‘Are you sure this is the right room?’ she asked, overwhelmed.

‘Signor Fallucci insisted on the very best guest room,’ Anna replied. ‘He says that every attention must be paid to you.’

‘That’s very kind of him,’ she murmured.

‘If you will follow me, signorina…’

Anna showed her through a door to a bathroom with walls also of exposed stone, an antique marble basin and hand-painted tiles. Thick ivory towels hung on the walls.

‘If the signorina is satisfied-’

‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ Holly said mechanically. She could feel a net closing about her.

‘If you would care to rest now, a meal will be sent to you here.’

When she was alone she sat down on the bed, feeling winded. On the face of it she’d fallen on her feet, but that wasn’t how it felt. The more she was welcomed and pampered, the more unnatural it all seemed, and the more nervous she became.

Everything made it clear to her that Judge Fallucci was a supremely powerful as well as a wealthy man. He was using both to prepare a niche for her, so comfortable that she wouldn’t want to leave.

But the fact was that she could not leave, even if she wanted to. He’d taken her passport; she had little money and no clothes. Now she had to depend on this stranger, who had seized control of her for his own purposes.

Despite the luxurious surface of her surroundings, she was a helpless prisoner.

CHAPTER TWO

SUPPER, when it arrived, was a feast for the gods. Soup made with ray fish and broccoli, lamb roasted in a sauce of garlic, rosemary, vinegar and anchovy, followed by tozzetti, sweet cookies made from sugar, almonds and aniseed.

With every course came the proper wine, rough red, crisp white or icy mineral water. Everything was perfect. Nothing had been left to chance.

When she had finished eating Holly went to the window and watched the last rays of the sun setting over the garden, which stretched out of sight, a maze of pines, Cyprus trees and flowers, threaded by paths, along which a tall man was strolling.