“Not really,” said Siena. “Fashion’s boring. I was always better at math and science in school. I had a place at Oxford to study medicine, but I turned it down.”
Sabrina looked suitably amazed.
“My father wanted me to be a doctor, but I wasn’t interested. Where did you go to college, by the way?”
Siena watched with satisfaction as Sabrina was forced to mumble, “Penn State.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a good school, too,” she smiled. It was her turn to be patronizing now. “I always felt college was a bit of a waste of time, though. I knew I wanted to act from day one, and modeling’s a much more effective route into Hollywood than an Oxford degree. At least it was for me.”
She placed her perfectly manicured hand smugly on Randall’s arm. That would teach the stupid, bossy woman to put her down.
“I think you would have made it eventually, Siena, with or without the modeling,” said Luke, anxious to get his wife off the hook and change the subject as soon as possible.
Siena beamed with pleasure at the unexpected compliment from her director. “Do you really?”
“Sure,” Randall answered for him. “With your surname and my backing, how could you go wrong?”
Bastard, thought Siena. Why could he never admit that she had any talent?
Luke, who could see how wounded she’d been by Randall’s comment, decided to risk his producer’s wrath still further by saying, “Actually, I think she’d have made it on her own. Being a McMahon doesn’t hurt, but if you couldn’t act, you’d never have gotten this far. Not in one of my movies, anyway. Believe me, I’ve seen so many stars’ kids in Hollywood trying to break into the business, and most of them are terrible.”
Siena could have kissed him. But her elation soon evaporated when she saw Randall’s face. The familiar simmering fury was building up inside him as he twisted his napkin around and around, like he was preparing to strangle someone. As far as he was concerned, he had “created” Siena. No one else, least of all her, could take any credit for her current achievements.
Watching him, she felt a knot forming in her stomach and realized, almost with shame, that she was afraid of him. She wondered if this was how Grandma Minnie had felt every time she caved in to Duke? For the first time Siena could remember, she felt a stab of real sympathy for her grandmother. Perhaps she and Minnie were more alike than she had liked to believe?
Sabrina, who was also none too thrilled with her husband’s impassioned defense of his beautiful leading lady, stood up and started waving at a group who had just arrived.
“Suzie! Helloooo, over here.” She flapped her arms wildly, as if trying to bring a plane in to land. Siena rolled her eyes at Randall, but he was still too angry to respond.
“Luke, darling, look. It’s Suzie Ong. And isn’t that your uncle with her, Siena? The actor?”
Siena, who had her back to the door, froze. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around. “I don’t think so,” she muttered desperately.
Please, please let it not be Hunter, not tonight. That would push Randall right over the edge.
Luke noticed that the blood had drained from Siena’s face. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. “Are you all right?” he whispered.
“It is him, you know, I’m sure of it.” Sabrina’s voice was like a foghorn. “Suzie! Come and say hello! She’s terribly nice,” she said in an aside to Randall. “She’s a television director over at NBC.”
“I know who she is,” he snapped, glaring at Siena as though she were somehow responsible for Suzie and Hunter’s arrival. Suzie was one of Hugh Orchard’s protégées, an elegant Singaporian in her mid-thirties who was becoming well known as an up-and-coming director in the TV world. She already had a fistful of hit shows to her name and had directed Hunter in the last two seasons of UCLA, presiding over the soap’s skyrocketing ratings, much to Orchard’s and NBC’s delight.
A few moments later, she had appeared at the table, looking rather awkward. Siena didn’t know if Hunter was with her or not—she was too terrified to look up and find out.
“Hello, Sabrina. Luke.” Suzie seemed less than thrilled to see them.
“Suzie, let me introduce you to Randall Stein.” Sabrina was obviously enjoying her role as hostess to Hollywood’s elite. Randall gave a grudging nod of acknowledgment, which Suzie returned. “And Siena McMahon. I imagine you two have already crossed paths?”
“No, actually,” said Suzie, looking at Siena coldly. She knew how the brat had treated Hunter and was not one of her biggest fans. “Hi.”
Siena’s head seemed to be magnetically drawn to the table. She still couldn’t look up.
“Isn’t that Siena’s uncle with you?” Sabrina plowed on, oblivious of the entire table’s discomfort. “Why don’t you both come over and join us?”
“I don’t think so,” said Suzie and Randall in unison. Their eyes met for a moment, but Suzie dropped hers first. The man looked positively murderous. “Hunter and I have a lot of business to discuss. Maybe another time. But it was lovely to see you.”
She kissed Luke and Sabrina perfunctorily on the cheek and disappeared back to Hunter and her table. Siena felt as if she were about to spontaneously combust. She could feel the imagined heat of Hunter’s stare on her back and Randall’s fury in front of her. She dared not look at either of them, but sat twisting her engagement ring on her finger, wishing someone would beam her out of there.
“I wonder what was wrong with her?” said Sabrina to nobody in particular. “She seemed in a great hurry to get away.”
“Yes,” said Randall nastily. “Siena sometimes has that effect on people.”
“I’m sorry.” Siena stumbled to her feet. This was all too much for her. Hunter was here, her darling, darling Hunter, and he wouldn’t even speak to her. Suddenly she had to get away.
The whole restaurant looked on, mesmerized, as she began ricocheting off tables, blinded by tears, running toward the door as if the room were on fire.
“Siena.” Hunter shot out his arm and grabbed her by the wrist as she staggered past him. Shaking, she looked down and saw his sweet, sad, concerned face. “Do you want to talk?”
She felt like she was in one of those nightmares where you’re trying to run but your legs are stuck in toffee. She wanted to fall into his arms, to tell him how much she loved him, how much she’d missed him, to say how sorry she was. But her brain and body both seemed to be frozen and she just stood there, miserably mute. Randall was behind her before she could say a word.
“No, she doesn’t want to talk.” He smiled evilly at Hunter. Pulling Siena away and putting his arm around her shoulder, he looked more like her jailer than her lover. “She doesn’t ever want to talk to you or hear from you again. It upsets her. Doesn’t it, Siena?” He jerked her around to face Hunter like a ventriloquist might jerk his dummy. It was a violent, almost an obscene gesture. A few of the women in the room winced. Siena nodded helplessly. “You see? She doesn’t want you,” Randall sneered. Hunter just stared at him, appalled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take Siena home. Before she gets any more upset.”
With the entire restaurant watching, including a horrified Luke and Sabrina, Randall bundled Siena outside and straight into their waiting chauffeur-driven Bentley. As soon as they were ensconced behind the darkened glass windows, she broke down in tears.
“I’m sorry, Randall,” she sobbed. She was shaking like a leaf. “I’m so sorry.”
“You will be,” he said.
And then he punched her so hard in the face, she was knocked out cold.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
When she came to, she was sitting up in bed at home in just her underwear. Her hands were tied tightly behind her back, she wasn’t sure what with. Randall was sitting in the armchair beside the bed, staring at her, with a half-empty bottle of brandy at his feet. Siena could smell the stale alcohol fumes from the bed.
His voice was badly slurred when he spoke to her. “You stupid bi
tch,” he whispered. “You just had to humiliate me, didn’t you? You can’t help yourself.”
Siena shifted uneasily from side to side and tried to keep calm. The whole right side of her face felt like it was exploding, but out of her left eye, she could see that the bedside clock said two-thirty A.M. She struggled to get her bearings. The last thing she remembered was Randall hitting her in the car. He hadn’t been drunk then; at least she hadn’t thought so. Clearly he was looped up to the eyeballs now.
“Randall, could you please untie my hands. This is ridiculous.”
She tried a firm, confident tone, hoping to jolt him out of this madness. She always knew he could be violent, but he had never pulled anything like this before. Not with her, anyway.
“You think you could have gotten to where you are without me? You and Luke. Is that what you think?” He had stood up and was advancing unsteadily toward her, his brandy glass still in his hand.
“Of course not,” said Siena. “I know how much I owe you.” She tried not to sound as panicked as she felt. “Luke wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear about fucking Luke.”
She heard the roar of his voice in her ear, followed by a heavy blow to her left temple. For a moment she felt nothing at all, as if everything were happening in slow motion, or to someone else. Then she became aware of a stream of her own blood flowing down her face, into her eyes and mouth.
He must have smashed the glass into her head.
Her hands were tied, so she couldn’t reach up to touch the wound. Suddenly terror overwhelmed her. She felt like she was drowning in blood.
He hit her again, and this time she felt the jagged glass as it sliced into the flesh around her eye. Everything went red.
“Jesus Christ,” she spluttered, tiny droplets of blood spraying off her lips in a fine mist. “What have you done to me?”
Randall stood stock-still and stared at the broken glass in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. Two of his fingers were bleeding slightly. “Shit, I’m sorry. Oh shit.” He sounded detached, zombielike. “Here, let me help.”
He pulled out a wadded-up handkerchief and moved across the bed toward her. Siena screamed and kicked out at him as hard as she could, both legs pumping like mad. “Stay the fuck away from me,” she yelled. “Stay back!”
Instinctively, Randall fought off her frenzied kicking. One of Siena’s feet hit him hard across the bridge of the nose. He yelped in pain and instantly brought his heavy fist down with a crack on her rib cage, right where she’d suffered the fractures from the car crash last year. It was agony. A second punch caught her across the left side of the face, so hard she thought she felt her cheekbone splinter.
Not even the adrenaline pumping violently through her veins could take away the searing pain of Randall’s blows. He was a big man, and even with her hands free, she would have been powerless against him. She slumped forward, doubled over in pain, the blood from her face cascading onto the white linen sheets.
This time, when he moved toward her, she had no ounce of energy left with which to fight him. She was only dimly aware of him untying her wrists, and later slipped in and out of consciousness as he brought towels and warm water from the bathroom and pressed them inexpertly to her face, making her cry out in pain. The last thing she remembered was Randall, holding a bloodied towel and looking bewildered, asking her over and over again, “Why, Siena? Why did you make me do it?”
“I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be easy.”
She awoke, disoriented, to hear a strange man’s voice. She tried to open her eyes to look around her, but nothing happened. She whimpered in terror. “Who’s there? I can’t see. Why can’t I see anything?”
The next voice she heard was Randall’s. He sounded sober and in control, almost businesslike. She could tell that he was standing on the far side of the room, and felt relief when he made no move to approach her.
“You’re in a private surgery center, darling, in Beverly Hills,” he told her. “The doctors are going to take care of you.”
“What do you mean? What doctors?” She was becoming increasingly panicked. “I can’t open my fucking eyes, Randall! What have you done to me?”
“What have I done to you?” He did his best to sound affronted. “What on earth do you mean?”
“Try to keep calm, Siena,” the strange voice said, before she had a chance to respond. It was a soothing, gentle voice, and it was close to her, either sitting on or leaning over the side of her bed. “I’m going to give you something to help you relax and keep numbing the pain.”
She felt a slight prick in her arm and a pleasant, cool sensation of some nameless liquid being pumped into her veins. Instantly, her head felt heavy, and she slumped back onto the pillows. She could also feel her heart rate dropping and a surreal mood of calm flooding her senses. It was wonderful, almost blissful, peace.
“You’ve had an accident,” the voice continued. “I’m Dr. Sanford, and I’m going to help you get well.”
“I can’t see,” whispered Siena. Even through her drug-induced stupor, she kept a dogged hold on that one terrifying fact.
“Randall tells me you fell,” said the doctor. “Into a glass cabinet. There’s been some damage to your eyes, but we won’t know how serious it is until we operate. Are you ready for me to operate, Siena?”
She groaned drowsily. After a long pause, she said, “I want to see the police. I want . . .” She stopped, apparently exhausted by the effort and concentration involved in speaking. “I want to report him. Randall. He attacked me.”
The doctor sighed and looked nervously at his client. This wasn’t the first time Randall Stein had brought him a battered girl in the small hours of the morning. But usually they were prostitutes or starlets whose silence could easily be bought, not world-famous film stars. And in any case, none of them had had injuries even approaching the seriousness of Siena’s.
It was a tragedy. The girl’s face had been shredded. She would never look the same again.
Both he and Randall had hoped that her concussion would be serious enough that she might have lost her memory of the attack. Clearly though, this wasn’t the case.
“The police? Well, that’s your right of course,” he responded cautiously. “But I really think we should focus on treating your injuries before anything else. I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes to think about it.”
“No!” Siena screamed. She was obviously terrified of being left alone with Randall.
“It’s all right,” said Dr. Sanford, taking her hand and stroking it till she began to breathe normally. Despite having made vast sums of money over the years, thanks to his “discretion” as Randall’s private doctor, even he was disgusted by what he had seen tonight. The girl could have died. If he weren’t already so deeply implicated in so many of Randall’s past “accidents,” he would have gone to the police himself. “He won’t hurt you, I promise,” he said with a meaningful look that was not lost on Randall. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Stay where you are or I’ll scream,” said Siena the moment she heard the door click shut. Though her voice was slurred and drowsy, Randall could tell she meant what she said and didn’t move.
“Fine,” he said calmly. “But I’d think very carefully before screaming if I were you. To the police or anyone else.”
He took out a cigarillo from his inside jacket pocket and lit it. Siena could hear this little ritual and smell the sweet tobacco smoke wafting across the room.
“Let’s look at your options, shall we?” Randall went on. “You can tell the police that I attacked you. For which, in any case, they will only have your word against mine.”
“I think,” she said derisively, “my injuries speak for themselves.”
“Do you?” Randall seemed unconcerned. “Well, perhaps. Or perhaps the word of a well-respected producer and very generous benefactor of the LAPD might count for more than that of a young actress already
known to be highly emotionally unstable? Who knows?” Siena opened her mouth to protest but found she was overwhelmed with exhaustion. That shot in the arm had really knocked her out. “In either event, at that point will begin a long, protracted, and very expensive legal battle that you are in no financial position to fight.”
“What do you mean?” she challenged him. “Of course I can fight you. I’ve got my own money.”
“Two hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars, to be precise,” said Randall. “Of the two million you gave me to invest last year, I’m afraid that’s all that’s left. In your name, that is.”
“Liar!” she snarled. “That’s impossible. You can’t have lost that much in a year. And if you have, that’s negligence. I’ll sue you for every fucking cent.”
“Again, an expensive business, suing people.” He puffed out smoke luxuriously. It was so long since Siena had even attempted to stand up to him, he was quite enjoying the thrill of the fight. “Particularly when one is being sued oneself.”
“Oh, you’re going to sue me, are you?” She wanted to laugh, but even with the painkillers, the pain in her chest was too much. “What for? Damaging your brandy glass? Staining the fucking bedspread with my blood?”
“No,” said Randall, still clinically composed. “For deliberately delaying production on the movie. For libel, if you try to blame your accidental injuries on me. And for breach of contract. After all, you’re hardly able to continue playing Peggy now, are you? After your drunken fall. I’m afraid you’ve well and truly lost your looks, sweetheart.”
He started to laugh, but Siena wasn’t listening. She had no idea if what he’d said about the money was true, and she wasn’t even sure if she cared. Her brain was a fog of anger, drugs, and pain. All she knew was that she might never be able to see again. And if she did, would she even recognize herself after what he’d done to her? The thought of her ravaged face suddenly made her feel violently sick.
“Pass me something,” she said, clasping both hands over her mouth.