Forbidden Until Midnight

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

New Year’s Eve five years ago, Paris

‘O F COURSE THE Dubois wouldn’t be so crass as to arrange their event at the Eiffel. It’s been done to death .’

‘Naturally. But this is... acceptable .’

‘Quite,’ came the insincere response.

Santo ground his teeth together and checked his watch. He was late and impatient. His eagerness to see Eleanor had grown into almost monstrous proportions now that he was actually here. The two elderly ladies, a Müller and an Allencourt, conversing in English, hovered by the entrance, in the way. One of them peered meanly over her shoulder at him, disdain evident the moment she recognised him.

Those of her generation had been less inclined to accept his father’s marriage to his mother and, as such, less inclined to accept him . However, as he made them and their children obscene amounts of money they tended to consider him a necessary evil.

He flashed his most charming smile, with just enough wickedness to melt the ice in her gaze, before her friend pulled her through the entrance to the Pavillon Dauphine. The grand building, situated at the bottom of the Avenue de l’Impératrice, was over a century old and every inch of its grandeur was marked in classic lines of beauty throughout. But at that moment Santo Sabatini couldn’t have given a damn for any of it.

He had one goal and intended to find her as fast as humanly possible. For almost the entire year he’d thought of little else. She had occupied his waking thoughts and tormented his sleep. The innocence of her request, the clear intention behind it, had driven him near wild with want. He’d almost begun to regret keeping tabs on her university career, the updates keeping him tied to her in a way he both wanted and loathed.

But then, a few months ago, something had changed. Her online presence had dropped away to nothing, with no mention of her or—more surprisingly—Edward Carson or his business. For a man who craved attention it was a little unusual. Then, a month ago, Santo had discovered that she had stopped attending class, making both him and Pietro deeply concerned. But no amount of digging had uncovered anything.

Santo stalked through the grand entrance and into the large sprawling conservatory, where a long dining table was overburdened with a spectacular feast, but the smell of the rich food only turned his stomach. Scanning the faces of those seated, he knew she wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel her presence.

He reached the lavish ballroom, one wall covered in large mirrors encased in ornate mouldings, honey-coloured wooden floors gleaming beneath the gentle lighting, and still there was no sign of her. Ignoring the way that the pace of his pulse had picked up in concern, he swept into the next room and the next, until he’d covered all the rooms bar the ladies’ toilets.

Then, through the window, he saw that there were people gathered outside, beneath the warm glow of heaters. An outside bar had been set up, and smaller seating areas attracted the few that were braving the cold in their furs and finery.

Ignoring his usual distaste for such things, he approached the patio doors that would have taken him out onto the area gently illuminated by strings of fairy lights, searching for a single face from amongst the crowd.

Already he felt a twisting deep in his gut. The only people outside were from Fairchild’s group. And with a blinding sense of betrayal, he knew she was there amongst them.

He hung back in a darkened corner of the room until he spotted her, laughing at something someone had said in a gauche way he had never before associated with her. The rage that he felt in that moment, the pure fury that she had gone back to the very people who would have used her, who had abused her, was a red haze that he could barely breathe through. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like a war drum and it took nearly everything in him to wrestle himself under control.

The realisation drained the blood from his head so quickly he became lightheaded. Because in that moment he’d felt a violence he’d only ever witnessed in his father. Instinctively and unconsciously, his hand went to his eyebrow, fingers pressed against the scar as a cold sweat lay in a fine sheen across his skin beneath the shirt and tuxedo he wore tonight.

He braced his palm against the wall, holding himself back, holding him up , knuckles gleaming white under the force of it.

How could she?

Past hurts mixed nauseatingly with the present as he almost violently forced himself back in line.

What had happened to him?

Behaving like some jealous schoolboy with his first crush. As if she had ever been anything more to him than a promise he’d made to an old man to whom he owed a debt.

In his mind, he wrote over the memories of their interactions, editing out the impact and the intimacy as if he could undo every effect Eleanor Carson had ever had on him. As if he could backpedal his feelings and shove them far back behind a line he had never crossed, and would never again.

He was done. He would fulfil his promise and no more.

Every single part of Eleanor was in agony. Her body, her soul, all buckling under the weight of the trauma that had taken everything she’d thought she knew about herself and those in her life and slashed a line through it all.

She laughed at something Ekaterina had said and it sounded as hollow and false as she felt. Resentment seethed beneath the surface as she reached for a glass of something she barely even tasted as she downed the alcohol, the faint buzz touching her senses but still not enough to take away the pain that cut at her lungs every time she took a breath.

She shivered, even though the heat from the outside lamps was such that many around her were without shawls or coats.

Tony slid a glance her way. Suspicion and anger mixed with that sense of snide superiority he could no longer hide from her. Because something had happened since she’d discovered the truth back in November, since her family had become something alien and unknowable to her. It was as if she could see through it all. The lies, the secrets, the bullshit.

She laughed to herself this time, uncaring of the concern in Ekaterina’s face. For all Eleanor knew, that was as fake as the rest of them. She’d seen Dilly earlier in the evening, her one-time best friend giving her a wide berth. And suddenly the tears she’d been holding at bay pressed terrifyingly close to the corners of her eyes.

She bit her lip, hoping that the sharp sting would work to pull her out of that moment. The moment when she’d thought of how much she wished there was someone to confide in. Someone to seek help from. Support. Love . But all of that was gone.

She was on her own now in a way that had truly shocked her to her core. Because eight months ago she’d discovered that Edward Carson was not her father. And overnight he had become a complete stranger to her.

‘Who is my father?’ she’d cried, begged, pleading with her mother, whose own shock had been worn clearly on her ghostly white features, contrasting with the fierce red fury of her father’s.

Eleanor looked around hazily at the sea of faces, wondering who—if anyone—knew. Or whether they could somehow tell that she wasn’t Edward Carson’s daughter. Were they all laughing at her behind her back? Had they always been?

No one can know. No one can ever know.

Little Freddie’s blood drive to help the friend from school who’d been diagnosed with leukaemia had irrevocably changed the trajectory of her life. He’d happily gathered their donor cards together, ticking off each one of their blood types, blissfully unaware of the sudden, devastating change in room temperature. That evening, Freddie had been sent to his room without explanation and little drama because somehow, without explanation, he’d realised that something was terribly wrong.

The single slap across her mother’s face delivered cruelly by the man she’d thought of as her father had broken something deep within her. But no matter how many times he’d asked, yelled or shouted, demeaned or bullied, her mother had refused to name her father. She had simply said, ‘I don’t know,’ over and over again, in the hope that either her daughter or husband might eventually believe her.

And then Edward Carson had turned on her.

‘You listen to me, and you listen good . If you want to have even the smallest chance of maintaining any kind of relationship with your brother, not a word of this gets out. Ever,’ he’d warned darkly. ‘You’ll go back to your friends, you might even find another fiancé. I don’t care. All that matters is that none of this gets out.’

As the words ran through her mind like a film reel, she knew that the worst was yet to come.

‘I will not have it known that I let a bastard into my family and treated her like my own.’

A waiter passed with another tray of drinks and she took the glass of whisky, swallowing the tears that had gathered in her throat along with the peaty alcohol.

Everything felt wrong. Her skin crawled as if some dark nightmare had slipped over her and she couldn’t escape it.

The man she had thought was her father, the man she had loved, the man for whom she had worked hard to become someone he could be proud of, had turned into a vicious monster. He had all but cast out her mother, allowing her to remain in the house only to save face.

And her brother—poor little Freddie who, having turned twelve over the summer, knew that something was wrong—had begun to retreat into himself, as if pole-axed by the secrets in the family. Yes, Eleanor could leave. But she didn’t doubt for one minute that her father would prevent her from returning or seeing her brother while he remained under his roof. And what would happen to Freddie without her mother or her around to protect him?

She didn’t think her father would do anything to him, other than mould his young, barely formed personality into whatever he wanted. And that, she was beginning to realise, was the most terrifying thing about the whole situation.

That her brother would lose his innocence. That he would be twisted and warped into her father’s image. That Freddie would become like these young men in the garden, laughing at whatever cruelty had taken their fancy.

Because that was what they did. They found something or someone and made them the butt of their jokes, casting them as an outsider to torment for their own amusement. And she didn’t want Freddie anywhere near these people. Fighting back the cramp fisting her stomach, she threw back another mouthful of whisky, a drink she’d acquired a taste for two years earlier, with Santo.

Santo.

She knew he’d be here this evening. She thought that perhaps he might have come here with expectations. Expectations that she’d encouraged last year, back when she’d thought she’d survived the worst that life could throw at her.

A bubble of almost hysterical cynicism rose from deep within her.

Na?ve. Foolish.

She knew that Santo had believed her to be both of those things. And he’d been right. All along, she had been incomparably na?ve and utterly foolish. And now it seemed as if broken shards of rose-coloured glass lay at her bare feet, ready to cut her if she moved even an inch.

‘Eleanor, are you sure you’re okay?’ Ekaterina asked, and she was about to reply when she felt it. When she felt him .

She swallowed, capable only of nodding her reassurance. Because if she opened her lips the only thing that would emerge was a miserable sob.

The hairs stood up at the back of her neck, goosebumps shivering over her skin. The weight of his attention was an icy finger trail across her shoulder blades, poking and prodding an accusation of betrayal and disappointment.

She could only imagine his shock at seeing her back here amongst the very people who epitomised everything he seemed to hate about this event. The very people she had turned her back on three years before. The very people that her father had blackmailed her into joining again.

‘If anyone finds out, you’ll never see Frederick ever again.’

And Santo would. He would find out, he would cut to the heart of her secret so effortlessly, and she couldn’t allow him to do that. She couldn’t risk it. So, with that threat ringing in her ears, she turned her back to where she felt Santo’s presence and said to Ekaterina, ‘Let’s dance.’

‘And that’s when I told him that he could invest whatever he wanted, but that I was having nothing to do with it.’

‘Quite right. So have you considered...’

Santo tuned out from the banal conversation of the men and women around him. It was always the same: who had the most money, where could that money be put to use, what could they get? This constant grab, grab, grab.

His gaze scanned the room, refusing to settle on Eleanor, but always keeping her within his line of sight. He clenched his jaw as, from the corner of his eye, he saw her wobble awkwardly on her heels. He hadn’t been counting, but he could tell that she had already had more to drink that evening than all of the previous New Year’s Eve parties put together.

Something was wrong.

And she hadn’t come to him.

Old insecurities rose to the surface. Memories of being unable to do anything to protect his mother, of being helpless against his father. And then, just when he’d got big enough to fight back, his father had used her against him. The threat against her was the only leash that Gallo Sabatini had needed against Santo, and he’d used it well.

Until that last day. He’d heard the argument from outside the house. The screams that had caused the blood to freeze in his veins. Santo had rushed through the doors of the villa just outside Rome and found his mother crouched over his father’s broken body lying at the bottom of the curved staircase.

With shaking hands, she’d pulled her mobile from her pocket. He’d honestly thought she’d been calling the police until he’d heard her begging Pietro to come. When his mother had looked up and found him standing there...

He’d never forget the look on her face.

The shock, the guilt, the shame...the fear . His mother had been frightened. Of him . Of what he might have seen, or heard. And in his entire life he never wanted to see someone look at him with that same fear.

Pietro had arrived and quietly dismissed all the staff. He’d taken his mother into another room and spoken to her for nearly half an hour before he came out. He’d told Santo that he’d called the police and would speak to them himself, that Santo didn’t have to worry about anything.

Santo had watched as Pietro managed the entire situation while he’d been unable to take his gaze away from the dead stare of his father’s eyes. In the weeks and months that had followed, Pietro was the only person who could get his mother to leave her bed. It hadn’t mattered how much he’d begged or pleaded, only Pietro could help.

At sixteen, it hadn’t even crossed Santo’s mind to be jealous of Pietro. He’d just been unspeakably thankful that there was someone in his mother’s life who made her return to even the smallest semblance of the mother he’d once had.

Pietro had tried to explain to him that it had been an accident. That they’d been arguing and that his mother had acted in self-defence. But the older man didn’t seem to understand that it didn’t matter to Santo. Truly. Self-defence or otherwise. If it hadn’t happened like that, it could have been his mother lying at the bottom of the stairs. It was that simple.

But of all the people in his parents’ lives, of all the people here , it was only an outsider like Pietro who had ever cared about them beyond his father. Pietro, a man who had been born on the wrong side of the tracks and, no matter how much money he’d amassed, would never have gained entry into a society like this. Pedigree. That was what mattered to the people here.

And it turned his stomach.

Someone barged into his shoulder as they passed, Santo’s head snapping to follow the blond head back towards the dance area, where various people were gathered. The head turned enough for him to recognise Antony Fairchild’s sneer, the foolish boy believing himself to have scored a point on whatever childish game he played in his head.

‘He still hasn’t forgiven you for snubbing him last year, I see,’ commented the richly accented Marie-Laure.

‘But have you?’ Santo asked in response, without taking his eyes off the boy until he disappeared into the middle of the throng. Santo knew that she was still displeased with him for turning down her advances. And the woman certainly knew how to hold a grudge.

Marie-Laure waited until she had his attention before answering. And he respected that. Whatever could be said about her indiscretions, or her political power plays, Santo always knew where he stood with her. There was artifice about everyone else, but at least with her he knew where he stood.

‘That depends.’

‘On?’ he said, turning his full attention on her. He was standing close enough to see the way her body responded to him instinctively, the widening of her pupils, the almost imperceptible hitch in her breathing.

‘How you’re planning to make it up to me,’ she teased.

He smirked.

This was easy. This was what he wanted from life. He’d paid his dues with complexities and lies. He didn’t need Eleanor or anyone like her. This was all he needed.

He bent his lips to her ears. ‘Long,’ he whispered. ‘And slow.’ He dipped his head lower. ‘And hard,’ he promised.

As Eleanor paused on the dance floor the room continued to spin. Frowning, she put her hand to her head, but that didn’t help. But what did a little spinning matter when her entire life was spinning out of her control?

She shrugged and smiled at Ekaterina, who had at least stopped asking her if she was okay. She saw Dilly pass by at the edge of the crowd and growled in her mind. Or at least she thought it had been in her mind, but the way people had turned to look at her made her question whether it might have slipped out.

She lurched towards a passing waiter, who looked worried as she went to grab for another shot glass of sambuca.

She loved sambuca. She had decided that it was her very favourite drink. It was sweet and thick and after downing it she didn’t care as much. Santo could keep his stinking whisky. She would now only drink sambuca for ever.

But as she put the empty glass back on the waiter’s tray she caught Santo standing with Marie-Laure from the corner of her eye. Her stomach clenched involuntarily as she saw Marie-Laure gazing at Santo in a way that left absolutely no doubt as to what she wanted from him.

And that wouldn’t have been so bad, had Santo not been leaning into her ear with wicked intent as he looked down at her. It was so markedly different to how he’d looked at her at the end of last year.

This was older, darker, sexier .

Burned by the shocking twist of jealousy that pierced her breast at the sight of the naked want in the older woman’s gaze, Eleanor averted her eyes. It clearly didn’t matter to Marie-Laure that he was twenty years her junior, and it clearly didn’t matter to Santo who saw them.

She forced down her jealousy just as someone grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back against him.

‘Dance with me,’ a familiar voice urged in her ear, pulling her against his crotch as irritation and recognition flashed through her body all at once.

‘Get off, Tony,’ she said, pushing at his hands. But he didn’t let go.

‘Come on, Lore, you used to love dancing with me,’ Tony insisted, his hands leaving her waist to press against her body in places she didn’t want him anywhere near.

‘Let me go,’ she spat.

‘You’re just playing hard to get,’ he accused, his breath hot against her already feverish skin.

Eleanor twisted in his embrace and slapped him hard, and for a second what she saw in his eyes made her blood freeze. And then, before she could feel scared, she was hit by a wave of nausea and she retched. Tony’s expression turned from fury to disgust as he pushed her away and all Eleanor could think was that she needed to get to the bathroom before she threw up.

She pushed people out of the way as she lurched awkwardly away from the ballroom and towards the bathrooms she had seen in the corridor. Shoving open the door, she went straight to the sink and ran the cold water tap. Drinking straight from the stream of water, she swallowed, hoping that it would soothe her churning stomach.

After an eternity the feeling passed and she thrust her hand in the water before pressing the cool dampness against her face and skin, no longer caring about her make-up or anything other than making it stop.

She just wanted it all to stop.

Struck by a wave of loneliness, she sobbed and careened into the cubicle, flicking the lock on the door and sinking to the cool tiles of the thankfully clean floor.

‘You’re just playing hard to get.’

‘No one can know.’

‘I let a bastard into my family.’

‘You’ll never see Frederick ever again.’

Round and round the words went, spinning in waves of nausea and the sickly-sweet concoction of alcohol in her stomach. She just wanted to go to sleep. Perhaps then she might never wake up.

Santo stalked towards the bathroom.

‘She’s fine, Santo. Leave her.’

Santo didn’t spare Marie-Laure a backward glance. Anyone in their right mind would have been able to see that Eleanor Carson was as far from fine as was humanly possible.

He’d let his own ego get in the way of what he was supposed to do, which was to keep an eye on her. Self-recrimination was a familiar stick to beat himself with, but he’d never thought he’d have to feel it with regard to her.

He went to knock on the door when a woman emerged from the bathrooms, just able to stop herself in time before she’d walked smack-bang into him.

‘Is there anyone other than Eleanor Carson in there?’ he demanded.

The woman shook her head quickly and ducked away from him to scurry off down the corridor.

Santo pushed the door open and found the bathroom empty. Decked out in the style of the late eighteen-hundreds, five sinks in front of five mirrors lined one side of the room and five bathroom stalls the other. Powder pink, pastel blue and gold mouldings around the room suited the pavilion’s overall design but did nothing but irritate Santo’s alert senses.

‘Eleanor,’ he growled.

No response.

‘I know you’re in here, I saw you come in.’

Still no response.

‘If you don’t let me know that you’re okay I’ll have to assume that you’ve drunk yourself into such a stupor, you’ve passed out and I will start kicking down doors,’ he warned.

‘Gowwaay...’ finally came a rather slurred reply.

‘No can do, Princess.’

‘Jussst leave me alooone...’

Merda . How could her friends let her get like this? And then he remembered what kind of friends they were and felt the resentment build in him again.

‘Open the door, Eleanor,’ he commanded. ‘Now,’ he warned, pulse pounding until he heard the click of the lock.

He pulled the door open and looked down to find her crumpled on the floor.

His heart yanked, hard.

Pitiable. That was what she looked like, and from the flush of shame on her cheeks she knew it too. Anger began to dissolve as he crouched down to her level.

Questions filled his mind and throat.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Whassit matter?’

He frowned, struggling to interpret her slurred English. ‘Eleanor—’

‘Doesn’t matter. Not any more.’

And, to his horror, she started to cry.

‘I want to go home,’ she whimpered.

‘Okay. I’ll get you home,’ he said, pulling her gently into his arms.

‘But I can’t,’ she confessed, tucking her head into his chest as if she could hide from the world.

‘Of course you can. I’ll take you,’ he insisted.

‘Don’t have a home. Don’t have a father. Not any more,’ she said, before closing her eyes and seemingly passing out.

‘Eleanor—’ He shook her gently in his arms, but she didn’t rouse.

Alarm spread through Santo’s entire being.

‘Don’t have a father.’

Did she know? Did Edward Carson know? Cristo , that changed everything.

Santo was halfway out of the door when he came face to face with her mother, Analise. She took one look at Eleanor in his arms and gestured for him to follow her.

They drew several curious glances as she led Santo towards the back exit.

‘Edward’s waiting,’ Analise warned and Santo nodded to acknowledge he’d heard.

‘He knows?’ Santo asked Analise.

‘Yes. Since November.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘What about Eleanor?’ he demanded.

‘She’ll be okay, if she plays along,’ her mother confirmed.

Santo gritted his teeth together and unconsciously tightened his hold on her.

‘What do you want me to tell Pietro?’ he asked.

There was an almost imperceptible hitch in her stride before the words, ‘Tell him whatever you want,’ were tossed over her shoulder.

As they came out into the slap of cold night air, Eleanor stirred in his arms. He followed Analise Carson to where a black limousine waited, with Edward Carson glaring angrily at him and his wife, yet not even bothering to spare his daughter a glance.

‘If you’ve touched her, I don’t want her,’ Carson stated.

The accusation hit Santo low and hard, everything primal in him rising against delivering Eleanor back into the man’s care.

‘If I’d touched her she wouldn’t be coming back to you,’ Santo growled and he knew in that moment it was the truth. If Eleanor ever came to him she would never need anything from Edward Carson again. He would give her whatever she needed for however long she needed it.

‘Put her in the car,’ Carson ordered and he looked to Eleanor’s mother for permission. All she had to do was say no and he would take her away.

He could see the warring in her gaze and he knew what was holding both women back. Frederick. Eleanor’s brother.

Fighting every instinct he had, Santo put Eleanor gently into the car and watched as Carson slammed the door and went round to the other side of the limousine, not taking his eyes off Santo until the last second.

As Santo watched the car disappear into the night he retrieved his phone and found Pietro’s name.

‘Carson knows,’ Santo said the moment the call clicked through. ‘As does Eleanor.’

The silence on the end of the phone was deafening.

The rules of the game had now changed.