Vengeful Love: Black Diamonds

by Laura Carter

  “I’ve read the proposal and I don’t like it. He hasn’t given me any concrete support for the return. I’m not saying the idea is dead in the water but he needs to rethink and send me a new proposal. As things stand, the answer is no.”

  He gestures to the coffee table flanked by two leather sofas, which is covered in plates of sashimi on ice, sushi rolls and Japanese style salad. I take off my mac and blazer then settle onto a sofa, pouring two cups of hot green tea.

  “Chase Mr. Cheung for the first cut of the joint venture agreement from Shangzen Tek, too. I’d like to have my lawyer take a look over it ASAP. I don’t want him running this down to the wire. If he starts playing games put him in touch with me directly. No, that won’t be necessary, I want to manage this one.”

  Gregory makes his way over to me and I hand him a cup of green tea. “I’m not interested in hearing a pitch from them. If I had an interest in the sector I’d know who to approach. It’s a good time to invest in the market. Is that everything? Alright, let’s pick up Thursday. I want an update on all action points. I’ll leave you to finish off. Good afternoon, gents.”

  He hangs up, drops the Blackberry onto the coffee table, then strokes a hand down my cheek and drops his lips to mine. “Hey baby.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” I wonder silently when is the best time to broach the Black Diamonds registration.

  My Blackberry rings inside my handbag. A US number I don’t recognise flashes on the screen. “Scarlett Heath speaking.”

  “Scarlett, Malcolm Russell here.”

  “Malcolm, hello, how are you?”

  “Well. Good. Listen, Scarlett, I’m calling about the US filings for Constant Sources.”

  “Oh, great, is everything going okay?”

  “No, actually, that’s why I’m calling. It looks like we’ve been beaten to it.”

  Shit! “How so?”

  I hear the rustle of papers down the line. “The trademark Black Diamonds and the whole game design were filed on Friday. Even some of the characters have been registered, Scarlett.”

  “It’s a replica?”

  “Hard to say. I’d like to question the creator, ah...”

  “Stuart Culliton.” I cast cautious eyes to Gregory who’s waiting for me before starting his lunch, leaning back against the leather with an inquisitive frown.

  “I’d want to make sure he hasn’t sold or licensed the game. That’s if it is definitely his game. By the looks of things, this is either a really great copy, or the actual original.”

  “Malcolm, why wasn’t it filed until today?”

  “We couldn’t get the information we needed from Stuart, Scarlett. It didn’t come through until Friday, then we had to prepare the applications.”

  “That’s interesting. Our lawyer in China had the same problem and now the same thing has happened. Okay, let me pick up with Stuart and I’ll see where we get to. In the meantime, what are our options?”

  “We could fight the true ownership. The fact that Stuart’s game is already on the market could help but if it turns litigious, the fact the game is making profit could also go against us if we lose.”

  “A claim for loss of opportunity?”

  “Right. And if we fight it, we’re talking money and locking the game up in litigation for a long time.”

  “That might just be our best card.” My mind is jumping down ten different avenues all at once whilst Gregory’s eyes are still focused on me, now from his position in the window. “Constant Sources didn’t buy the game to keep it on the market, they bought it to take it off the market.”

  “It’s a possible tactic. Why don’t you reach out to Stuart and we can reconnect later today?”

  “Great, thanks, Malcolm.”

  I hang up my Blackberry and tap it against my pursed lips as if the rhythm might help organise my thoughts. Somebody else is ripping off Black Diamonds. That’s feasible. It was always the weakness and the risk I warned Gregory against. Someone could have reverse engineered the game and got the code. But if you were trying to rip it off, why not come up with a similar concept, why go for the exact same game and give it the same name, knowing it would lead to a fight?

  I explain everything to Gregory and tell him, “That’s a question we might never know the answer to but what I don’t understand is why Stuart has held the information back. It’s like he’s purposefully stalled the registration.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, Scarlett, he seems content here.” Gregory dabs his fingers on a white linen napkin and rests back on the sofa.

  I pick up a bowl of spiced seaweed salad and sit back to eat it with my chopsticks, my mind still wandering. “Do you think he’s angry about you buying the game at seven hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “I really don’t think so. He’s onto a good thing here.”

  “But if he thought that game was his millionaire ticket.”

  “Speak to him, see what you think, but I don’t get the impression he’s vindictive and I’m generally a good judge of character.”

  I swallow and place the bowl back on the coffee table. “And what about the fact these registration problems have happened in the same order we’re trying to register?”

  “China then the US? Baby, that’s hardly a pattern. It’s electronic gaming—they’re obvious jurisdictions.” He picks a piece of tuna sashimi with his chopsticks, dunks it in soy sauce then eats it in one mouthful.

  “Why aren’t you concerned about this, Gregory?”

  He dabs the sides of his mouth with a napkin. “Should I be concerned?”

  I sigh. “Maybe not yet. I guess I’m more irked than concerned at this stage. If I was here overseeing things I don’t think we’d be in this situation.”

  “You’re entitled to a holiday, Scarlett.” He stands, drops his used napkin on the coffee table and adjusts his cuffs beneath his blazer so the shirt hangs just slightly lower than his jacket, a Gregory-ism that makes me smile. “I trust you. You’ll sort this.”

  “I need to speak to Stuart.”

  “Not yet, I want to show you something.” A delicious half smile makes its way to his lips. I have to blink away libidinous thoughts. “Come.”

  He holds open his office door and I step into the hallway. Adjusting his tie, which was already perfectly central, he leads me down the corridor. We walk side by side, my hand aching to hold his.

  “We’re here,” he says, sounding almost triumphant.

  I look around the end of the corridor and see nothing, other than a corner desk in the open plan area opposite the frosted glass office spaces. A short metal nameplate with ‘Melanie’ in black letters rests on one side of the L-shape desk. A similar tag with ‘Laylla’ rests on top of a computer screen on the other.

  Smiling at Melanie and Laylla, I whisper, “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  He turns me away from Melanie and Laylla to face the door of a frosted glass corner office. I run my eyes over the door and the glass. It takes seconds for my focus to fall on the black letters.

  SCARLETT HEATH

  GENERAL COUNSEL

  “I’m getting a corner office? When did you do this?”

  He holds open the door to let me into the ridiculously large office, not as big as his own but certainly not small. He lets the door close behind us as I take in my large chrome and glass desk in the window, two flat-screen televisions on the walls, a round table with four leather chairs in one corner and a black two-seater sofa with a matching footstool in the other.

  “Like it?” he asks.

  “Like it? Are you kidding?”

  He gestures to the black leather desk chair. “Take a seat.”

  I do as instructed and spin in my chair to face a bunch of white roses in the window. “Are these for me?”

 
“Who else would they be for? Look in the drawer.”

  I open the top drawer of a three-drawer chest to one side of the desk and find a rectangular black box. “Oh my gosh, a Mont Blanc?”

  “I’m not having my wife use biros.”

  “I don’t use biros, I have a nice pen.”

  “Well, if you don’t want it...”

  “Shhh, of course I want it, I love it. This is insane though, Gregory, these pens cost a fortune.”

  “A perk of being a billionaire,” he says, so incredibly arrogant I laugh.

  “You had this done when we were away?”

  He nods and walks to the window. “You can always see home, too.”

  Standing beside him, I look across the city to the Shard, then I lean up and kiss his cheek. “I love it.”

  * * *

  Stuart has a desk in an open plan techy space on the twenty-third floor. I’ve had no reason to visit this floor before. Everything feels grey, full of wires and metal, sort of futuristic. There are tens, if not hundreds of computers and machines. The floor is mostly filled with men, heads down, most wearing headphones as they play with source code on various programs or work with small tools on what look like computer and mobile accessories.

  I make my way through the computer stations, some machines stacked two or three high, all displaying different screens, and head to the bottom left corner of the floor where Gregory told me to look. Stuart’s ears are covered in large, padded black headphones, his eyes are focused intently on a black screen covered in some kind of green code. With his black hair, square jaw and black shirt, I think of Neo and the Matrix. The One.

  He catches me in his peripheral vision, taking a second to blink and actually look up. Those eyes. The same unsettling feeling washes over me as the first time I met him. His eyes are beautiful. Deep brown and too familiar for a boy I’ve met only twice. They’re alluring, magnetic even, yet I don’t want to look at them. I rub my arm as goose bumps form on my skin. It’s the air conditioning, Scarlett, calm down.

  “Scarlett, hi,” Stuart says with a smile and a strong Zimbabwean accent.

  My nerves settle instantly, his smile forcing one from me in return. “Stuart, do you have a moment to chat about Black Diamonds?”

  “Sure,” he says, freeing himself of his headphones and standing from his desk, tapping keys on his keyboard and sending his screen to black. “There’s a coffee area over there.” He points back towards the lift.

  I take a seat on a stool set at a high white bench in the small kitchenette area. “How are you settling in?”

  “It’s great.” He takes a can of Pepsi from a double-door fridge. “Want one?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You know, I was irritated at first, I wanted to just sell the game, make my millions.” He laughs, a warm, soft chuckle. “Gregory was right though, Black Diamonds wasn’t my big break. I’m working on some really exciting stuff and Gregory has the technology to help me do it. Some of the stuff here...” he shakes his head and gulps from his can, “...it’s real high quality. Innovative. Tech I’ve never worked with or even seen before, only heard of. And London’s growing on me, too. I’ve got a more permanent place, finally, after four months of being here.”

  “Well, that’s great, Stuart. I’m glad you’re enjoying it and settling in. But listen, you know I’m trying to register the intellectual property in Black Diamonds, don’t you?”

  “I, er, I guess that seems obvious.”

  I lean my head to one side. Of course you know, Stuart.

  “Right. So you understand that I’m trying to register the intellectual property you sold to Gregory, to Constant Sources.”

  “Sure.”

  “That means you don’t own it anymore, of course. Yes?”

  “Yes, ‘course.”

  “Stuart, before you sold the game to Constant Sources, did you try to sell it to anyone else? Did you try to license it to anyone? Did you give anyone access to the source code?”

  “I, er, no. Why do you ask that?”

  “Well, it looks like someone is trying to register the game, or an identical knock-off, at least, as their own.”

  “Scarlett, I never sold the game to anyone. Well, not before Gregory. I swear.”

  “Could the source code have been reverse engineered?”

  He shrugs. “It’s encrypted but I guess there are ways and means.”

  “Did anyone else help you make the game?”

  “No! It’s mine. Just mine.”

  “It’s Constant Sources’ game now.”

  “Sure. I mean it was mine.”

  I pull the stool closest to mine out from under the bench. “Sit down here for a second. My lawyers in China and the US said you were slow to get the information to them that they needed to file intellectual property applications. Why?”

  “I know, they emailed me a couple of times but I was busy here. When I get into something it just takes over me, it’s like a part of me. I find it difficult to concentrate on other stuff.”

  “Stuart, not giving them the information on time has allowed somebody else to file an application before us and that’s a big problem.”

  “I didn’t realise. I’m sorry. But Gregory doesn’t want to use the game anyway, right? He just wants to make sure it’s off the market so it doesn’t compete with Jail Run. So does it matter if someone else filed?”

  Is he playing dumb?

  “Well, yes, Stuart. There’s no point in him taking Black Diamonds off the market by buying it from you if someone else puts the game on the market, is there?”

  “I get it. So have I messed it up for him?”

  Taking a deep breath, I stand from my stool. “I hope not.”

  “Hey, you’re engaged?” he asks, clocking the obscene ring on my finger.

  “Erm, yes.”

  “To Gregory, right?”

  “H-how did you know that?”

  He shrugs. “Guess I could just tell by the way you are together.”

  Are we that obvious? I think of the one time that Stuart has seen us together. Full business mode in the negotiation meeting. In fact, in business mode and sour with each other.

  “You must have good intuition.”

  “He’s lucky.”

  I feel my brows furrow. “Thanks. Listen, Stuart, it would be helpful if you could be more responsive with the lawyers from now on, okay? And please come and talk to me if you remember anything, anyone who might have approached you to buy or license the game, anyone who might try to pass off the game as their own. You can speak to me any time. I’ll be here full time from Monday, you can pop in to my office whenever you like.”

  His smile reaches his eyes, the brown pools shining. “Thanks, Scarlett. I will do. It’s nice to know someone else in London. It can be a bit...ah...”

  “Lonely sometimes?”

  He shrugs.

  “Any time, Stuart, just pop up.”

  “Scarlett, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is Gregory angry with me?”

  “No. Not yet. Just try to stay on top of your emails, okay?”

  He nods and jumps down from his stool.

  I watch him leave with a peculiar feeling like something just isn’t quite right.

  * * *

  After following up with the lawyers in China and the US and asking Richard to expedite the Black Diamond filings in the UK and Europe, my first day back turned into a long and tiresome one. The last thing I needed was a call from the Real Estate team at my firm to tell me my father’s house sale is set to complete a week on Friday.

  I call Sandy as Jackson drives me back to the Shard, having already dropped Gregory home around six. I’ve arranged for a moving company to tak
e care of the contents of the house but they need me to give them directions—what’s staying, what’s trash, what’s for charity, where boxes should be delivered if they’re kept. Sandy agrees to help and I gratefully accept. I can’t do it alone. My father was a hoarder and as much as he pretended he wasn’t by putting all of my childhood keepsakes, toys and clothes in the loft, I’ve always known they’re there. The thought of having to go through them now, as if they’re nothing, throwing them away or marking them to be delivered to charity, that’s hard enough. I couldn’t let someone else go through our life and box it up, designate it as useless or “to be binned,” those are our memories. They’re all we have left and the only person who can share that and really understand the piece of my father hidden behind each item, is Sandy.

  Jackson drops me and heads off to Lara’s house to be with Sandy. It’s still strange to me sometimes that my only mother figure now lives with and works for my mother-in-law-to-be. Weird.

  I rest my back against the mahogany wall of the lift as it rises to the sixty-fourth floor and dings to announce my destination in the clouds. I’m struck by a chill through my veins when I catch sight of the apartment door ajar. It stops me in my tracks, reminding me of that night. My body tenses as someone’s fingers grip the side of the door.

  Fear cripples my body and threatens to choke me. I’m frozen, trying to think of anything I can use as a weapon and wishing I wasn’t alone.

  “Scarlett, perfect timing! How are you, peaches? How was your holiday?”

  Amy springs from the apartment and envelopes me in her arms as my lungs fill against her silver bubble coat. I hadn’t realised how much I’m still affected by this apartment and the events of the night I murdered Kevin Pearson.

  “Amy, hi. I’m well, thank you. How are you?”

  “Fine. Fine. I have to get home, the hubby is working nightshift, but I’m glad I caught you. You’ll have to tell me all about the Caribbean next time. I’d love love love to go. Oh and the engagement. I want to hear all about the one and only time that man will ever be on his knees.” Her words should make me happy but I know that’s not the only time Gregory was on his knees. In my head I see him in Dubai, begging for my forgiveness after telling me about his past. “Now, hurry up and get inside, I’ve left you a little something. My way of saying congratulations to you both.”