by Julia James
She read the article in shock. Disbelief. Yet her disbelief was seared with the hideous knowledge that everything was true, whatever her desperate hope that it was not. Her father’s company had gone under, collapsing under a mountain of hitherto concealed debts, and all remaining assets acquired by a new owner.
Like her mother—sobbing jerkily on the sofa while Talia hunched over her laptop—Talia tried to phone through to her father’s office. The call rang out, unanswered. Unlike her mother, she then tried to find a number for the company that seemed to have bought what was left of Grantham Land, but LX Holdings did not seem to exist—certainly not in the UK.
She started to search for overseas companies, but realised how little she knew of corporate matters. The press didn’t seem to know much either—the adjective employed in their articles to describe the acquiring company was ‘secretive’.
As for where her father was... Talia knew with bleak certainty that filled her entirely that he had gone to earth. He would not easily be found. As to whether he would bother to get in touch with his wife and daughter...
Her mouth tightened to a whip-thin line. She turned her head towards her mother, huddled in a sodden mass of exhausted hysteria. Would her father care?
She knew the answer.
No, he would not. He had abandoned them to whatever would be the fallout from this debacle.
Fallout that, within a week, she would know to be catastrophic.
* * *
Luke sat in his office. Beyond the window he could see Lake Lucerne. He had deliberately chosen this place for his base because of its very quietness.
Throughout his entire career he had striven to draw as little attention to himself as possible. The financial press called his company ‘secretive’ and he liked it that way. Needed it that way. He’d needed to amass the fortune he’d required for his purpose as unobtrusively as possible.
His corporate structure was deliberately opaque, with shell companies, subsidiaries in several jurisdictions, and complex financial vehicles all designed with one purpose in mind: to amass money through careful, assiduous speculation and investment without anyone noticing, and then, once his fortune was sufficiently large, to hunt his enemy to destruction.
And now his enemy was defeated. Destroyed utterly. Wiped off the face of the earth—literally, it seemed. For, like the sewer rat he was, he’d gone to ground.
Luke had a pretty shrewd idea of where he’d gone, and it was not a place where he would feel safe. Those from whom his quarry had borrowed money in his final desperate attempts to stave off the ruin rushing upon him were not likely to be forgiving of the fact that he could not repay them at all.
He tore his mind away—that was not his concern. His concern was what to do with the rest of his life.
He felt his guts twist. His face hardened with a bleakness in his expression that he could not banish.
Weeks had passed since the night that had transformed his existence—when he had so rashly thought, for those brief hours, that he had started his new life, free at last from the punishing task he had set himself. He still could not accept what she had done—could not accept how totally, devastatingly wrong he had been about her.
I thought she felt as strongly as I did! I thought what was between us was as special to her—as mind-blowing, as amazing and as lasting—as it was to me. I thought we had started something that would change our lives.
That twist in his guts came again, like a rope knotting around his midriff. Well, he had thought wrong, hadn’t he? That incredible night had meant nothing to her—nothing at all.
She walked away with barely a word—just that brutal note. How could I have got it so wrong? Got her so wrong?
In the punishing years since he’d set out to wreak vengeance upon the man who had driven his father to an early grave he’d had no time for relationships—only those fleeting affairs. Was that why he’d got this woman Talia—the name echoed tormentingly in his head...Talia—so wrong?
What do I know of women? Of how they can promise and deceive?
With a razored breath he reached jerkily for the file lying in front of him. He flicked it open, seeking distraction from his tormenting thoughts.
The photos inside mocked him, but he made himself stare at them—made himself read the accompanying detailed notes and scan down the complex figures set out in the financial analysis provided.
With an effort of mind he forced himself to focus. The rest of his life awaited him. He had better fill it somehow.
His acquisitions team were busy stripping what flesh remained on the carcass of his prey, disposing of any remaining assets for maximum profit—which they would do, he knew, with expert efficiency. He had left them to it. His goal had been to destroy his enemy, not make money out of his destruction. He had plenty more of the money that he’d amassed—enough to give him a life of luxury for as long as he lived. Now all he sought were ventures to invest in that would be for his own enjoyment. And this project, displayed in the photos in front of him, would do as well as anything else.
His mouth twisted and thoughts knifed in his head. The photos showed palm trees, an azure sea, the verdant greenery of the Caribbean.
I would have taken her there...
The thought left a hollowness in its wake, an emptiness that would not leave him.
* * *
Talia stared out of the window of the low-cost carrier’s plane that was winging her to Spain. Dread filled her. Her mother was at the Marbella villa, where Talia had taken her in those first nightmare days after her father’s disappearance and financial ruin.
It had been painstakingly explained to her by the blank-faced lawyer who had summoned her to her father’s former City HQ, where she’d been able to see through the glass door all the deserted offices being dismantled and stripped of their furnishings by burly men. Her father’s ruin encompassed not only the corporate assets, but Gerald Grantham’s personal assets too.
‘Your father put everything he owned into the company—initially for tax advantages and latterly to shore up the accounts. Consequently...’ the man had looked impassively at Talia, who had stared back at him white-faced ‘...it all now passes to the acquiring owner.’ He’d paused, then said unblinkingly, ‘Including, of course, the riverside mansion in the Thames Valley and all its contents.’
Talia had paled even more, as the man had gone on.
‘Vacant possession is required by the end of the week.’
So she’d taken her mother to Spain, thanking heaven that the villa seemed to have been spared. It appeared to be owned by a different corporation—an offshore shell company her father had set up.
In Spain, she’d tried to sort out the pathetic remnants of what they had left—which was almost nothing. All their bank accounts had been frozen, and all the credit cards. Had it not been for Talia’s secret personal account—the one she’d opened in defiance of her father’s diktats—she would not even have been able to buy air tickets or food. Or to pay Maria, the only member of staff in Spain she’d been able to keep on. She needed Maria as her mother’s only support when she went back to London to see if there was news about anything else she could salvage.
But it had turned out to be the reverse. Now, with dread mounting in her, she knew she would have to give her mother the worst news of all. The Marbella villa was being taken from them...
They had been given a fortnight to get out, and in that time Talia was going to have to find them somewhere else to live and keep her mother from collapsing totally. It would finish her, she knew, to lose the villa as well as everything else—as well as her husband. Which was a loss she simply could not and would not believe.
‘He’ll come back to us, darling!’ Her mother’s pitiful words rang in Talia’s ears. ‘He’s just sorting things out, making it all right, and then everything will be back to normal again!’
; Talia knew better. Her father was not coming back. He’d saved his own skin, leaving his wife and daughter to face utter ruin.
Her mother repeated her pathetic hopes again that evening, when Talia arrived at the palatial villa, its opulence mocking her. Talia said nothing, only hugged her mother, who seemed thinner than she had ever been, her face haggard. She looked ill and Maria, taking Talia aside, expressed concern for Maxine Grantham’s health.
Talia could only shake her head, feeling dread inside her at the news she must tell her mother.
She let her mother chatter on in her staccato, nervy fashion, telling her how the pool needed to be cleaned, and how Maria had to have help because she couldn’t cope with such a huge house on her own, and that she must get to Rafael, in Marbella town, who was the only person she trusted with her hair, because she couldn’t possibly let her husband see her with such a rats’ nest when he came back—as surely he would, very soon now.
Surely Talia must have heard from her father by now, she said. For she herself had not, and she was worried sick about him, because something dreadful must have happened for him not to be in touch...
Talia put up with it as best she could, saying soothing, meaningless things to her mother. As they sat down to eat the meal Maria had prepared Talia encouraged her mother to take more than the few meagre mouthfuls that was all she seemed to want. She had to force herself to eat, too, because above all she had to keep her strength up.
I’ve got to keep it together—I can’t fall apart! I can’t!
It was an invocation she had to repeat when, after dinner, she sat her mother down in the opulent drawing room and told her she must speak to her.
‘LX Holdings has made a successful claim on the offshore company which...’ she took a breath ‘...which owns this villa. Which means...’
She faltered. Her mother’s complexion had turned the colour of whey.
Talia’s voice was hollow as she made herself finish what she had to say. ‘We have to move out. They’re taking the villa from us as well.’ Her voice broke. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m so, so sorry—’
A cry broke from her mother, high and keening. And then, as if in slow motion, Talia saw her mother’s expression change, her hand fly to her chest. Her whole body convulsed and she shook like a leaf.
‘No! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t lose this villa too! Not this too! I can’t! Oh, God, I can’t!’
There was desperation in her mother’s voice, and then she collapsed into a sobbing, hysterical mess, clutching at Talia. But Maxine Grantham was beyond any kind of soothing...beyond anything except complete collapse.
* * *
Restlessly, Luke seized the file from his in-tray, flicked it open, and stared down at the photos it contained. He frowned. Was this really a project he should go ahead with? It would take a lot of investment, a lot of work, and the return was uncertain.
Yet there was something in the photos that called to him. The state of brutal ruination inflicted by nature that the photos showed echoed across the years. Not earthquake damage this time, as in his memories, but the terrifying force of wind destroying whatever stood in its path.
His thoughts were bitter. Taking on such a project halfway across the world would help him put out of his mind what kept trying to occupy it—the infernal memory he needed to banish.
She didn’t want me—didn’t want what I wanted. Didn’t want anything about me.
He cut the endless loop that wanted to play and play inside his head and went back to staring at the photos, making himself read the notes compiled for him by his agent. He needed something to fill the emptiness inside him now that his enemy was destroyed and the burning ambition that had driven him all his adult life had been finally fulfilled.
The low ring of the phone on his desk interrupted his concentration and he reached for the handset absently. It was his PA, and her voice was uncertain.
‘There is someone here, Mr Xenakis, who is asking to see you. She has no appointment, and will not give her name, but she is very insistent. I told her it was impossible, but—’
Luke cut across her. He had no interest in whoever it was. ‘Send her away,’ he said curtly. ‘Oh, and is my flight booked and the villa reservation made?’
‘Yes, of course, Mr Xenakis, it is all done.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
He dropped the phone down on the desk, but as he did so there was a loud noise by the door to the outer office and it was suddenly flung open. The voice of his PA was protesting vigorously in English, not the French in which she spoke to Luke.
His head shot up, anger spiking at the intrusion. But the emotion died instantly when he saw who was pushing through the open door, his PA behind her, trying to stop her.
She stopped dead.
For a second there was complete silence, even from his PA. Then Luke spoke.
‘Leave us.’
But it was his PA he addressed. Not the woman who had forced herself into his office.
Not Talia.
* * *
Blankness filled Talia’s mind, wiping out every turbid emotion that had been raging inside her head since she had left Marbella that morning. With Maria’s help she’d got her wildly sobbing mother to bed and summoned her doctor. He’d prescribed a sedative, then taken Talia aside. He’d told her with a frown that such upset was not good for his patient, known to him already for her nervous attacks and for her weakened heart.
Talia had been appalled by the latter—her mother had never told her. The doctor had also made it clear to her that he blamed the slimming pills she took constantly. They’d put a strain on her heart—now exacerbated by her hysterical collapse.
‘She must have complete rest and quiet—and no further upset!’ the doctor had told Talia sternly. ‘Or the consequences could be most dangerous to her! Her heart cannot take any more stress of this nature!’
Talia had shown him out, his words mocking her with a cruelty that she could scarcely bear. No further upset...
She’d felt a beading of hysteria herself—they were about to be evicted from the last place that Talia had so desperately hoped might be salvaged from the debacle of her father’s ruin and disappearance. How could she possibly avoid further upset?
Throughout the sleepless night that had followed, during which she had tossed and turned, her hands clenching convulsively as she’d gazed tensely at the darkened ceiling, it had become clear that only one option was left to her.
Before she’d told her mother, her bleak plan had been to use the fast-dwindling amount of money she’d secretly squirrelled away to rent a tiny flat, somewhere in a cheap part of the costas, and then get the first job she could find to bring in a salary, however meagre. Her mother would be appalled, but what else could she do?
But if she insisted on that now, after the doctor’s grim warnings, she would be risking her mother’s life by forcing her to leave the villa and abandoning all hope.
By morning, dull-eyed and heavy-hearted, and filled with a kind of numb, dreadful resignation, Talia had come to the only conclusion she could. After her bleak exchanges with the lawyers in London, when they’d told her she and her mother were penniless and homeless, she had finally tracked down the headquarters of the mysterious LX Holdings. A morning flight had brought her here.
And now, paralysed by shock and disbelief, she was standing in the doorway of the huge office she had forced her way into in sheer desperation.
It could not be—it could not be...
Luke? But how—? Why—?
Shocked words fell from her frozen lips. ‘I don’t understand—’
With a curt gesture he dismissed his PA who backed away, closing the door as she left. She saw him step towards her. Heard him speak.
‘Talia...’
There was a hoarseness in his voice but his face was closed, filled with tension.<
br />
‘Why did you come here? How?’ The questions shot from him like bullets.
Talia felt her face work, but speaking was almost impossible. Two absolutely conflicting realities echoed in her head. Then slowly, as the hideous truth dawned on her, she made the connection—forced herself to make it.
‘It can’t be—you can’t be...’ Her voice was faint. Her face convulsed again. ‘You can’t be LX Holdings—’
She saw Luke’s brows snap together, as if what she’d said made no sense. His mouth twisted. ‘How did you find me?’ he said. He looked at her. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded. He had said nothing of his identity to her that fateful night—no more had she told him hers. So how...?
‘They...they told me. Your lawyers in London. When they spoke to me.’
Her voice was staccato, shock thinning her words. He was still staring back at her as if what she’d said made no sense at all. Her face worked again.
‘I’m Natasha Grantham,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE
LUKE FELT THE world reel. He heard her words—how could he not?—but he felt only denial slice through him. No, he would not let her be that! Anyone but that!
She was speaking still, and he could still hear her—hear her and want only to silence her.
‘I’m Gerald Grantham’s daughter. You’ve taken everything he possessed. But...but I’m asking you not...not to take the Marbella villa as well. That...that’s why I’ve come here.’
Her voice faltered and she fell silent.
He stilled, and now a new emotion filled him—one that was cold, like ice water.
‘You are Gerald Grantham’s daughter?’ he repeated.
He had to be sure. In his head skimmed fractured memory from long years ago, when he’d first set himself to studying everything he could about the man he was going to destroy. Grantham had a daughter, yes, and a wife, too—always being trotted out at his side, dressed to the nines, glittering with jewellery, frequenting expensive venues, spending his ill-gotten money.