Читать книгу Platinum Coast - Lynne Pemberton - Страница 6

He wasn’t going to catch her; not this time. Her legs torn and bleeding, Christina brushed through the sharp, brittle cane-stems as flying cockroaches buzzed and whistled past her head. The island sun in the cloudless sky was merciless, scorching her shoulders and arms whilst the rushing blood pounded in her ears.

Suddenly, the cane field cleared to a wide expanse of dry scrubland across which she saw the old abandoned plantation house. The breath sobbed in her throat as she ran towards it.

The crumbling coral-stone steps leading up to the front door looked scarcely able to take her weight. She stepped up them cautiously, glancing behind her There was no one there. She had lost him.

‘Thank God.’ she gasped as she pushed open the heavy wooden door with its peeling paint Inside the house it was cool. She stood for a few moments, adjusting her eyes to the gloom as her rasping breath echoed around what she gradually came to see was a vast, domed hallway dominated by a broad, sweeping stone staircase to her left.

She stopped at the landing, her expression a mixture of fear and fascination. She could hear something. It echoed faintly around the vast, empty house a hushed, repetitive scraping sound, sinister yet strangely familiar As if in a trance she walked slowly towards the noise It was coming from one of the bedrooms. She tried the doors as she moved along the landing. They were all locked, except one – the door to the room whence came the ghostly sound. She opened the door and edged into the bedroom. Then she smiled.

Crossing the room she leaned over the old-fashioned gramophone and lifted the stuck needle. The record crackled slightly as she replaced it in the groove and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 erupted around her

It was loud, so loud that she did not hear the sound of manic laughter coming from the man who had appeared behind her. She heard nothing but the music until he was upon her.

She whirled round as he grabbed her arm.

He was wearing a crude voodoo mask. It covered his face, but she could see his eyes, cold and unblinking. Dead green eyes. The man’s laughter turned into a high-pitched shrieking which shook his body. She tried to struggle but it was no good, he was too strong. Yet, strangely, she was not afraid.

He reminded her of one of the grotesque laughing men she had seen at fairgrounds when she was a child. Somehow he wasn’t real. Yet he was real; so were his actions.

He began unbuttoning her blouse. She watched him as if from a distance, impassively, knowing that it was useless to resist. He bared first one breast and then the other. She cried out as he squeezed one nipple viciously. His laughter had subsided; he smiled at her pain and seemed almost peaceful.

He moved his hands up over her breasts towards her neck. She stiffened as the fingers closed around her throat. Now she was afraid. Rigid with fear she waited for him to tighten his hands. Then she saw the ring: the tricoloured band of gold that she had given Stephen on their wedding night. And it was then that she began to scream …

‘No, Stephen, no, please.’

Christina woke up shouting, drenched in perspiration and knotted in a tangle of silk sheets. Shaking uncontrollably, she sat up and tried to calm herself as her overloaded mind began to distinguish dream from reality. She was not on the island, she reminded herself, but in New York for a meeting with Kingsleigh Klein, Stephen’s lawyer. After a few moments she reached across and switched on the bedside light. It was 3.15. She leaned back against her damp and crumpled pillow and took a deep breath. It was the same nightmare she’d had for the past ten nights, since returning from Stephen’s burial at sea to the familiarity of the apartment in New York’s prestigious Sutton Place.

She ran a shaky hand through her dishevelled hair. Tonight, she thought, of all nights she had needed a good seven hours’ sleep. She contemplated taking a sleeping-pill but thought better of it. It would make her groggy in the morning, and she couldn’t afford that. Not tomorrow at the meeting which Kingsleigh Klein had unexpectedly called to ‘discuss the disposition’ of Stephen’s Platinum Resorts shares. Christina had been surprised that this had not been covered in his will, but at the time it had been read to her by an overawed young associate from Bascombe and Partners on Barbados she had been too stunned and disorientated by grief to ask any questions. All she knew was that Stephen had left a great deal of money – many millions more than she had dreamed possible – in outright legacy to herself and in trust for their son Adam and Stephen’s daughter from his first marriage, Victoria.

She shivered, though this time it wasn’t the bad dream that caused her uneasiness. It was the cold breath of reality.

She knew that there was going to be conflict. In the weeks and months ahead the wolves would be after her, snarling and snapping, eager for blood. She had always hated the deviousness and brutality of high-powered business. It frightened her. Yet later that morning she was to be pitched right into the middle of it, thrown into the arena to fight it out with Antonio Cellini and the stepchild who had always hated her.

At least with Antonio it would be purely business. With Victoria it would be personal. It always had been. Like Christina she had expectations of Stephen’s Platinum Resorts Inc. shares. After all, like Christina she had been much loved by him.

Though unlike me, Christina thought, as she made herself more comfortable against the pillows, she was also completely spoiled and indulged by Stephen.

She shook her head ruefully. She had never been able to make it work with Victoria. From the very beginning, at their first meeting, Christina had seen something in those lovely eyes that did not belong in a child. She had tried to win Victoria over, to become friends with the beautiful child who had fast become a beguiling young woman, but she had failed. Her efforts over the years had been constantly rejected; now the gap between them was filled with distrust and resentment.

It was, she supposed, the classic stepmother – stepdaughter relationship. With Stephen in the middle.

Despite his acuteness in business he had never been able to see how treacherous his own daughter could be. He had showered her with material possessions; her trust funds and the country properties she would inherit in England made her worth tens of millions of pounds. And with her looks and brains she was bound to acquire herself a fabulously wealthy husband.

But it wasn’t enough, not for Victoria. Platinum Resorts Inc. remained, a monument to Stephen’s vision and legendary flair. Tomorrow the disposition of his holding in the company was to be made clear.

Tomorrow, at the lawyer’s meeting, Victoria was certain to make her move.

Robert Leyton awoke with a colossal hangover.

Delicately he eased himself out of the bed, careful not to jolt his sore and aching head.

Behind the bathroom door was a full-length mirror. Robert squinted at his reflection. He looked like death. The muscles of his stocky, gone-to-seed body were slack and his face was drawn and haggard, eyelids drooping heavily over his dark eyes.

‘Getting old, my son,’ he told himself in the mirror.

His hand shook as he slowly and painfully shaved the dark stubble off his chin, careful not to nick himself. He didn’t want shaving cuts on his face today, not with a meeting with that smart lawyer coming up. Besides, as Victoria’s chief trustee he owed it to her to put up a good appearance. He must do his best for Stephen’s daughter. His old friend and partner would have expected no less.

He lit a cigarette with a hand that trembled slightly and inhaled, letting the smoke curl lazily away from his thin lips as he gazed out of the window at the driving rain. Thirty-two floors below him it was washing some of the surface filth off the streets of the city. He hated New York; had never been able to understand why Stephen had loved it so much.

But then, there was much about his former partner he had never understood.

Staring sightlessly out of the window, he drew smoke deep into his lungs and recalled Stephen’s words to him the day before he died. His voice on the telephone had been cold and deadly serious.

‘Robert, you must promise me something. It’s very important. If anything happens to me in the next few days I want you to go to Zurich, to see Nicolas Wagner. He has a letter in his possession. It’s to do with Platinum Resorts …’ – the company Stephen had founded without Robert’s participation – ‘He’ll know what to do if you tell him it’s time. He’ll contact Klein first. It’s all arranged.’

Robert had expressed surprise. He had never known Stephen be so mysterious. ‘But why?’ he had asked.

‘Because you’re the only one I can trust to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Stop that bastard Cellini getting his hands on Platinum Resorts! He’ll do anything to gain control, anything. It’s up to you to stop him.’

Robert had shivered. He doubted if there was anyone who could stop Antonio Cellini getting what he wanted. Except a man like Stephen.

‘Have I your word, Robert?’ Stephen’s voice had been low and urgent. ‘You’ll pull out all the stops?’ It had been a demand.

Though mystified, he had agreed. ‘Yes, of course, Stephen. You know I will. Anything you say. But come on, why so serious? You’re as fit as a fiddle. Nothing’s going to happen to you.’

‘I know that,’ the voice at the other end of the telephone had snapped back. ‘It’s merely a precaution. You know me. Better safe than sorry.’

They were Stephen’s last words to him.

The following day Christina had phoned and broken the fatal news in a distant, choking voice.

Victor, the butler, had found Stephen’s body at the foot of the stairs in their Barbados home, Crystal Springs House. His neck was broken.

The island coroner had ruled that it was death by misadventure. Robert had difficulty accepting the verdict, but kept his own counsel. It surely could not have been coincidence that Stephen had set in motion those complicated and highly secret arrangements ‘in case of’ his own death?

He turned from the rain-splattered window and savagely screwed his cigarette out in an ashtray. What, he wondered for the hundredth time, had Stephen got himself mixed up in?

After the fortieth length, Antonio Cellini pulled himself effortlessly out of the heated water and padded across the marble tiles to a towel draped on a chair at the side of the dark-blue-tiled swimming-pool.

He moved on the ground as he had in the water: effortlessly and with an animal grace. Standing at six one and weighing 180 pounds, he had the body of a man of thirty. Which, he considered, wasn’t bad when next birthday he would be fifty-three.

Wrapping himself in the towel, he looked across the grounds of the Southampton colonial-style mansion he had finally bought from his parents-in-law. He never tired of the sense of pride that view gave him; it represented everything he had ever wanted, everything he had worked for and achieved.

A flash of blonde hair appeared at a bedroom window but was gone before he could lift a hand to wave. He wondered why Susanna was up so early. It was unusual.

He jogged barefoot up the well-manicured lawns and through the open french windows. He was surprised to see his wife sitting fully dressed at the head of the polished dining-table in the elegant, pale-green morning room. She was spreading butter sparingly over a wafer-thin slice of toast.

‘Good morning, Susanna,’ he said brightly. ‘Up so early? To what do I owe this pleasure?’

She ignored his question. ‘Antonio,’ she demanded with barely controlled irritation, ‘how many times do I have to ask you? After you have been swimming, please come in through the kitchen. You are dripping all over the Aubusson.’

Her blue eyes were cold and full of disapproval.

He was tempted to tell her acidly that the faded, threadbare rug he was soaking had cost him several thousand dollars. That if he wanted to stand on it, wet or otherwise, he would. And that furthermore, if there was one thing he had learned in his long years of association with a tight-ass like Stephen Reece-Carlton, it was that it was vulgar to use anything but the generic: ‘the car’, not ‘the Mercedes’; ‘champagne’, not ‘Dom Perignon’; ‘the rug’, not the goddamned ‘Aubusson’! He caught his own chain of thought and smiled ironically. Well, what do you know? Some of Stephen’s class had finally rubbed off. Too bad it had to be after his death. He wondered if he ought to correct the supposedly classy woman he had married. But he thought better of it. He didn’t want another argument, not this morning. This morning he had more important things on his mind.

‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he continued, glancing at the Louis XV clock, yet another of Susanna’s expensive antiques. ‘Why aren’t you still in bed? You’re never up at this time in the morning.’

‘I have an appointment with Clifford Norton about the party next month. He goes on vacation this afternoon. This morning is the only time he could make.’ Her mouth nipped at a corner of the toast and she chewed it slowly and delicately. He grimaced. It irritated him the way she ate like a bird.

‘Not another party, Susanna,’ he moaned. ‘I’m sick of your constant parties. All those phoney people descending on us like a cloud of locusts. Give me a break. Haven’t we done our quota of entertaining for this year?’

She gave him another icy stare but said nothing. He grabbed a warm croissant from a plate on the table and bit into it as he walked out of the room, leaving a trail of crumbs behind him. He bounded up the wide staircase two at a time and almost collided with a maid. She was new, dark-skinned and attractive, and he smiled at her. He didn’t bother to learn their names any more, they changed so often.

He padded through Susanna’s bedroom suite, which interconnected with his own. He hated the fact that they had separate rooms. He missed waking up next to her.

It has been wonderful, once: to be aroused by the musky remnants of her expensive perfume, to touch the silky strands of her wayward hair, to caress with eager fingers the fine golden hair of her bush. But it hadn’t lasted long. He had realized early in their marriage, after a few cold and indifferent submissions, that Susanna loathed sex in the morning.

And that had been the beginning of their growing apart; the start of what had eventually led to separate bedrooms. It had never excited him to have his women acquiescent. He wanted them eager for it, hungry enough to match his own appetite. His mind strayed to the good-looking maid he had encountered on the stairs. She had possibilities, he thought, and felt his penis stirring into life.

He shook his head vigorously, shaking off thoughts of sex, then smiled to himself. The prospect of a fight always made him horny, and today at the meeting he expected there to be a bloody battle. It was important to keep his mind on business.

Christina, he was certain, could be persuaded to stay out. She had Adam to look after now. Victoria, though, was going to need some careful handling. She always did …

He showered and dressed in a sombre Armani suit, a blue shirt and silk paisley tie, then ran a comb lightly through his hair which, except for the distinguished wings of grey at the temples, was as thick and dark as it had always been.

He smiled at himself in the mirror, showing a set of even white teeth. He felt good: alert and exhilarated, his veins pumping with adrenalin, anticipating the battle.

He was sure he would win. Now, at last, he would gain control of Stephen Reece-Carlton’s business empire. His grin widened at the prospect – and at the thought that his triumph would have Stephen Reece-Carlton turning in his grave.

Victoria surveyed herself in the full-length wardrobe mirror of room 263 of the Plaza Hotel.

She saw a slender, stern-faced young woman whose braided blue Chanel suit matched her eyes to perfection. She had pinned her long, black hair into a chignon in order to emphasize the exquisite heart-shaped diamond pendant glittering at her throat.

Tenderly, she touched the brilliant, six-carat stone and recalled the words that had been written in Stephen’s open, scrawling handwriting on the card accompanying it:

When you wear this I’ll never be far away.

Your ever adoring father.

She felt the tears spring into her eyes and gripped the edge of the dressing-table, fighting to stay in control. He had given her the necklace only days before he had died. It had been his last gift.

She fought back the tears. They threatened to mess up her mascara and she hadn’t time to start on her make-up again.

‘Come on, Vicky,’ she said softly to herself. ‘You’re Daddy’s girl. Do what he always told you to do. Come out fighting.’

She smiled bravely at her reflection, pushing a wisp of stray hair out of her eyes, but inside she felt her heart breaking with the pain of his loss. She missed him so much. He had gone so suddenly, too soon for her to have learned all that he had to teach her: about winning people over, making them feel good, while all the time he was manipulating them for his own ends. About continued success and how not to grow complacent. Most of all about power.

Victoria was twenty-one, rich and beautiful. In his will her father had left money in trust for her until she was twenty-five, more than enough to buy her anything she wanted. But none of that was enough. She wanted power.

Now that her father was dead she saw herself as his natural successor. She had inherited much of his wealth, his good looks and his business acumen. She had also inherited his determination. And it was with that, the iron will she had seen him use so often, that she intended to wrest control of the one thing he had not left her – complete control of Platinum Resorts. Or rather – had not left her yet, she reminded herself. Today’s meeting was to determine the reassignment of her father’s shares. Antonio had been asked to attend, but she couldn’t believe that Stephen Reece-Carlton would have been so weak as to make the sentimental gesture of giving away shares to a business partner. No, Antonio’s presence was a mere formality, as was that of her trustee, Robert Leyton. Dear old Uncle Bob. Yet another man she could twist around her finger. Which left Christina.

There was a fierce stabbing pain in the palm of her hands. Victoria looked down in surprise as blood seeped slowly down one wrist. At just the thought of her stepmother she had clenched her fists so tightly that her long nails had drawn blood. Maybe it was an omen? For the first time since her father’s death, Victoria smiled.

The rain had turned Madison Avenue into a blocked artery of horn-sounding yellow cabs, all going nowhere.

Antonio peered past his driver’s head at the immovable jam of vehicles stretching as far into the distance as he could see, then consulted his watch. He turned to stare at the pedestrians scurrying along the sidewalk. No matter how fraught and bad-tempered they were, he thought, at least they were going somewhere. He decided to join them. He might get a little wet, but that would be better than being a half-hour late.

He arrived at the New York offices of Platinum Resorts Inc. damp and agitated. It had been a struggle among the pedestrians on the wet sidewalks. He was fifteen minutes late.

‘The traffic on Madison was hell,’ he announced by way of an apology as he walked into the huge room that had been Stephen’s office. The others seated around the polished American cedar boardroom table looked up. No one smiled.

‘It was bad for all of us, Mr Cellini,’ Kingsleigh Klein grated patronizingly. ‘But, as you see, the rest of us made it for the appointed time.’

Antonio hid his irritation for the arrogant Kingsleigh Klein, who had been Stephen’s choice of lawyer for himself and the company. Klein had always made it obvious he disliked Cellini. The feeling was mutual, and when he had control, Antonio reflected as he smiled ingratiatingly and sat down next to Victoria, one of his first moves would be to get rid of him.

He glanced at Christina sitting opposite and noticed the dark rings around her hazel eyes, made all the more prominent by the exhausted pallor of her face. He nodded briefly to Robert Leyton. So who was the third man, neat and smooth and prissy-looking, wearing gold-rimmed half-glasses that made him look like a college professor?

‘Now that we are all finally here …’ – Klein glanced at him again – ‘perhaps we can begin? We have a lot to get through. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Herr Nicolas Wagner who has joined us today from Zurich? Like myself, Herr Wagner is a lawyer. Stephen Reece-Carlton consulted him a few months ago.’

Klein looked as if he had swallowed something sour, Antonio was pleased to see, but Wagner seemed to be out of the same mould: boring, precise and fond of the sound of his own voice.

‘Before his death,’ Nicolas Wagner began, ‘Stephen Reece-Carlton left an important document with me. His instructions were that this document was to be opened not less than one week after his burial.’ He produced a large brown manila envelope which he placed on the table in front of him. The room was silent.

Wagner paused for a moment before he went on: ‘This document is to be opened and read to all of those present here today by Mr Leyton.’

The lawyer slid the envelope across the polished table to Robert, who proceeded to open it. Antonio, watching through narrowed eyes, noticed that his hands were shaking.

Inside the envelope was a sheet of white foolscap covered in Stephen’s untidy scrawl.

Robert’s voice cracked slightly as he began to read. He stopped, cleared his throat, and began again.

‘Earlier this year I felt compelled to write this letter in case I met with an untimely death. The building of Platinum Resorts Inc. has been for me a wonderful and challenging experience. I believe that the hotels are a testament to all the effort and time put into making them what I consider to be perfect retreats.

‘I have no regrets. It has been a labour of love. I wish to leave Christina and Victoria 24 per cent of the company each in the hope that, now that I am dead, they may settle their differences and unite to prevent Antonio Cellini gaining control of Platinum Hotels.

‘That is something I do not wish to happen.’

There was a concerted gasp from everyone around the table as they shot Antonio embarrassed looks. His eyes smouldered and he reddened slightly, but he made no comment as Robert continued.

‘Without me there to prevent it, I am afraid Antonio will drag the company down.’

At this he finally exploded. Everyone jumped as he smashed his clenched fist onto the table’s polished surface, rattling the glasses and upsetting Victoria’s cup. Coffee spilled onto her new Chanel suit. She frantically dabbed at the seeping brown stain with a tissue, then glared at him ferociously.

‘I suppose it’s too much to expect an apology?’

‘For Chrissake, shut up!’ he barked at her. ‘I’ll buy you a dozen designer suits.’

Robert looked up from the letter. He was tempted to smile. Cellini had always made him feel inadequate, and now he was enjoying the chance to observe the Italian’s discomfiture. ‘May I continue?’ he enquired with a trace of smug satisfaction.

‘Yeah, you can continue,’ snarled Antonio, ‘but don’t expect me to hang around here if there’s gonna be much more of this crap. Just cut out all the amateur dramatics and get to the point.’

His voice became even more angry. ‘Christ, this is just typical of Stephen! That sonofabitch loved to play power games with people and even now he’s dead he’s still stringing us along. All we want to know is, who’s holding the remainder of the shares? When we know that we can get down to the real business.’

Robert had never been on the receiving end of Antonio Cellini’s legendary temper and wasn’t about to change that now. He became conciliatory. ‘There’s not much more.’

‘Then get on with it,’ snapped Antonio. Robert cleared his throat and continued.

‘Several years ago, for reasons I choose not to disclose, I was forced to part with a substantial proportion of my company. The shareholder, my half-brother Edward Harrington, who holds 28 per cent of Platinum Resorts, has always preferred to remain anonymous and let me act in his best interests but, in the event of my death, I am certain he will make himself known to you.

‘I must warn you that my half-brother is not to be trusted, not under any circumstances, and I am absolutely opposed to his becoming involved in any way with the running of Platinum Resorts.

‘You must always be on your guard against this man. As the other shareholders in the company, you must try to get rid of him in any way you can. Buy him out, but get rid of him. This is vitally important.

‘This is my last wish and I entrust you, particularly Christina and Victoria, with the task of carrying it out.

‘I would like to think that Platinum Resorts will enter the next decade with the same vigour and style that have made it the phenomenal success that it is today.

‘Thank you, Christina, for putting up with my obsession and loving me in spite of everything.

‘Finally, I wish all of you everything I would have wished for myself. Especially longevity.

‘Take care, and bonne chance.’

The sight of Stephen’s signature, still bold and authoritative while his body was now at the mercy of the sea, caused Robert’s voice to falter.

For a while there was a silence in the room, broken only by the soft patter of raindrops on the window panes.

Then Victoria’s voice cut crisply into the silence. ‘This is quite incredible, you know. Daddy and Uncle Edward never got on, barely saw each other. They were only half-brothers in any case. There is absolutely no reason I can think of why my father should leave Edward Harrington a controlling interest in his company.’

The Swiss lawyer glanced at her sympathetically. ‘I appreciate this has come as a shock to you, Miss Reece-Carlton, but your father’s instructions were crystal-clear. It seems that, for whatever reason, Mr Reece-Carlton intended Edward Harrington to benefit.’

‘For whatever reason,’ thought Christina. A lawyerly euphemism if ever she’d heard one. Like Victoria, she could think of no reason why Stephen should have left Edward a stake in the company he had loved. Why, she could remember him refusing his half-brother the loan of a few hundred pounds once. And now to leave him all this? It didn’t make sense.

‘But why all the goddamned secrecy?’ Antonio exploded. ‘So far as I knew, Stephen wouldn’t give his fag brother the time of day. I just don’t believe he could do this! I mean, legally, didn’t he have to notify me? We were partners, for Chrissake.’

Herr Wagner shuddered delicately at the choice of words, but hastened to assure them: ‘Mr Reece-Carlton acted quite properly. On his instructions I formed an offshore company and issued 28 per cent of the registered stock to Mr Harrington. An entirely legal manoeuvre, of course.’

Antonio snorted. ‘Legal, perhaps, but something here stinks. I’m not letting Harrington get his fat little pinkies on my company!’

Christina chose that moment to intervene. ‘Don’t you mean our company?’

For once, Victoria agreed with her. ‘Yes. By my reckoning we three are equal partners, Antonio, dear, holding 24 per cent each.’

Kingsleigh Klein broke in: ‘That’s certainly the current position, but aren’t you forgetting Stephen’s express wish that his half-brother should not be allowed to take part in the running of the company?’ He looked at Nicolas Wagner, who nodded slightly. ‘And I’m not breaking any professional confidences if I tell you that Mr Harrington himself has no intention of becoming involved in the running of Platinum Resorts. I believe you have been talking with him, Herr Wagner?’

The Swiss lawyer allowed himself a careful smile. ‘While delighted by his brother’s generosity, Mr Harrington made it quite plain to me that he does not see business as his forte. He wishes to sell his holding and has instructed me to act on his behalf. Naturally I would approach the other stockholders first.’

‘Now you’re talking language I understand. How much does this bozo want, and how soon can you arrange a transfer to me?’ rasped Antonio.

Christina felt her temples throb with suppressed annoyance. The man was impossible. ‘Hang on a minute, Antonio. There’s more than one guest at this party,’ she reminded him.

So far she had taken a back seat in this discussion. The news of the bequest to Edward had both shocked and surprised her – it seemed such an uncharacteristic move for Stephen to make. But now Antonio’s arrogant presumption had got through to her and she was determined to challenge him. He had no automatic right to those shares. No more than herself or, God forbid, Victoria.

‘Herr Wagner. I take it you would be equally happy to dispose of the shares to any of the existing shareholders?’

He inclined his head. ‘That is so. Mr Reece-Carlton foresaw there might be some – how shall I say? – healthy competition, and I have considered how best to handle it. I presume you will all three be bidding for Mr Harrington’s holding?’

He was looking specifically at Victoria who murmured, ‘Naturally.’ Christina’s heart sank. Her stepdaughter was twenty-one, had never held down a job or even completed her studies. Yet, with all the arrogance she had inherited from her father, she seemed quite convinced that she could step into his shoes.

‘I think, my dear, as your trustee …’ Robert Leyton began to bluster.

Victoria turned huge blue-grey eyes directly on him. ‘Uncle Robert, I know this is what my father would want. Obviously I need your consent to proceed, but you won’t withhold it, will you? After all, I am my father’s daughter.’

He shrugged and glanced slightly shamefacedly at Christina. She was not surprised. Father or daughter, Robert Leyton never could refuse a Reece-Carlton.

‘Then, with Mr Leyton acting on your behalf as trustee, I will accept a bid from you,’ Nicolas Wagner told Victoria. ‘I think the simplest and quickest way of handling this is to take sealed bids from all of you for outright control of Mr Harrington’s holding. I suggest we reconvene here in this office in one week’s time. That should give you all the chance to review your affairs and give me your best offer.’

Antonio was far from happy with this suggestion. ‘Now hold on a minute. Christina, Vicky, come on!’ His tone was heavily condescending. ‘It doesn’t have to come to this, surely? Competing like enemies after all the ties there’ve been between our two families.’ He put one bronzed hand on his heart. ‘If I promise, on the memory of my dead mother, to run the company just exactly as Stephen would have liked, can’t we just forget this competition shit? I mean, surely you do realize how much money I’ve got behind me? This is just a lawyer’s way of beefing up his fixer’s fee.’

It was such a phoney act it was almost laughable, Christina thought. But before she could reject the suggestion, Victoria was replying, her remarkable eyes flashing a stormy blue-grey light.

‘No, Antonio, I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you’d run Platinum Resorts the way Daddy would have wanted. Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll take my chance in the bidding.’

‘Me too,’ said Christina. ‘Stephen left his family more than well provided for. It was obviously his way of giving us a chance to keep control of Platinum Resorts.’

Victoria gave her a cold, contemptuous stare. ‘Less of the “us”, please. No matter what Daddy might have wished in his letter, I’m acting purely for myself in this. If my bid’s successful, Christina, you’re out. As far as I’m concerned you were never more than an interloper in this family.’

Christina drew in her breath. More than ten years of it, and yet Victoria’s venomous hatred still had the power to cut her like a knife. Such a depth of ill-feeling, just because Christina had had the temerity to become Stephen Reece-Carlton’s second wife.

Stephen, she prayed silently, show me what to do. I miss you so. Why did you push us all into this crazy competition? Was it just to prove how well you had taught us?

Or perhaps it was for another purpose altogether?

Oblivious to the others, wrapped in her own private thoughts, Christina leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes to hide the stinging tears that threatened. Perhaps, by taking part in this battle for control of Platinum Resorts, she could find the answers to the questions that haunted her night and day. Why had Stephen died? Who had entered their house in Barbados and pushed him to his death – for that it had been murder all along she was suddenly in no doubt at all.

Yet the man she had met eleven years before had been kind and generous, rich in more than monetary terms. How could she ever have dreamed it would one day come to this? One company and three contenders equally determined to wrest control. A regular scorpion’s nest after such golden beginnings …