Unchained Destinies

Mariann edged a little closer to glimpse the dazzling beauty of romantic Budapest. Her face softened. There was the vast Gothic parliament building, its severe facade turned into an elaborately decorated wedding-cake by the snow icing. And on its balcony, she mused, a Hungarian Prime Minister had once made a plea for freedom from Soviet occupation. How awful, to have been oppressed—

‘What’s the name of the people you work for?’ asked Vigadó with a sudden verbal lunge.

She blinked, dragging her mind back to a present-day oppressor, and told him. He checked the phone book, wrote down the number on a pad and faced her again, the jet-black hair stark against the leaden skies, his face a dark, unreadable blur in the fading light. ‘I’ll ring them in the morning.’

‘No point. They’ll be here,’ she said, worrying that he’d find out someone had impersonated him.

‘Why aren’t the men working overtime? Why you?’

Suddenly Mariann felt trapped. His body language was telling her that she was being very astutely judged and found wanting. ‘I—I badly need the money,’ she said huskily. ‘I begged and coaxed them to let me carry on.’

‘Clever.’

She thought so. Living on her wits was becoming a way of life and life was a series of opportunities. ‘We’re doing a good job, and doing it fast. We’ll be out of your way before you know it.’ True! He scowled at her and stayed silent. ‘Well?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No, it isn’t “well”. Far from it. Get out of here,’ he said with a sudden, brutal finality. ‘Don’t bother to come back. I’ll get my own man in.’

Mariann stared at him in dismay. Her careful plans, all her work, had come to an abrupt end! She’d failed! Helplessly she watched Vigadó sling his coat over his shoulder and pick up his briefcase. His dark, steely eyes flicked back contemptuously to her as he paused in the door that led to the next office. She froze.

‘I told you to go!’

‘But you can’t mean that! What about my mates?’ she wailed, moving forward to head him off. The image of the open cabinet burned in her mind.

‘For God’s sake!’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? Don’t you know what a dangerous man I am?’ His voice became a low, savage growl, his eyes petrified her with their intense black anger. ‘Stay,’ he said menacingly, ‘and you risk more than a little damage to that beautiful face of yours.’

Her eyes flipped automatically to his scar while his glance swept from her toes to her head, slowly, measuring her inch by inch. With every flicker of his thick, dark lashes, Mariann felt weaker, the caress of his eyes on her lips making them part, the contempt, when their eyes finally met, rocking her on her heels. And it was the first time that she’d ever felt so scared for her own safety that she was close to being physically sick.

‘You have ten seconds to move, two minutes to clear the mess!’ rapped Vigadó.

‘Impossible! I need to clean—’

‘Go!’

There was no sense in inviting an explosion of that simmering temper. Mariann sullenly shrugged her shoulders. ‘You’re the boss.’ What on earth was she going to do? ‘I think you’ve dropped your wallet or something,’ she said, pointing back vaguely to her heaped clothes. When he grunted and strode over to check, she slipped past him into the next office and quietly pushed the cabinet shut.

‘Nothing there,’ he said softly, returning. ‘Now what are you doing?’

‘Checking there’s nothing of mine in here,’ she said breathlessly.

Cold and hard, the sinister dark eyes lingered on hers for a few scary seconds. ‘I believe everything in there belongs to me,’ he said tightly, and strode to the desk, sifting through the mail as if she didn’t exist any more.

Thinking savagely that half the authors in that cabinet rightly belonged to their original publishers and not him at all, she stalked out, racking her brains for a way out. It seemed awful just to walk away and admit defeat. He shouldn’t always get whatever he wanted, she thought resentfully. He bullied people, using whatever means he could—power, the that of violence, sex. Angrily she pushed cleaning rags into a carrier bag and wrapped the roller.

She didn’t want him to win. She never abandoned anything she’d set out to do. It had been so easy for him, to arrive, snap out a few questions and decide he didn’t want to be bothered with a perfectly good gang of decorators.

A small voice inside her urged her to go, that arguing with him would be imprudent and staying would be risky. But she’d always been more stubborn than wise, making things work for her. Throughout her life, her policy had always been to go that extra mile, push harder, further than other people to reach her goal and never to show weakness.

That was how, she mused, she had won the reputation of never being troubled, of always being happy and sunny. Even her family believed that. But early on she’d seen that they’d had enough troubles of their own without hearing about hers—and they, like everyone else, had come to see her as the one bright and cheering ray of sunshine in their lives.

Only her younger sister, Sue, knew that there were dark days too. That the constant effort to show the expected sparkling face had become part of a role she didn’t always want to play.

Mariann grimaced and slowly dunked her brushes in the turps jar before suspending them in their clips. Her elder sister Tanya was warm, motherly and deeply committed to them all. John, well, he was a kid brother, eager, enthusiastic, romantic. Sue was sensible and downto-earth.

Smiling, Mariann thought that it was odd how easily she’d drifted into being the glamorous, carefree one. Men went out with her for those qualities—her ability to enjoy life, have fun, make them laugh—and not because she looked homely or could bake feather-light sponges.

Sometimes she wondered if anyone would ever see deeper than the external face she showed the world. But when she’d once revealed some of her real self, everyone had thought she was fooling around and had laughed at her hesitant confidences.

A smile, a quip, a witty remark…they’d never wanted any more. And increasingly everyone had come to think that she was so tough, she could work miracles. Like now. She straightened, her eyes on Vigadó’s dauntingly broad back. ‘England expects…’ she thought, and smiled wryly.

And then a thought popped suddenly into her head uninvited: how lovely it would be to have a relationship with a man who had a stronger will than she! Mariann grinned. No, it would be awful! Too many fights! Talking of which, this Vigadó was one guy she didn’t want to get the better of her!

Action stations! Re-form! Charge!

Giggling to herself, she padded over to the open door of the next office, watching his body move lithely around as he emptied his briefcase.

He hadn’t noticed her, her bare feet making no sound on the dustsheets. On the brink of speaking, she checked herself. He’d stiffened all his muscles in tension. Bending over his case, he picked up a framed photograph of a woman and stared at it. Slowly and deliberately, he pushed it back into the briefcase with a gesture that suggested he loathed the very sight of the woman.

Vigadó’s wife? she wondered. It hadn’t been Liz— Lionel’s wife—because the photo she’d seen had shown her boss with a dark woman. The one in Vigadó’s photograph was ash-blonde. He squared his shoulders as though coming to a decision and turned. Her eyes widened at the expression of dark despair that filled his face with a vulnerable, human quality she hadn’t seen before.

But instantly his face tautened into a mask, smoothing away the bitter sorrow of his mouth, the bleakness in his eyes, the heart-tugging lines of strain.

Mariann was fascinated. He did have doubts, worries, problems, like normal men! And that meant he was accessible. There was something inside him she could appeal to if necessary. It gave her hope.

‘You still here?’ he shot.

Bullies backed down if you stood up to them. She’d known enough men who’d grabbed her and crumbled when she’d assaulted them with scathing words. And this one, apparently, had a wounded core. Inspiration came to her.

‘Just wanted to say that you’ll be hearing from me.’ Stiff and proud, she turned, collected the two largest paint tins and carried them to the outer door.

‘You’re not trying to coax me to let you stay or…anything else?’ he asked in surprise, stepping forward to stare after her.

‘No. See you in court,’ she answered crisply.

‘Court?’ He gave a small, incredulous laugh.

‘Yup.’

The laugh came again. ‘Suing?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Did you have a written agreement, a contract?’

‘Yes,’s she said, unperturbed. There had been a generous price for the job and she knew there’d been a backhander arranged for Antal. Disapproving of such corruption, she’d pretended not to see the money change hands, telling herself that Vigadó cheated so many people, he shouldn’t be surprised if his staff cheated him too. She prayed her father would never find out what she was doing.

‘I hope you’ve got a work permit,’ he snapped.

‘No.’

‘Well! You personally don’t seem to be on very firm ground,’ he said scathingly. ‘How are you intending to sue me? By claiming sexual harassment?’

At the low, meaningful probe, she gave him a mysterious smile and turned her back on him. ‘Now. Where did I put my flat brush…?’