Chapter 10
"Didn't anyone ever tell you that blonds have more - ?"
The video link that enabled Nolan's face to appear on her laptop all the way from New York kept breaking up, making it difficult for them to finalise plans.
Emily finished adjusting the long, brown wig that disguised her fair hair. It had to look believable, or she would never be able to carry out the scheme that she and Nolan had so meticulously planned.
Emily had arrived in Italy the morning after the Graysons flew in. Nolan had remained behind to operate things from command central, and besides, he was only a private jet ride away if she needed him.
"How do I look?" she asked him.
"Are you wearing Pucci?"
"Do I look the part?"
"You look fantastic, Ems... or, should I say, 'Olivia'."
She was no longer 'Emily Thorne' in Italy. Despite an extensive effort to track them down, Rick and Giovanna Gartland had seemingly disappeared. Neither Emily or Nolan could find any evidence of their whereabouts since their arrest in 2004, apart from that one photograph taken last year when Rick was finally released from prison.
After a great deal of research, Nolan came across an article that had been published in Italian Vogue in 2011 about a woman called Bianca Rocca, Giovanna's sister. Bianca owned several exclusive fashion boutiques across Italy. Nolan had had the article translated because, towards the end, the interviewer started asking Bianca about Giovanna:
Interviewer: So, Bianca - if you don't mind I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about your family. Am I right in thinking that your sister is Giovanna Gartland?
BR: I don't have anything to say about my sister.
Interviewer: No-one has seen her since she left prison in 2007. Can you say anything about how she has adjusted to life back in mainstream society?
BR: I really don't think... wasn't this interview supposed to be about my work?
Interviewer: I just think our readers might be interested in hearing about what happened to her and her husband. It was a high-profile global fraud case that still sets the benchmark for more recent cases of corporate corruption.
BR: Look, you're asking the wrong person. I haven't seen or spoken to my sister in over twenty years and, as far as I'm aware, Rick is still in prison. It' s their business, not mine. I don't see how this conversation is relevant to the business empire I've spent the last seven years trying to establish?
"You're sure this is Bianca's address?" Emily asked Nolan.
"Absolutely."
"And you know when to call me?"
"Trust me, Ems. Thanks to you I graduated from the school of unscrupulous revenging with flying colours - I know what i'm doing."
Emily put her new identification card in her handbag. This time, Amanda Clarke was not Emily Thorne. She was Olivia Barnes, a freelance fashion journalist working on a potential assignment for Vanity Fair. As far as Bianca Rocca was concerned, Olivia Barnes was an American journalist, visiting Rome to write an article about her. In reality, Emily was working under-cover to try and trace the whereabouts of Bianca's sister and her husband.
"Are you really sure about this, Emily?" Nolan said.
"I can manage." Emily said. "The Garlands are easy targets in comparison to Conrad and Victoria."
Emily put on a brightly colored trench coat to finish off her look.
"Just wait for my message, ok?"
Nolan saluted.
"Oh and Nolan...?"
"Yes, Ems?"
Emily paused.
"Are you wearing any trousers?"
"I like to roam free when i'm alone in my own home."
Emily picked up her handbag.
"I wish I'd never asked," she said, closing her laptop and ending their conversation abruptly.
"Can I get you another coffee, Olivia?"
"That would be lovely," Emily said. "I've just a few more questions to go through about next season's collections, but apart from that I think I've got everything I need."
"I'll show you the look book for our proposed Spring/Summer stock," Bianca said. "Excuse me for a moment."
She left to make more coffee, giving Emily the perfect opportunity to text Nolan.
Call me in 5.
A few minutes later, Bianca returned. She sat down to continue the interview, twisting her long dark hair into a neat chignon bun at the nape of her neck. With her hair tied-up, Bianca bore a vague resemblance to her younger sister, Giovanna. Both were slender and long-limbed, but where Giovanna had sharper, slightly pointed features, Bianca had a softer, more feminine look.
"I'm sorry for the heat," she said. "The air conditioning is broken."
"Please don't apologise," Emily said. "I'm just so grateful that you agreed to see me at such short notice."
Emily picked up her notebook and pen.
"Shall we continue?"
Just then, Emily's phone rang: Nolan's caller id came up on the screen.
"I'm sorry," Emily said. "Do you mind if I take this? It's my sister."
Bianca waved her hand.
"Sure, go ahead."
Emily answered Nolan's call, making sure she stayed in ear-shot of Bianca.
"Hey Ems, it's your favourite sister calling," Nolan's voice purred down the line.
"Cecelia, hi. I can't talk right now, I'm in an interview... Look, you're going to have to deal with him yourself just for one night... Have you given him his meds...? I can't do anything about that Cecelia, I'm in Europe... Look, I'll be back in LA tomorrow night, ok?"
Emily's voice had risen to a high-pitched agitation; she could tell by Bianca's body language that she was listening intently to her fake conversation.
"I'm sorry, I can't... I'll call you when I'm at the airport."
She hung up and put her hand to her forehead, letting out a sigh of frustration.
"Everything ok?" Bianca asked.
"Not really," Emily said. "My dad's sick and my sister won't pull her weight. She expects me to be able to look after him by myself."
"She doesn't support you?"
"She's supposed to be my sister, but family means nothing to her. Honestly Bianca, you have no idea..."
Emily sat back in her chair, pretending to be upset. She had planted the seed; now all she had to do was wait for it to blossom...
"Oh you'd be surprised," Bianca said, her tone darkening. "You're not the only one with a sister who disregards family bonds."
Emily raised an eyebrow.
"You think your sister's bad? I haven't spoken to mine in the last twenty years."
"What happened?" Emily asked.
"It's a long story."
Bianca sighed and walked outside onto the terrace; Emily followed her. She poured two glasses of crisp white wine and handed one to Emily.
"This is off the record now, yes?" she asked. "I don't want the unpleasant details of my past to be the focus of a magazine article that is supposed to be about my work."
"Of course," Emily said.
Bianca looked at her closely for a moment or two, wondering whether or not to trust her. She gave a brief nod of the head, and then she began her story.
"When I was in my early twenties, I moved to New York to do an internship with a prominent fashion house. Whilst I was there, I met a young American business man and we fell in love. It's the same old story," she said. "After six months together, he asked me to marry him, and of course I said yes. Why wait? As far as I was concerned, he was the love of my life."
Bianca took another sip of her wine and continued.
"That summer, my new fiancee and I visited Italy so that my family could meet the man that I was engaged to marry."
"Did they like him?" Emily asked.
"Oh, they loved him. Except Giovanna, that is. She said that she didn't trust him - that men earning lots of money rarely stayed faithful for long and that I would end up some sort of lonely trophy wife, constantly in competition with younger mistresses."
"Was she right?"
"Oh yes," Bianca answered. "But not in the way that you would expect. Giovanna begged me not to marry him so soon after we had met - the words of an over-protective little sister, I thought - but I disregarded her advice all the same."
Bianca's glass of wine was going down a lot quicker than Emily's, even though she was the one doing most of the talking.
"A few weeks later, I took a fall whilst I was horse riding at my parent's farm. I had badly injured my back and broken my leg - injuries which left me confined to my bed for two months. It was hell! Fortunately, my fiancee was great about the whole thing. He cancelled his return flight to New York and arranged to work from my family home in order to be with me."
Bianca filled up the wine glasses.
"Then what happened?" Emily asked.
"Nothing, to begin with," she said. "Giovanna was great. She came round often to bring me things and to keep my spirits up. I'd never seen her so attentive! Then came the shock."
Bianca paused for a moment, lost in thought.
"I was up and able to walk again, and thinking about making arrangements to travel back to New York. Then one evening, Giovanna said that she had something to tell me. My fiancee was with her, and they sat me down to break the news that unfortunately, whilst I was laid up in bed badly injured, they had formed a strong attachment to each other - so strong, in fact, that my fiancee wanted to break off our engagement."
"Oh my God," Emily said. "How did you react?"
"I was broken, a real mess. The man that I loved returned to New York without me and, worse yet, he took my little sister with him and married her there later that year."
The pieces of the puzzle finally fit together in Emily's mind.
"I cut off all ties with both of them and then got on with the rest of my life," Bianca said. "However, fate has a funny way of working back on people. When I look back now, you could say that I had a very lucky escape."
Bianca got up to get something from inside. She came back with a shoebox filled with miscellaneous items. She took out a newspaper cutting and handed it to Emily, who read the headline:
The End of an Energy Empire: Gartland's Last Day in Court.
Underneath there was a picture of a man and a woman looking serious as they tried to shield their faces from the hundred of press photographers waiting outside the court. There was a caption underneath:
Pictured: Richard Gartland and his wife Giovanna, attending the last day of their trial. Both are facing imprisonment.
"Richard Gartland was your fiancee? The man who left you for your sister?"
"Exactly. You might be too young to remember the RPG Energies scandal..."
"No," said Emily. "I've heard of it."
She pointed at the picture of Giovanna.
"That could have been me, had things been different."
She returned the newspaper article to the box.
"So next time your sister lets you down, be thankful that she's not like mine," Bianca said. "You have no idea what it feels like to have people that you trusted take your whole future away from you in an instant."
"You'd be surprised..." Emily said.
Just then, the intercom buzzer sounded.
"Excuse me a moment," Giovanna said, going inside.
Emily seized her opportunity. She knew she wouldn't have long. She searched through the papers and articles that Bianca had saved in the shoebox until she found it: a letter, addressed to Bianca from her sister, dated March 2010, with Giovanna's address written in small, neat handwriting in the top right-hand corner. It was a letter begging for money and assistance. Apparently, Giovanna's life after her imprisonment had not been an easy one.
Emily heard Bianca's footsteps approaching, so she quickly took a photograph of the address with her phone and replaced the letter back in the box just in time.
Bianca came back out to the terrace, holding a large bunch of lilies.
"They're beautiful," Emily said. "Who are they from?"
"I don't know," Giovanna said. "There's no card. A young boy from the local florist dropped them off just now."
Emily had got what she came for. After a few more minutes of polite conversation with Bianca, she made her excuses and left, thanking her for her time.
When Emily left the apartment, the young boy from the florist was waiting for her at the bottom of the street, as directed. She paid him for the lilies, thanked him in Italian and tipped him generously. Emily got into her car, watching the boy as he ran off down the road, disappearing back in the direction of the apartment.
As the boy ran past Bianca's apartment, he nearly ran into a man with greying hair and steely blue eyes who was stood outside.
"Scusi," the boy said, continuing on his way. The man hardly noticed, because he was too absorbed in the argument he was having with the person on the other end of the phone.
"Victoria - how kind of you to finally answer your goddamn phone!" Conrad said. "Where the hell are you?"
"I left early to have breakfast with a friend."
"Which friend?"
"That's none of your business, Conrad," Victoria answered.
"Well whilst you were drinking espresso and socialising, I have been driving halfway around Rome trying to sort out this mess we're both in."
"Did you find her?"
"I've found her apartment."
"What if she won't speak to you?" Victoria said.
"Oh, she'll speak to me, my dear - no need to worry about that."
"I've arranged an appointment with a local private investigator this afternoon," Victoria said. "We need someone with local knowledge to help us track them down."
"Fine. I'll meet you back at the villa this evening and we can work out where to go from there."
There was a silence.
"Victoria?"
"I'm not in this evening, Conrad. I've made plans."
"With who? Is this another date with your breakfast buddy?"
"Yes, it is actually. You're not jealous are you?"
"Jealous? I wouldn't give you the satisfaction!"
Conrad hung-up on her, then immediately wished he hadn't. He tried to put his ex-wife's evening plans out of his mind, and pressed the intercom buzzer on Bianca's apartment building.
"Hello?"
"Bianca Rocca?"
"Who is it, please?"
"Surely you haven't forgotten me, Bianca?"
There was a pause.
"Conrad Grayson," she said. "I knew this day would come."
"Aren't you going to let me in?"
"You can go to hell!"
"Oh no, that's not how it works Bianca. You owe me, remember? Ten years ago, I did you a somewhat significant favour and now I'm back for my side of the bargain."
There was an even longer pause. Conrad begun to wonder if she had gone, but then the intercom buzzed and the front door to the apartment building opened with a click.
"It's on the fifth floor, apartment three," Bianca said. "Come straight in, Conrad - the door's open..."