Read Online The Love Killers by Jackie Collins - Free Book Online

or maybe a musician. At sixteen those were his ambitions. When Enzio found out about it he’d beaten him with a leather strap and locked him in his room for a week. Angelo never mentioned it again.
    London was a fine town, as Angelo soon discovered. Lots of pretty girls and friendly people. A person could walk the streets without fear of getting beaten up and robbed.
    An apartment had been arranged for him, and he went to work for the Stevesto setup. It was easy potatoes; all he had to do was keep his eye on a couple of casinos and begin getting the hang of things.
    Angelo was happy. He could have a different girl every week if he felt like it, and he did feel like it. He had to have sex every day. It was a habit—like morning coffee or doing push-ups—a habit he enjoyed excelling at.
    Angelo was not tall and muscular like his brothers. He was slighter in build, almost skinny. And his face was more angular, with high cheekbones. He liked to wear his hair thick and long—a minor freak-out—and sometimes he featured a Che mustache and stubbly beard.
    â€˜You look like a fuckin’ commie,’ Enzio was always screaming at him. ‘Jesus! Whyn’t you cut off that hair, buy some decent clothes—a suit maybe. You look like shit. Why can’t you take after your brothers?’
    Fuck his brothers. Angelo kept his personal appearance exactly as he wanted. It was about the only way he could spit in his father’s eye without doing too much damage.
    * * *
    The full contingent of English press turned out at Heathrow Airport to meet Rio Java. Her reputation always preceded her.
    She stepped off the plane in an outlandish pink catsuit, trailing a full-length leopard-skin coat over one arm.
    â€˜Hi, boys,’ she greeted the army of photographers. ‘What do you want me to do?’
    What
didn’t
they want her to do. Rio Java was always good for a front-page picture.
    She had been making headlines for years. A heroin addict at eighteen, Rio had first been discovered in a rehab center by the very famous avant-garde film maker, Billy Express, who was making a movie about drugs called
Turn On/Turn Off.
His intrusive camera followed her every move as she was given the treatment—the cure. He didn’t miss a thing, and the result was instant stardom. It wasn’t long before she moved into his life permanently, gave birth to his baby (an event he filmed in loving if somewhat lurid detail), and starred in all his future projects. Billy Express was extremely successful and very, very rich. The more pornographic of his movies had made him a fortune.
    Rio lived with Billy and his entourage in an elegant New York brownstone he shared with his mother. It was not the ideal arrangement, but his mother—a former Ziegfeld girl—came with the package.
    Rio felt she owed Billy a lot. He was responsible for making her a celebrity, and she loved every minute of her notoriety. Off heroin, she had no objections to joining Billy, his friends,
and
his mother on their constant LSD trips. One memorable night she found herself sharing Billy’s bed with his Chinese boyfriend, Lei. It amused Billy to have them make it together while he filmed their lovemaking. The result was that Rio became pregnant again, and Billy was delighted. He loved children and lost no time in having the top floor of his house redecorated as a nursery, just in time for the birth of Rio’s twins—two tiny Chinese boys.
    They were all happy. Billy, his bizarre mother, Lei, the children, the entourage. They made their movies, threw outrageous parties and existed in a sort of delicious, stoned vacuum.
    Until one day Rio met Larry Bolding. He was a very straight married senator in his mid-forties. He came to one of Billy’s parties, and Rio took one look at the suntanned face, the suit, the honest eyes, and flipped out. There was something about Larry Bolding that attracted her with a passion.
    â€˜I
have
to