Chapter Eight

Outside the mausoleum, it’s pitch-black. They’ve inexplicably dressed me in my gold L’Wren Scott dress, and I shiver from top to toe. I don’t know how long it’s been since they chained me up to this marble pillar, but I don’t care about the cold. I know that every moment we spend inside the mausoleum will bring Robert another moment closer to rescuing me.

He will be here soon, I know he will. I’d stake my life on it. And that isn’t just a figure of speech—it’s a reality, because if he doesn’t get me away from Georgiana and her evil accomplices soon, once I’ve finished writing Georgiana’s autobiography, they’ll kill me. I’m certain of it. And I don’t want to die. Not like this, not at the hands of a coven of madwomen.

The mausoleum door swings open and first Georgiana, then Tamara with Pluto in her arms, and finally Gigi emerge, each with a suitcase, and all with grim expressions on their faces.

I know why. The argument between the three of them erupted when I was still inside the mausoleum, and I guess it still hasn’t been resolved. The longer it goes on, the better it will be for me. Anything to keep us here on the island, where Robert can find me.

Finally, it’s agreed between the three of them that because Gigi flatly refuses to travel in the same car as Pluto, she and Georgiana will make the journey to our ultimate destination—wherever that is—in Tamara’s car, which is parked close to the exit of the tunnel, on the mainland.

And after Tamara and I make it through the tunnel to the mainland, the car service they ordered for us will be on standby to spirit us directly to our mysterious destination.

But however hard I strain to hear the now-whispered conversation taking place between my captors, I still can’t work out exactly where we’re all headed. The only thing I learn is that they are leaving my suitcase filled with designer clothes inside the mausoleum. But that’s the least of my problems.

I hear them say that a particular job has been allocated to Tamara to carry out before we leave the island.

“Ma chérie, you are so brillante at le dirty work,” I hear Gigi declare, whereupon Tamara shoots her a look fit to kill.

“And I’ll never forget that winning goal you scored at basketball when Les Orchidées played Les Roses, Tammy,” Georgiana says, and I have no idea what the hell she’s insinuating.

“And Tammy, I know you want to knock her out right now, but you can’t do that yet. Just so that you won’t be tempted to disobey me, I’ll leave the dart gun for you on the other side of the tunnel. You can shoot her with it, and as soon as she passes out, drag her into the cab, and tell the driver she’s drunk and passed out. That’s why we dressed her in that gold dress. Partying too much, remember?” she goes on.

How the hell will Robert be able to get me away from Tamara once she drugs me again?

“We’ll meet you there in a few hours, but be sure that the job’s done and you don’t leave any traces,” Georgiana says. Then she and Gigi walk toward a wooded area of the island and out of sight.

Leaving me alone with Tamara.

Without a word she marches away, still with Pluto in her arms until both of them disappear from view.

Surely she isn’t disobeying Georgiana? Surely she isn’t leaving me here alone? At that thought, my spirits lift. If she leaves me here, I know it will be just a matter of time before Robert gets here and I’m safe at last.

Ten minutes later, she’s back again, only this time without Pluto, and my heart sinks. She glares at me, then unties me from the tree and drags me yards and yards away from the mausoleum.

Is she going to drown me in the lake? Or are we headed toward the tunnel and off the island? Either scenario is a nightmare, and neither of them leads me back to Robert and to safety.

To my relief, I hear Pluto’s bark. He’s tied to a tree in a clearing on high ground, overlooking the mausoleum. Within moments, I’m tied up to the same tree. And I watch as Tamara stomps back toward the mausoleum.

It’s so dark that I don’t see her fling the first bottle through the mausoleum door, but I do see the flame of the gasoline-soaked wick in the darkness. And then another, and another, as she throws Molotov cocktails, bomb after bomb, into the mausoleum.

There is an almighty boom and the sky lights up orange.

The air is filled with smoke.

In moments there’s a second boom, and an inferno of flames shoots out of the mausoleum and into the sky.

Tamara is beside me now, untying me first, and then Pluto.

“Like fireworks, bitch?” she yells, then starts to drag me away in the opposite direction, her right hand wrapped around my leash, her left around Pluto’s.

Toward the tunnel, I guess.

But what if Robert knows that it exists? What if he is even now in the tunnel, coming closer and closer, about to rescue me?

What if he isn’t?

I gulp a big mouthful of air, take a calculated fifty-fifty risk, and sink my teeth into Tamara’s left hand.

She lets out an almighty yelp, drops Pluto’s leash, and in a flash he runs away from her, toward the water. Just as I had gambled that she would, she chases after him, leaving me here unfettered and unsupervised.

I sprint as fast as I can in the other direction, praying that I can find the tunnel entrance, or somewhere to hide, anywhere.

I end up by the edge of the lake. But I’ve got no idea how deep the water is, and I can’t swim, so what’s the point of plunging in?

Tamara is still frenetically calling Pluto and seems to have forgotten all about me. Or at least, I pray that she has.

I head into a group of weeping willow trees by the water.

And then—and I can’t believe my ears—I swear that over the screech of her voice, I can hear the slow, rhythmic motion of a boat approaching the island. Not a boat. A flotilla of boats.

I don’t have X-ray vision, I don’t have night-vision glasses, but I bet my life that my rescuers do.

So I tear off my dress and wave it as high as I can above my head, hoping against hope that the glitter of the gold will alert my rescuers and lead them to me.

Just as I sigh in relief and feel that I’m safe again, Tamara rises up out of some nearby bushes and charges at me. As she wrestles me to the ground, I fight as hard as I can to resist her, but her strength is almost superhuman and I can’t. Over her shoulder, to my joy and relief, I see Robert at the head of his private army of ex–military men, all armed to the teeth, advancing toward us, their weapons cocked and ready to fire.

But at the same time that I see them, so does Tamara.

Her thick, heavy fingers close around my throat and squeeze.

“Drop your weapons, or she dies!” she yells, and while I try to kick against her with all my might, I can’t breathe properly anymore.

I struggle for air, but she doesn’t loosen her grip on me one iota.

“Do what the lady says,” Robert commands, and a thrill courses through me when I hear his familiar deep and reassuring voice.

The men all drop their weapons on the spot.

She eases the pressure on my throat and pulls me up from the ground, and as she backs away from the lake, and toward what must be the tunnel, she uses me as her human shield.

Even if Robert’s men pick up their guns again, she’ll choke me to death before the bullet hits her. And I know that he would never let them take that risk.

Despite the state I’m in, I start to breathe properly again. In the distance I can see the mausoleum, still ablaze with flames, and Robert is close to me, so close that if I reached out, I could almost touch him. His face is expressionless, his fists clenched, his muscles tensed, every centimeter of his body coiled like a serpent about to strike.

And even though Tamara has me in a choke hold, as she pulls me farther and farther away from Robert and the men, I see him give a slight, imperceptible nod.

As the sniper’s bullet speeds through Tamara’s skull, she gives a bloodcurdling shriek and lets go of me. Her eyes bulge out of her head, her neck snaps forward, and in half a second, her face is reduced to nothing but splintered bone and shards of bloody flesh.

Robert catches me just as I am about to faint.

And before I do, I hear his last words: “You are safe now, my darling. It’s all over. She’s dead and gone forever.”

Afterward, with Robert’s help, I was able to piece it all together. When he received the lying letter Georgiana forced me to write and saw the signature “Ciel,” he knew immediately that I had been kidnapped.

“By Tamara, I knew it could only be by Tamara,” he said a few hours after the rescue, as I lay in the hospital, exhausted, drained, unable to find the words to tell him the truth about what really happened, or even to speak at all.

Later on, I discovered that when he got my text, he sprang into action, marshaled twenty men from his private army—ex–Navy SEALs, ex-SWATs—and, most important of all, stationed a sniper, equipped with thermal-vision goggles, on the highest turret of Hartwell Castle.

It took almost an hour for firemen to put out the fire in the mausoleum, and when they were done, the purple marble memorial to the late Lady Georgiana Hartwell was burned to ashes.

When the media learned that the mausoleum had been burned to the ground in a mysterious fire, and with it the tomb of Lady Georgiana, the story hit the headlines. Robert was deluged with condolences and countless requests that he issue a public statement on the fire—and on his emotions, now that the grave of his late, lamented wife was nothing but a heap of ashes—but he steadfastly refused all requests.

Meanwhile, I spend a few days in the hospital, weak, confused, locked in the past, trying desperately to remember what really happened, what didn’t, what was the truth, and what wasn’t.

“We’ve checked all her vital signs, completed all the X-rays, and there’s no physical reason for her to still be delirious,” I hear the doctor tell Robert.

“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he says, with his customary confidence, and part of me thinks he’s right. The rest of me knows he isn’t; it’s not that I’m shocked about what happened to me. I’m shocked that I haven’t told him the full story yet.

I force myself not to dwell on that and I drift back to sleep once more.

A few hours later, I feel the heat of Robert’s body close to me. He’s sitting on the bed now, an iPod in his hand.

“I made this for you, after you disappeared,” he tells me. “All the time I searched so desperately for you, I held fast to the belief that one day we would be reunited, and that when that day came you’d listen to the words and understand,” he says.

Then the songs ring out: “Hymne à L’Amour,” of course, and then “Earth Angel,” “On a Slow Boat to China,” “Only You,” “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” “Time After Time,” “Embraceable You,” “Can’t Take My Eyes off You,” and finally, “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything,” and I listen, overcome by the love, passion, and emotion in Robert’s choice of the lyrics and the music.

“All another way of telling you exactly how I feel about you,” he says, stroking my hand.

I manage a faint smile, and for the first time in days eat a little supper, then fall fast asleep.

The same nightmare haunts me.

Tamara, with a green face and a pointed hat, riding a dart gun and headed straight toward me.

And Georgiana, her hair jet-black, her nails and mouth deep red, a diamond and ruby tiara on her head, brandishing a violet-colored bomb.

And then the flames, the fire, the boom, dust everywhere, gasoline, and me running, running, running, straight into Robert’s arms. Only when I get there, he’s vanished into thin air, nowhere to be found.

As always, I wake up screaming.

“Perhaps if I hypnotize you,” Robert says, his voice gentle and concerned.

Hypnosis. The equivalent of a truth serum . . . I’m just not ready. . . .

I give him a faint smile, then shake my head.

“She’s perking up, Mr. Hartwell. In a day or two, I think you can take her home,” I hear the doctor say as I drift back to sleep.

As Robert and I pass through the gates of Hartwell Castle and up the drive, I catch a glimpse of Hartwell Island in the distance. The island is barren, bare, all vegetation razed to the ground in the fire. The mausoleum is now just a burned-out shell. But though it’s just a ruin, the sight of those ruins still makes my stomach turn, and I have to avert my eyes from them.

Robert puts his arms around me and pulls me close.

“Don’t look back, my darling. It’s all over now. She’s dead, and you’re safe,” he says.

If only that were true . . .

Later that night, when we are alone together in our suite, he pours me a glass of Cristal, then sits on the sofa next to me, hugs me to his chest, and says, “Sweetheart, after I watched the look of horror on your face as we drove up to the castle tonight and you saw Hartwell Island again, I issued an order for the entire island to be bulldozed tomorrow.

“Irrespective of that, I want you to know that after everything Tamara put you through, if she hadn’t burned the mausoleum down herself, I’d have personally dismantled it piece by piece and razed the island to the ground myself,” he adds, with an undertone of so much fury in his voice that I tremble inwardly.

Then he gently undresses me and puts me into bed.

“You must rest, cara mia. And I’ll make us supper,” he says, but I go straight to sleep and only wake up in the morning.

My head still hurts, my throat still hurts, and I’m still dizzy. Dizzy and confused and—where it counts most of all—tongue-tied.

When he sees the condition I’m in, how drained I still am, how emotionally fragile, Robert focuses his attention on me even more single-mindedly than he did before the kidnapping, all in the service of making sure I feel safe, happy, and loved.

To my surprise and delight, he serves me breakfast in bed; fresh-squeezed pineapple juice followed by a smoked salmon and caviar omelet he has cooked for me himself. He feeds me each mouthful of omelet, followed by fresh fruit salad, spoon by spoon.

I eat it all, love it all, his tenderness, care, and consideration for me. But no matter how much I love him, part of me isn’t really here with him at all. Part of me is still back in the mausoleum with her. Sometimes I think I dreamed the whole nightmare. Dreamed that she was still alive, that she kidnapped me, that she was forcing me to write her autobiography to win Robert back.

But other times I know it was real. Georgiana wasn’t buried inside the mausoleum, she wasn’t burned to death in her tomb. She is alive, waiting to pounce on me again and to steal Robert from me and make him her own forever.

But Robert is mine, all mine, and I must hold fast to that knowledge, and not allow the thought of Georgiana and her evil machinations to undermine it.

I know she’s still on Robert’s mind, though, but only in a negative way, thank goodness. When I finish breakfast, he turns to me and says, “To tell you the truth, I’m glad that the mausoleum burned down. I’m glad that Georgiana isn’t in there anymore. I’m glad she’s well and truly gone at last, God forgive me.”

And—God forgive me, too—I just look at him and nod.