to make out with each other, occasionally dipping to tend to his arousal, it all seemed agonisingly familiar.

It was when Cosmo withdrew his briefcase that she knew she’d hit on gold.

The dildos he extracted were even more monstrous than she remembered, and there was resistance as two of the girls were directed to strap them on. Cosmo produced a mountain of cocaine to get the wheels oiled and Turquoise’s eyes sprang with tears when she saw how eagerly—and how desperately—his company vacuumed it up. It was terrible watching their misfortune unfold, but cold hard evidence was the only way to catch a beast like him. She had no option, and if it stopped even one victim from meeting the same fate as that poor young girl buried so callously in a lonely cold desert that night, it would be worth it.

Coming up on their high, the girls took to their appointed tasks with zeal and soon the orgy became a writhing mass of limbs with neither head nor tail, one girl indistinguishable from the next and Cosmo somewhere in the midst of it all spiralling recklessly towards his private nirvana—but no heaven was worth it when it spelled hell for someone else.

Sick to her stomach, she was ready to kill the screen when Cosmo scrambled from the melee and took something else from his box of treats. Turquoise squinted, trying to decipher what it was, and when she saw she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Cosmo mounted a winking golden crown to the top of
his head—it was crusted with rare and exquisite gems, its circumference peaked like icing, topped with mock sapphires and rubies and fringed with fur, an old-school king’s crown like something from a deck of playing cards. The girls were so busy with each other that they failed to notice, and Cosmo stepped over them to position a large sack of what appeared to be grapes—
grapes?
—on his dresser. Taking his position on the bed, he sat upright and gazed dead ahead, his ludicrous crown jewels perched and shimmering in the half-light.

Unnervingly Cosmo was staring straight into the eye of the camera, and as Turquoise looked directly back at him she felt a chill.

Silently Cosmo issued his orders and the girls disbanded to obey. All four got to their knees, taking it in turns to crawl to the bag of fruit and extract an orb with their teeth. Like dogs they were required to return to their master, scramble to the bed and take his erection in their mouths. It took Turquoise a few seconds to fathom what was going on: the women were sucking his dick with grapes on their tongues, and judging by Cosmo’s contorted face it was a sure-fire way of coaxing him to the brink of ecstasy. Each girl remained on him just a minute or so before it was the turn of the next, and the departing sweetheart returned to the bag to retrieve a second helping. With this routine, Cosmo was set to go all night.

These were someone’s
daughters
, Turquoise thought furiously. Injustice crackled through her as she recalled a conversation she’d had once with Ava, in which her friend had confided her and Cosmo’s wish to have a family. The hypocrisy of Cosmo’s wanting kids—daughters he would
protect and pay for and love, if indeed he was capable of that—was odious. Did he not consider that the girls here had fathers and mothers? Did he not see them as individuals, someone’s
children
, beloveds, not things he could play with and throw away?

Things he could allow to die?

As Turquoise skipped through the footage, her worst fears were confirmed. Cosmo’s regal routine went on for the best part of the night, with the girls wearying and beginning to protest, and whenever they did it only gave Cosmo more fuel for fun. He’d hoped they would complain, because each time they did it gave him an excuse to hit them: the king and his lowly servants, who tended to his every need, who existed and worked in fear of his wrath.

He hit them, he slapped them, he floored them. And each time he got harder.

Cosmo Angel was one seriously fucked up human being.

Turquoise reached the end of the tape and stared for a while into the blank eye of the computer screen, processing what she had seen while trying her best to forget it.

There it was. At last, after all these years, she had Mr Angelopoulos crucified in black and white—or rather full colour, for the entire world to see, should they be interested.

And, boy, she kind of thought they would.

30

D
awn at Fountain Valley was always peaceful. Leon squinted against the morning sun, casting pale light across the circuit, the white lanes looping towards and away from him, an endless chain with no beginning or end: his battleground.

Absent-mindedly he tugged at the sweatbands on his wrists. Marlon had given them to him the day he had died.
‘Here,’
his brother had said, reaching into the glove box of his truck and taking something out. Leon had recognised the bands from when Marlon started training—they were black with white crests on; he would know them anywhere.
‘Put these on.’

‘But these are your lucky stripes
.’

‘And you’re my lucky little brother. And if I get selected, if I go away next year you’ll have to fill those out; be a man, take care of things. You promise me?’

How different things might have been if Marlon were still alive. Maybe Leon wouldn’t be here at all if things
hadn’t happened the way they had: maybe he’d have ended up a waster, getting stoned, dealing drugs, packing a gun. Maybe Marlon would have made the Sydney team; maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Leon could have changed the outcome if he’d reached his brother sooner…maybe not. Maybe. There were things that happened and things that didn’t. That was all. All that mattered was what you chose to do with the facts.

Leon fixed on the track. Was he willing to sacrifice another four years in pursuit of the gold? That was what the super-elite required: existence in suspension, a readiness to give up your body to the physicians and psychologists and medical experts, putting things for ever on hold—family, girls, friends, the real world—while never knowing if it would pay off.

It had to. Four years chasing the next Olympics…because he would not give up. He would never give up. He had Marlon at his shoulder and for him he would keep going.

His archrival’s days were over. It was time for a new leader.

The roar of an engine pulled him from his thoughts. Leon glanced up in time to see Jax arrive in the car lot, his bullet-shaped head poking out of the top of a ridiculous yellow monstrosity. The vehicle was a fiend, a massive neon thing Leon didn’t know the name of.

Jax leapt from the car, already in his kit, and strode towards his opponent. He was donning his hallmark vest, the gold bullet emblazoned across his back as much a souvenir as a caution, and Teddy Simpson, the team coach, was trailing in his wake.

‘So it begins,’ Leon muttered, steeling himself.

‘You. Me.’ Jax lifted his chin. ‘Let’s do it.’

It was obvious Jax had a hangover. He had been partying hard, enjoying the superhero attention in London, LA and every state their PR jaunt had visited: the plane only had to touch down before Jax was unbuckling himself and getting directions to his nearest blow job. One flash of his medal was a VIP pass into anything—and anyone—he desired. With silver Leon experienced the same, but despite the accolades it wasn’t enough: success wasn’t about where you came so much as whether you had done the absolute best you could. If there was one extra breath you could have taken, one more push you didn’t deliver, one further crush of the lungs, the final pain you could have abided and hadn’t, that was real defeat.

What made the difference between silver and gold? Luck? Biology? Fortune of physicality, of owning a single gene that lifted you imperceptibly above the rest? Jax had been revealed during tests to possess a bigger lung capacity, but then the same had revealed Leon’s bigger heart. What couldn’t be measured, only felt in the soul, was ambition.

Leon hadn’t been banking on a duel today. He’d been here since daybreak. ‘Now?’

‘No, next week, bozo.’

The fire caught in his belly. Desire to eliminate this man was all consuming. The Championships were this summer and he had to show his mettle. Jax was getting beat.

‘A hundred metres.’ Teddy stood by. ‘Ready to fly?’

‘You had breakfast?’ Jax snarled.

Leon didn’t get it.

‘Prepare to eat dust.’

‘Conserve your energies, Jax. It must take it out of you having such wit.’

‘Fuck you,’ said Jax unimaginatively.

‘You want to get into this again? ‘Cause I’ll get into it again.’

‘Be my guest, bozo.’

‘Swop the pornos for a dictionary once in a while; it might widen your vocabulary.’

Teddy interceded. ‘Boys…’

‘You think you’re so fuckin’ smart?’ Jax glowered.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Well I’ve got news for you.’ His audience waited. ‘You aren’t.’

‘Wow. I’m enlightened.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘I’d sooner your girlfriend did it for me.’

Jax’s mouth pursed like a walnut. ‘You’re a dead man,’ he seethed. ‘Just like your dead brother.’