CHAPTER THREE
‘YOURBANKDETAILS,’ Sebastiano commanded once he’d opened his banking app.
She recited the sort code and account number off the top of her head.
‘And your surname?’
Her forget-me-not eyes flashed. ‘Sansom.’
He tapped it in, uncertain why he would feel disconcertment for not knowing this. There had been no need for him to know Layla’s surname before. It was good that he knew it now though. It would make it easier to track her down when the time came to take his revenge. He didn’t want to involve Raj or the staff here at the Diamond Club. This was between him and Layla, no one else.
Being Sicilian, revenge came as naturally to him as loving his family. Unlike the majority of his compatriots though, Sebastiano was of the opinion that revenge was better served cold. In truth, he’d had little need to act out in vengeance before. He came from an enormously wealthy, respected family. Slights of the kind that required vengeance were few and far between. When issues that angered or irritated him arose he dealt with them immediately, time being too short to waste on fools or incompetents.
Layla was neither a fool nor an incompetent. For two years she’d played him like the finest violin and tonight was her virtuoso performance.
She would realise in his own time what a mistake she’d made targeting him for that performance.
His revenge would take a much different flavour from the media’s portrayal of Sicilian vengeance.
Confirmation of the transfer flashed on his screen. He held it up for her. ‘Done.’
Not looking at him, she swiped at her phone, read what was on the screen and took a visible breath of relief.
Enjoy the relief. Enjoy those breaths. Soon, you will be begging to breathe easy.‘You won’t get away with this. You know that, right?’
She seemed to shrink before lifting her chin and bravely saying, ‘If you hurt me, you hurt our baby.’
He laughed, enjoying how the sound of his laughter made her shrink into herself again. ‘I will hurt you, Layla, but you can sleep safe—I was raised to never lift a hand to a woman and I’m not going to start with a hustler like you. There is no baby. I applaud you on a job well done. Go and spend your ill-gotten money while you can.’
She dropped her stare. Hands shaking, she put her phone into her bag and then unzipped a pocket in it and produced a small key. Fixing her eyes back on him, she grazed so hard on her bottom lip that when she spoke he could see the indentation made by her teeth.
‘I am pregnant, Sebastiano. I didn’t want it to be like this but you ghosted me and made it impossible for me to contact you. I am giving you a way out. I do want you to be involved in our child’s life but if you can’t commit to that then please, for our baby’s sake, leave me alone.’
He shook his head with faux disappointment. ‘As deeply touching as that little speech was, it is time for you to release me.’
Backing away from him, she threw the key but her aim was off and it landed on the floor beside his bed on the other side from the post he was chained to.
Seeing the uncertainty cloud her beautiful face, he raised his eyebrows. ‘I can’t reach it, cara.’
The uncertainty deepened.
‘I fulfilled my side of your demands,’ he pointed out. ‘Time to fulfil yours.’
She gave the slightest nod before tentatively moving to the side of the bed and bending down to scoop the key up.
Sebastiano waited until precisely the right moment to pounce.
Layla had never truly appreciated Sebastiano’s agility or the wingspan of his muscular arms, not until she was straightening with the key in her hand and a much larger hand suddenly whipped through the air and clasped her wrist. Caught off guard, the key dropped onto the mattress as she was half pulled and half stumbled onto the bed. In the blink of an eye she found herself sprawled on top of him, her breasts crushed against his hard chest and her face in his neck, only the tips of her toes still making any contact with the thick carpet.
She was winded more through shock at the unexpected than anything physical, long stunned beats passing before she found anything approaching sense and tried to scramble off him. Tried because the arm of the hand that had captured her wrist was now wrapped around her back, trapping her to him. Trapping her against Sebastiano’s mostly naked body...
Panic shot through her and she dug her hands into the mattress for the purchase needed to lift her face out of his neck then wriggled urgently...except the way she instinctively twisted to pull her face away to stop herself breathing in his scent meant she was trying to escape to the opposite side of the bed from where her feet were. Before she could demand he let her go, Sebastiano clasped her bottom and shifted beneath her, pulling her further onto the bed so she was no longer on top of him but facing him with her head in the crook of his chained arm and her legs draped over his thighs.
His gleaming green eyes captured hers. A seductive, knowing smile tugged on lips that were so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her mouth.
It was no longer an effort to hold her breath. Layla’s lungs had closed up, and when he slid his hand under her top and over her bare skin, the sensation that followed was so intense that the ache between her legs, a dull burn since she’d tortured herself by touching him so intimately, deepened into a painful throb.
This was why she’d succumbed to her desires and given herself to him. The intensity of her feelings. The depth of her desire. Lust like she’d never imagined existed, growing with each of his visits to the club, deepening with each lock of their eyes until she’d found herself fantasising about him strolling into his suite, taking one look at her and throwing her over his shoulders and carrying her to this very bed and doing whatever he wanted to her. When she’d handed her notice in, she’d known her resignation meant the unspoken, invisible physical barrier they had both erected would be torn down.
One night. That was all she’d wanted, all she’d thought she needed. But it hadn’t been enough, not for either of them. The reality of their lovemaking had been headier than even her wildest fantasies. Only Sebastiano’s meeting with the Bank of England the next morning had compelled them to drag themselves out of bed to shower and dress, and even then they didn’t make it out of the bedroom before he had her back up against the wall.
‘Dio, how am I going to get my head straight to discuss regulations when I can still taste your sex on my tongue?’ he’d murmured, spearing her hair as he kissed her deeply. ‘I will call you later, as soon as I’m free.’
But the call had never come. She’d waited until the next evening and sent him a breezy message that in no way matched the dread that had been thumping in her heart. Hope your meeting went well and all’s okay. Layla. Blue ticks indicated the message had been delivered and read. His blocking of her had come later. She didn’t know when. She didn’t reach out to him again until after the pregnancy test.
She’d been so wrong. One night had been enough for him. He’d only responded to her seduction tonight because he was so highly sexed he would respond to any woman offering herself on a plate to him, and it was with that thought shouting in her brain that Layla clamped her lips together to swallow the moisture filling her mouth and tried desperately to tune out the pleas of her delirious body.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she said in a voice that was far huskier than she’d been aiming for.
Another knowing smile on his lips, he inched his face even closer. ‘Think about what?’
If Sebastiano was agile he had nothing on Layla. Now she had her wits about her, she used her natural litheness to spring herself free. Feet connecting to the floor, she snatched up her handbag and raced to the door.
His mocking laughter hurt her ears. ‘Run, little rabbit, run. Run as fast as you can and as far as you can. It doesn’t matter. You know I will catch you.’
Sebastiano climbed out of the car and gazed up at the office block that had once been modern but now showed severe signs of wear and tear. Set in the stonework of the doorway, an intercom with a list of the businesses that occupied it. He pressed the button for Clayton Community Law and announced himself. The door buzzed. He was expected.
With a paper sign on the aged elevator declaring it out of order, he climbed the stairs to the third floor where Laurence Clayton, the law firm’s bushy-white-bearded founder, was waiting in a rundown reception area for him.
‘A pleasure to meet you. Thank you for agreeing to meet me out of business hours,’ Sebastiano said as they shook hands.
‘Believe me, the pleasure is all mine. My office is this way. Forgive the carpet. We keep hoping to replace it but funds never stretch that far.’
The threadbare carpet, Sebastiano was certain, was older than his father.
‘I am quite sure we can do something about that,’ he assured the man who’d set up a not-for-profit law firm three decades ago and dedicated his working life to providing free legal services for people who couldn’t afford it, all paid for through fundraisers and charitable donations. ‘I understand your computer system is in need of updating too?’
Laurence opened a door to reveal a small office heaped with legal texts and mountains of paperwork, and pulled a rueful face. ‘Sending attachments to the courts and barristers is our biggest problem. The system is so dilapidated and cranky it can’t always cope with the size of the files. We manage—we always manage—but it’s frustrating because it’s sucking time that should be spent helping our clients.’
Sebastiano took the offered hard chair and smiled.
Layla dragged herself out of bed after yet another fitful excuse for sleep, showered, dried her hair, and dressed carefully in skinny black trousers, a cream and black horizontally striped top, and a pair of black ankle boots that were on the cusp between funky and professional. After throwing a slice of toast and a cup of tea down her throat she went out into the cosy back garden to say goodbye to her mum.
Jilly Sansom was on her knees doing some early morning weeding, although that was really the wrong word to use for her mother’s method of pulling out unwanted plants considering she found so many of them to be pretty that she tended to let them stay rooted and do as they pleased. Whatever her methods, the results were incredible, their back garden a tranquil oasis that blazed with year-round colour.
It was the garden that was making her mum prove so stubborn about moving to the suburbs with her. The garden was her labour of love. The cannabis farm next door and their area’s recent crime rate explosion paled into insignificance in her mum’s mind. Layla had fallen in love with one of the houses she’d viewed that weekend, one that had a garden she was certain her mum would love, and had already arranged a second viewing to drag her mum along to. She couldn’t bear to leave her behind.
Jilly beamed to see her daughter. ‘You look great. Very professional.’
Layla yawned through a smile.
Eyes so like her own brimmed with compassion. ‘Another bad night?’
She gave a ‘what can you do?’ shrug. ‘It’ll get better.’
‘It always does,’ her mum agreed then brightened again. ‘Got your passport?’
‘In my handbag.’ She was flying to Italy that morning to meet with a mega-rich philanthropist who wanted to set up a charitable legal firm using a similar model to the one she worked for with hints of a sizeable donation to their own firm dangling before them.
She’d been blown away at being chosen to represent the company. ‘Me?’ she’d said on Friday to Laurence, the firm’s founder, when told about it. ‘But I only qualified five minutes ago!’ Well, three months ago. Three months since Layla Sansom had become a fully qualified solicitor of law.
‘And that’s why it has to be you,’ Laurence had told her earnestly. ‘You could have joined any law firm when you graduated but you chose us. I’m well aware that numerous other firms have tried to poach you since you gained your full qualifications but you have stayed loyal.’
‘Only because I believe in what we do.’
‘And that’s why it has to be you—you are still passionate about what we do.’ He’d pulled a wry face. ‘You haven’t been around long enough to get jaded.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll happen at some point,’ she’d assured him.
He’d laughed. ‘That’s the spirit. But seriously, if anyone can sell the importance of our work, it’s you, so clear your diary for Monday.’
After kissing her mother goodbye and promising to let her know when she’d landed, Layla went back inside, grabbed her smart black fitted jacket and carried it to the living room to wait for the car that would be taking her to the airport.
Standing at the reinforced sash bay window, she watched a small gang of teenagers in school uniform trundle to the bus stop she would normally catch her own bus to work from. Most of them were kids she’d known since they were in their own mothers’ bellies, some she’d babysat for in her own teenage years. She loved the lot of them, pains in the butt that they were, but wished every interaction with them didn’t come with the argument of why she wasn’t going to buy cigarettes or booze for them or why she didn’t want to buy cannabis from them. Poor kids. She could only pray that they stayed strong, focused on their education, and got the hell out of this neighbourhood. Pray, too, that they stayed within the walls of their homes when the sun went down. The people who roamed these streets at night were not the kind of people you looked in the eye. At night you only left your home if you had to, and if you did have to, you kept your head down and walked as fast as you could.
A tall, dark-haired man appeared on the other side of the street. Layla’s heart caught in her throat and she shrank back from the window even though her brain had already registered that it wasn’t him.
It had been over two weeks since she’d fled the Diamond Club. For the first week she’d shied away from all shadows. For the first week she’d behaved like a fugitive in a film, constantly looking over her shoulder and watching out for places and spaces where someone could hide and pounce. A cricked neck had stopped the constant checking over the shoulder but even now, travelling on a crowded bus through London’s rush hour, she felt exposed, which was ridiculous. As if Sebastiano would be seen dead on public transport! All the same, she felt safer on busses than the tube so that was now her favoured mode of transport. She’d also taken the precaution of adding even more locks and chains to the front and back doors at home leading her mum to complain that it took longer to lock up than to brush her teeth. Although she knew deep down that these precautionary measures were a complete waste of time when up against a man with unlimited resources, they at least allowed her to get a little sleep, if not the full night she so craved.
What was even more ridiculous was that she knew perfectly well Sebastiano wasn’t going to break into her home and kidnap her from her bed and he wasn’t going to snatch her from the street or drag her from a bus.
Constantly thinking and worrying about the form his revenge would take was what was stopping her from sleeping. She hoped he waited a few months longer, when hopefully the pregnancy would be visible. He wouldn’t be able to deny it then. Three and a half months gone and no one would guess she had a baby growing inside her.
She wished she could stop the idle fantasies that kept creeping on her when her brain became especially woolly with lack of sleep, of Sebastiano approaching her and then stopping mid-step, his gaze dipping to her stomach and the expression on his face changing from whatever revenge looked like to rapture.
Despite everything, she wanted him to want their baby. She wanted him to love it. She wanted her child to have what she’d never had—a father.
An email from a client pinged, an impoverished woman with three small children, under threat of eviction for non-payment of rent after the children’s father stopped his maintenance payments. It was for people like this client that Layla had chosen her career path, people who needed but couldn’t afford decent legal representation. People like her mother.
It was as she was sending her reply of reassurance that everything was in hand that a huge car with darkened windows expertly pulled in to the small gap at the front of her house. Every person within Layla’s eye line turned to gawp at it.
Only when she’d unlocked all the locks and chains on the front door and stepped outside did she realise the car was a stretched Bentley.
‘Wow,’ she murmured. Her years at the Diamond Club had taught her more about the societal value of cars than she could ever hope to forget, and this car was of a breed of the super-rich.
The waiting chauffeur opened the back door for her.
The interior was every bit as luxurious as she could have imagined, the cream seats made of the softest leather, all the panelling a highly buffed dark wood.
‘If you open the panel in front of you, you will find cold drinks to help yourself to,’ the chauffeur said via an intercom.
London’s streets were heaving that busy Monday morning, and as they crawled their way through rush hour traffic, Layla had a marvellous time exploring the luxurious cabin. Such a marvellous time did she have that it wasn’t until The Shard suddenly loomed in her vision that she realised she was being driven in completely the wrong direction for the airport...
Just as she was processing this, the driver entered an underground car park. A trickle of unease crawled up her spine.
The car came to a stop. The back door opened. A tall figure in a dark grey suit slid in.
‘Hello, little rabbit.’
A handcuff was locked around her wrist before she even found the wits to scream.