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PROLOGUE

On the one hand, you might have said my day wasn’t going terribly well.

But on the other, I had told Amy that I wanted to make big changes in my life and there weren’t many lifestyle changes more significant than swapping a luxury Italian palazzo for a prison cell.

And my second prison cell in two weeks, at that. Clearly I was going for some sort of record. It was one thing to say you wanted to start over, it was another thing to start over as someone on the ‘no fly’ list because you were considered an international flight risk. I was almost certain the generally accepted way of society was to go the other way.

I took a deep breath, blew it out hard and examined my bitten-down fingernails while trying to remain calm and wait for someone to appear and make this entire mess go away. Ideally someone I knew, accompanied by someone with a working knowledge of the Italian legal system, but at this point, as long as they didn’t have a gun, a pair of handcuffs or a pointy stick, I’d be happy. And if they did have a gun, a pair of handcuffs or a pointy stick, but also came bearing biscuits, I’d probably be just as happy.

‘This is what happens when you’re too busy working to watch telly, like normal people,’ I admonished myself. ‘If I’d watched Bad Girls or Cell Block H like Amy, instead of doing my homework, I would know these things. ’

I traced a shallow line in the cement floor with the bare big toe on my good foot and wondered how it got there in the first place. I’d been thoroughly searched on my way in and anything that might have hacked a seven-inch gash in a concrete floor had been removed from my person. Hairgrips, the belt from my dress, even my bra. I had nothing left on me but my knickers and my beautiful bright pink dress. At least, most of it was still bright pink – there was quite a lot of muck and a few well-placed splotches of blood around the hem. But still, I had told Kekipi not to give me a dress with a train, so this was entirely his fault. Well, apart from all the bits that were my fault. Which was most of them.