Chapter Three
Hennessy
‘WHAT THE HELL were you thinking?’
Renzo sounds as furious as he looks, and suddenly I am furious too, because I’m so sick of this. Sick of people blaming me for things I cannot control. Sick of him acting all holier-than-thou instead of taking my side for once.
‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking.’
I glare at him, channelling my fear into fury and focusing it on him, which is unfair I know, but he represents everything I hate about my life: the judgement; the assumptions made about me for which, I admit, I have been largely to blame.
But nobody gives me a chance to change them. Nobody wants me to change.
‘Everyone is bending over backwards to try and get control of the narrative here. All you needed to do was keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. But you can’t do it, can you?
Because you love chaos, you love the attention.
’ I feel a shiver wash over me as his eyes sharpen on my face. ‘I told you to wait.’
‘I’m not a dog. Or a child.’
His face is all hard bone and steel. ‘Then stop acting like one. Stop blaming others for the consequences of your actions. Stop expecting people to step in and save you.’
‘I didn’t need you to save me,’ I say, and he stares at me in obvious disbelief, which is unsurprising, as I don’t believe what I just said either. But I’d rather hack off my own limbs than admit that.
He nods slowly, his lip curling. ‘Oh, that’s right. I forgot—you can take care of yourself.’
Ignoring him, I lean forward and bang on the privacy glass.
‘Can you drop me at the corner of Fifth and East 74th? Thanks.’
As I sit back down, Renzo’s gaze narrows in on mine in a way that makes my breathing go shallow.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m giving your driver my address.’
His dark-blue eyes get even darker. He is looking at me as if I am an animal in a trap, and it is almost impossible to keep from screaming, because I am trapped.
Trapped in this car with a man I should be thanking, but whom I can’t, because last time I thanked him for rescuing me we ended up kissing.
Shortly before he pushed me away, just as if I were a plague carrier.
My lungs tighten as I replay that day—a day I’ve spent the last three years trying to pretend never happened.
‘But you’re not going back to your apartment,’ he says in that autocratic way that comes as naturally to him as breathing.
There is a buzzing sound inside my head. But I don’t care what Renzo says. There are few places on earth where I feel safe enough to sleep, but my apartment is one of them.
Tamping down my panic, I hold his gaze. ‘Of course I am,’ I snap back. ‘Where else am I going to stay?’
Renzo stares back hard at me, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. ‘I would have thought that was obvious. You’ll stay at my apartment.’
There is a serrated edge to his voice as he makes that earth-shattering statement, and there are no words to describe the way it makes me feel. How it snakes through me, twisting and turning, chafing me inside so that I feel trapped inside my own skin.
‘No,’ I say vehemently, shaking my head. ‘No way. Absolutely not. I’d rather sleep on a park bench.’
‘In that outfit?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Hennessy. Or do you think wearing vintage somehow equips you for sleeping rough?’
‘I’m not going to sleep rough. I’m going back to my apartment.’
He holds my gaze steadily. ‘If the paparazzi are at the office, then they’re probably camped out there too.’
My breath catches. He’s right, of course, but I wasn’t prepared for them at the office. Now I am, it will be fine.
‘What difference does it make if they are? I’ll have to face them tomorrow anyway. Look, I know what I’m doing. If you give them what they want, then they get bored quicker.’
‘Good idea,’ he says in that voice of his, the one that makes me feel like Little Red Riding Hood when she meets the wolf in the woods.
‘Maybe you could parade around in your underwear like you did in Paris. The whole world loved that. Only they didn’t get bored, did they?
They waited for you outside the hotel, and when you drove away one of them was following you so fast, he went into the back of your car.
Didn’t you have to go to hospital with whiplash? ’
I square my shoulders. ‘That was four years ago, and I didn’t “parade anywhere in my underwear”. I was wearing pyjamas and a robe, and I was standing on my balcony.’
‘They’re not going to get bored, Hennessy. Your father is on the run and, while he is, people are going to be eager for updates.’
‘I don’t care. I want to go home, and you can’t stop me.’
The car slows, and I turn towards the door, but Renzo is too fast, and before I can even grasp the handle, he grabs my arms.
‘Let go of me!’ I thrash against his grip, but he effortlessly pins me back against the seat.
‘I will when you calm down.’
The calmness in his voice aggravates me more. ‘How can I be calm when you’re restraining me like this?’
‘It’s for your own good,’ he says flatly. ‘I’m not about to let you jump out of a moving car. And I can’t allow you to go back to the apartment. The press will be waiting, and there are too many of them. And they will want more than you will want to give.’
Tears sting my eyes at the blunt truth of his words, because it’s true.
They will want more. They always do. I don’t want to admit defeat, but right now I don’t think I can face dealing with them.
In the past, I always moved on when there was any heat, but I can’t do that now.
I can’t walk away from the business. And I don’t want to.
I want to prove that I’m not just a nepo-baby. So, I need to stay in New York.
‘Then drop me at the nearest hotel.’
His nearness is making me feel dizzy and untethered. I try to think of something with lots of weight, such as that poem by Emerson that Antony and I had to learn for English.
Renzo arches one eyebrow ‘And what—you’ll check in and stay under the radar for the duration?’ He stares down at me intently, and I lose myself momentarily in the blueness of his gaze. It’s a different kind of drug, but just as dangerous and intoxicating.
‘I don’t think so.’ Now he shakes his head. ‘You’re acting as if this is some kind of funfair ride, but you can’t just hop on and off.’
‘Pity. I mean, who doesn’t love a merry-go-round?’
He leans in so close that I can see that he is a man at the end of his tether. ‘I don’t.’
I glower at him. ‘Not everyone is as fun-phobic as you. Normal people love funfairs.’
‘And shareholders and advertisers hate scandal. So, unless you can find some other appropriate person to babysit you, you’ll stay at mine.’
‘Why not just go the whole hog and send me to a nunnery?’ I practically spit the question at him, but he doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. The hard twist to his mouth makes it clear that the discussion is closed.
I angle my face towards the window and feign interest in the clouds scudding across the bruised-looking sky. I’ve stayed in so many places around the world, one more won’t make any difference. Only, I can’t do it cold. I let my arms go limp, and after a moment he releases his grip.
‘I still have to go to my apartment,’ I say quietly. ‘There’s things I need.’
I try to keep the urgency out of my voice. I fail. I know because Renzo’s eyes lock onto mine and there is a tense, electric moment that swells and fills the car like dry ice at a club.
Renzo
Outside the window, the city seems to twitch like a needle on a lie detector.
‘What things?’
I scan Hennessy’s face as she gives me one of those none-of-your-business looks she’s so good at. Does she mean drugs?
‘I need some clothes.’
‘Then buy some. We can stop en route.’
‘No. I want my clothes. Besides, how’s it going to look if someone snaps me on a shopping spree when Charlie’s on the run for tax evasion?’
She has a point, but there is tension in her voice that matches the sudden stiffness in her shoulders.
She is holding back, hiding something, distracting me with her reasonableness.
Or maybe it’s her scent that’s distracting me—that light, floral perfume that drifts like woodsmoke through my dreams, teasing my senses so that I wake feeling hard, hungry and reckless. Like a stranger.
‘It’ll be fine. I can be in and out in five minutes,’ she says carelessly, but there is still tension there.
‘I can call Sam, the concierge. He’s known me for ever, and he’s completely Team Hennessy.
If you drop me off just up the block, he’ll let me in through the trade entrance.
I’ve done it before,’ she adds, still doing her careless act.
I make her wait before I reply. My first instinct is to refuse. But I don’t trust her not to try and sneak back on her own. Far better that I keep an eye on her.
‘Fine. We’ll swing by your apartment and pick up your stuff on one condition.’ I hold her gaze and she stares back at me warily.
‘Which is?’
‘That I come in with you.’
Her eyes widen, the pupils flaring. ‘You don’t need to do that. I can find my own apartment.’
‘I’m sure you can, but I have no intention of letting you out of my sight. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it’
Her pulse is beating jerkily in her throat. She gives me one of those unblinking stares that takes in everything about me and gives back nothing.
‘Whatever.’ She slumps back against the leather upholstery, her arms wrapping around her waist. ‘Have it your way.’
‘That’s how I like it,’ I say, not just because it’s true, but because I like watching that flush of colour seep along her cheekbones.
Ten minutes later, Kenny, my driver, pulls in several hundred metres up the street from her apartment building. ‘Here.’ I reach into the side of the door and pull out a New York Mets baseball cap. ‘Put this on.’
‘Wow.’ She takes it and glances over Kenny’s shoulder at her reflection in the rear-view mirror, miming confusion. ‘It’s like magic—I hardly recognise myself.’