The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) by Primula Bond

then stopped. ‘You didn’t pull strings to get this job for me, did you? I’ll be livid if you did.’
    Gustav walked me to the giant wooden door of the apartment and heaved it open. He pulled me close to him, kissed me hard again, then ushered me out onto the landing.
    ‘You impressed them with your talent at the London exhibition, Serena, but sometimes life is a system of favours, especially in business. You know how I like to make any working relationship official and documented at the earliest opportunity, and I suggest you do the same. Boil it down to I take, you take. I give, you give. And here you are, oh, yes, still giving. Still fulfilling your delicious part of our bargain! Your gorgeous body, that plump little ass, your mouth. Repaying me every night. Most mornings. And some afternoons when we have the time!’
    ‘I just want to show you, them, the world, that I can do this alone. I’m feeling a bit nervous, that’s all.’
    A slight shadow still stained his face. So long as I’m not the cause of it, the occasional sweep of darkness doesn’t scare me any more, but it’s a reminder of emotions and complexities still to be unravelled.
    He tipped my face towards him. ‘Look, I’ll admit I have fingers and toes in every pie. Back in the day my ancestors were hawkers and travellers. I set out my market stall, display my protégée’s wares and invite punters to roll up, roll up, take a look, buy it if they like it.’ He rubbed his finger and thumb together with a sly grin. ‘And give me my commission, of course. How else do you think we can afford this place?’
    ‘I can see you as a gypsy, now you come to mention it.’
    I just wanted to look at him all day. Tall, lounging in the doorway, his tie hanging loose around his unbuttoned neck, his black hair brushed back over his noble forehead. His eyes roving over my body even though I was swathed in winter clothes. He’s the opposite of a chancer market trader. He’s the epitome of suave, sorted entrepreneur, and I am the beneficiary of all that, and much, much more.
    Reading my mind, Gustav murmured, ‘Believe in yourself, Serena. A cliché, perhaps, but I mean it. The Weinmeyers flew all the way to London to see your show after your sensational private view. It’s your talent they’re after.’
    ‘Nevertheless. I feel nervous.’
    He stepped round me to call the lift, and then kissed me yet again.
    ‘This is the first day of the rest of our lives, girl.’
    The wind buffets me across the park now, past the cyclists and ice skaters and out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art onto Fifth Avenue. I’m too far south, so I turn north and the wind knocks me into a pile of snow banked under a starved-looking tree.
    As I trudge my way between Park Avenue and Lexington, my kit is weighing me down. Where is Dickson the Driver when you need him? The surly chauffeur is locking up the holiday house in Lake Lugano for the last time. Goodbye to Switzerland. Goodbye to Margot and all that history.
    Despite the weight on my shoulder, the weight in my heart starts to ease. All that remains is for Gustav and Pierre to neutralise the rest of the poison.
    I walk right past the house at first, an old Upper East Side wooden mansion with curled wrought-iron balconies that looks as if it should be situated in New Orleans. The marble and limestone mansions all around here have long ago been split into apartments or donated to museums and schools, but this, I realise when the door opens, is still one complete town house.
    The front door looks flimsy enough to kick in but it swings silently open as soon as I ring the bell. The petite façade hides an enormous wood-panelled hallway with black and white floor tiles and dominated by a staircase Scarlett O’Hara should be sweeping down. There’s no butler or housekeeper bustling about. Just an elegant blonde woman around Gustav’s age, maybe older, standing at the top of the stairs in a fuchsia-pink, diaphanous halterneck