by Karen Swan
‘Uh, it’s one of my favourites – I think because the soprano is so prevalent, it’s easier for me to sing along. I can never get anywhere near the low notes of The Barber of Seville, for example, even in the shower.’
He nodded, seeming amused by the idea.
‘How long are you in the city for this time?’ she asked, sipping the champagne slowly and wishing she hadn’t accepted it now. Did it appear unprofessional? Was he inwardly disapproving? Had she failed a test?
‘Just a few more days here then back to Europe, for most of the summer I hope. My wife does not like me to travel so much.’
‘It must be hard for her when your businesses demand so much attention. Does she ever travel with you?’
‘No, she has no interest in sitting in hotel rooms whilst I attend meetings and dinners; frankly I would not want her to be exposed to half the characters I have to do business with. And of course, she has a very busy life of her own; she is very involved in several charitable projects.’
So far, so predictable, Chloe thought behind her polite smile. Charity work and shopping would define her days.
‘Anjelica is very good at making sure our schedules co-align as often as possible; we try never to go more than a week apart, but recently my business concerns have been . . .’ He sighed wearily. ‘Complicated.’
‘Yes, I saw, I’m sorry,’ she said, marvelling at his understatement. Even if she hadn’t spent most of last weekend reading a thick file on his business interests as part of the in-depth profile Invicta kept on him, his companies had been dominating the headlines of the financial papers for all the wrong reasons recently – allegations of sexual harassment at his hotel group had been leaked and resulted in a series of resignations by several senior female personnel; on top of that, the proposed $12.2 billion merger of his One Stop highways travel plaza business (a US-based subsidiary of his Black Pearl hotel group) with the budget motel chain Traveller’s Rest, had been referred to the Federal Trade Commission.
He looked at her. ‘You read the business news?’
‘Of course. I like to get a broad picture of the climate and trends; many of our clients are in that world so it pays to keep abreast of the current events.’
He looked displeased as he looked straight ahead; in spite of his light, quick eyes, he had what Kate would call a ‘strong’ profile: heavy brow, fleshy nose, prominent jaw. ‘So then you know that the sale of one of my companies to a partner brand is being shot down by the anti-trust agencies?’
She had read that the Department of Justice was filing to prevent the deal on the grounds that the new company would control a 62 per cent stake of the travel accommodation market in up to nine states. ‘I do. I’m sorry, that must be a blow. I can only imagine the amount of work that went into putting the deal together in the first place.’
‘Yes. Fifteen months of talks and negotiations. It has been an interesting week,’ he said mildly. ‘My lawyers had covered every angle before we went public. It is very strange to them – and me – that this has happened. Assurances had been made in the relevant quarters that our dominance in the handful of states in question would not be a problem. What is nine states out of fifty-two, after all? Certainly not a monopoly. The technical requirement for that classification is controlling 25 per cent of the given market.’
Chloe quickly did the maths. Nine states out of fifty-two was a fifth of the market, or 20 per cent. So why was the deal being held up? Was he implying it was being deliberately ambushed? And if so, by whom? ‘Is there nothing that can be done to rescue it?’
‘Only structural remedies.’ And when he saw the blankness in her expression he added, ‘Divestiture of some of our other businesses. I have been “advised” that selling off my main hotel group would benefit the deal greatly.’
‘So will you do that?’
‘No. Never. I have made it very clear to them that I would never even consider it.’ The words rounded out under pressure, his accent a thick and rich gravy upon them. She was surprised when he gave a low laugh, shaking his head at the very idea; it was both mocking and incredulous.
‘Can I ask why not?’ Her mind was working fast, trying to understand his position. She knew he had got his hands dirty making his seed capital in mining in Russia and was a multi-millionaire by his early twenties; that he had made his second fortune in home electronics, before finally sealing his billionaire status with the acquisition ten years ago of the Black Pearl group. According to Poppy’s notes – made in her trusty red biro – the luxury hotel chain was the crown jewel in his empire, encompassing a major five-star hotel in every European capital, and it had given him the cachet of international class, of discernment by association – or rather, outright ownership. ‘It sounds like that company is particularly special to you.’
‘Yes,’ he said, beginning slowly. ‘If I lost everything and had to start again from nothing, I would throw everything I had into getting back that one company. It is the only one that matters.’
‘Because it is profitable?’
‘It is my least profitable business,’ he chuckled. ‘That is why the Department of Justice thinks I am crazy for rejecting their so-called offer. One Stop, on the other hand, can’t stop making money. Even my advisers are telling me I am crazy to try to do this deal and sell it off.’
‘Then why do it?’
‘Because the monies from that sale would give me the capital injection I need to expand Black Pearl without having to take in external investment.’
She thought back. ‘But wasn’t the point of your iceberg dinner to attract interest from investors?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I see you and Poppy have been talking.’
‘No, no,’ she said quickly. ‘Not talking. But I sat next to her. I inevitably overheard some things from time to time.’ She gave an easy shrug.
‘It was a back-up option. As soon as I began to suspect my rivals were interfering with the merger, I set up this other plan but it is not what I would choose. I work better alone. I am not what you would call a team player. Boards don’t like me and I don’t like them.’ He gave a wolfish smile.
‘I see,’ she said slowly, trying to keep up. ‘I still don’t understand, though, why you want to sell one of your most successful companies to grow the most unsuccessful one?’
He gave an amused smile. ‘It is illogical, I agree, and it is the very first time in my life when I have allowed myself to pursue a project that is not geared to maximum profit. But I feel I have perhaps earned that right. If not now, when?’ He gestured around him, the move taking in the plush quilted leather of the limo, the uniformed chauffeur, the city itself: he was master of it all. ‘But you see, those hotels – each one of them – represent everything my early life was not – comfortable, warm, well stocked, safe. When I was a boy in Novokuznetsk, my mother would stand in the queues for five hours for bread, soap, sausages . . . And when she was not queuing, she worked three jobs as a cleaner. Yet it was still not enough. Some days I was so hungry, so riddled with stomach cramps, I could not stand straight.’
‘My God.’ She frowned, appalled. ‘What about your father? Where was he?’
‘He worked in the steel factory but he left us when I was six, when my youngest brother was born. He had cerebral palsy; there was very much stigma attached to disability in those days, it made our lives much harder, but to have handed him over to the state, to a so-called home, would have been tantamount to abandonment. He would have been left to wither. My mother knew this, my father too – but still he wanted my mother to choose between them. So she chose my brother.’
‘She sounds like an incredible woman,’ Chloe said softly; she could see the anger still simmered in his blood, a quiet hurt that had not yet been extinguished.
‘She was.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And I vowed to avenge her when my father left, abandoning us.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes. The factory my father worked in was the first company I bought. I fired him
myself.’
Chloe felt a chill. This was a man who had been chiselled from rock – he was as hard on the inside as the outside, shaped by forces beyond his control. ‘That must have been . . . satisfying.’
‘Yes it was, but I did it for my mother, for her pride. I wanted to make her life better.’ He looked ahead for a second, a small knot of muscle spasming in his jaw. ‘One time, when she was an hour from the front of a line, she collapsed and had to be moved out of the way; she had arthritis in her knees and the pain was so bad. She lost her place and had to start again.’
Chloe gasped. ‘But surely someone could have helped – got the bread for her? Or helped her get to the front?’
He gave a dark smile. ‘You think like a westerner – you do not understand what it was like then; this was communist Russia, everything was rationed. People were just trying to survive. Kindness was weakness; if you got, then they might not. Who could take the chance?’
‘It must have been terrible growing up like that.’ She could scarcely imagine it. Her own childhood, though plain by Tom and Poppy’s standards – whilst they had skied every winter, she had stayed at her grandparents’ croft in Scotland; they had had ponies, she had cats; they had had land, she had a garden – was still blissful in its normality. She had been warm, she had been loved, she had never gone without.
He gave a shrug. ‘I know what it is to suffer, to go to bed at night wracked with pain because my body was so starved of food, but I cannot regret it; the hunger in my stomach became a different sort of hunger and made me what I am today. It has driven me on to all this.’ He indicated again the gleaming car, his evening suit, the glittering lights of Manhattan itself. They drove past the grand crusted façade of the Waldorf Astoria – not one of his hotels; or at least, not yet. ‘So when they say I must divest of the very thing that represents my life journey, it will not happen, even though the hotel game is just a vanity show. There is almost no money in it.’
‘There really isn’t?’ She was fascinated. No one had ever given her such honest insight before.
He shook his head. ‘If I buy an established hotel in a prime city, I pay a high premium for that; with new management we can usually increase the yield by five per cent, if we really dig, perhaps seven per cent.’ He shrugged. ‘It is nothing really, no margin. But I still won’t sell.’
‘I can see why it matters so much to you.’
‘Black Pearl is my legacy. It is the empire I will pass on to my future sons – God willing. The merger may have been black-flagged, but there is always another way.’ He looked straight at her. ‘I like to say Adversity is simply Opportunity turned inside out.’
‘I like that,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll try to apply it the next time I feel the universe has got it in for me.’
He nodded back but she saw genuine warmth in his eyes now. It had been a frank and enlightening conversation and she felt they both understood each other better; certainly she felt he was beginning to trust her. In the course of this one short car journey, she had made meaningful contact at last with her most important client and one of the most powerful men on the planet. She had been right in what she’d said to Elle about him the other day – cut him and he wouldn’t bleed gold; he was flesh and blood and sweat and tears, a man grown from the bones of a starving young boy.
Their car was pulling up outside the Lincoln Center plaza and the security guards jumped out to open the doors. She smiled as she imagined Elle’s face at seeing her now – gliding out of the limo in an exquisite gala gown, a billionaire by her side. They walked up the steps together and into the magnificent, teeming lobby, its split staircase and cascade of galleries awe-inspiring at any time of day but particularly tonight. The safes of Manhattan’s grandest dames had been opened and the guests were out-glittering the chandeliers: sapphire cuffs, ruby tiered necklaces, bauble rings, even tiaras . . . Chloe felt bare by comparison; it wasn’t the dresses that did the talking here but the jewels. She was wearing her usual diamond stud earrings but they were so small even her newly short hair covered them and automatically, her hand rose to her chest, picking out the exposed sweep of her neck, back and shoulders.
As if reading her mind, Alexander scanned the room and looked back at her. ‘Always so de trop. When will these people realize even diamonds cannot compete with the beauty of young skin.’ Chloe was taken aback by the compliment but it made her hand drop down and she stood a little taller. ‘My wife has more jewels than she could possibly wear, but to me, she never looks more beautiful than when her skin is bare.’
Chloe smiled at him. It was a romantic thing to say and she liked that he clearly idolized his wife, that in spite of all his wealth, she still held the power.
Heads had turned at their entrance, but it was a moment before Chloe realized there was no immediate clamour to greet them; none at all, in fact. Although Alexander outgunned almost everyone here financially, that wasn’t the same thing as being liked and she guessed that many of those ‘enemies’ he had referenced in the Rarities bar the other night were here in this building – businessmen and bankers he had edged in deals, grudges worn on the lapels of those expensive dinner suits.
They stood there for a moment, an island in a sea of glittering guests – alone, isolated, publicly ostracized. Chloe felt her cheeks begin to burn. Everyone was looking . . .
She saw Alexander’s bodyguards – one watching him, the other the crowds – begin to lead the way up the stairs, parting the crowds like the wake on a speedboat. Alexander held out an arm, a surprisingly chivalrous gesture, and she slipped hers through it. ‘Let us go to my box, there is always too much talk at these things. People wanting to score points and compare. But we are here for the children, are we not?’
There was scorn in his voice but not just because of the social snub. His philanthropy was well documented and through the charitable foundation that bore his name, he had established various schools and hospitals back in Russia. The aim of tonight’s show was part of the effort to raise ten million dollars for a children’s welfare project in Syria. But, she wondered, as they climbed the steps conspicuously, people moving aside, whispering at their backs, how many other people here even knew – much less cared – which charity tonight’s performance was supporting? Most of them were more preoccupied with being seen by the right power brokers and society hostesses.
Their path to the box was unimpeded, thanks to the heavies in front, and they took their seats above the masses. The auditorium was filling rapidly, ripples of laughter and delighted greetings rising like balloons through the air. Everything was red and gold, lavish and opulent. Below the stage, the orchestra was already warming up, strings being tightened and waxed, pipes cleared and polished, chairs scraping back, stands being adjusted up and down a couple of inches.
Chloe saw a few people she recognized – Invicta gold clients – and she waved friendly greetings, before seeing the small jolts of recognition and then disapproval on their faces as they clocked her date for the night. She felt another kick of injustice on his behalf. He was a ruthless businessman, of that she had no doubt. But wouldn’t anyone be, after a childhood like his? How many people here would have survived his upbringing? Who else here had lived through the very same poverty and hardship that they were raising funds to overcome tonight?
None of them, and she wondered how he bore it all, the constant scrutiny and judgement that accompanied him wherever he went. He didn’t seem to court attention and yet it clung to him. She had seen it herself the first time she had set eyes on him at the bar last week. Beside her, Alexander was still and quiet and yet he was the undisputed nerve centre of the room, the source of all energy. The more he looked away, the more they stared. He was all the more imposing for his refusal to engage with their games, customs and social mores and although she could feel their collective disdain, she sensed their envy too; they still wanted what he had. The still wanted to be him.
The house lights dimmed and a hush fell upon the crowd, every
one settling in for the next hour. The orchestra took up their instruments but the conductor made no move to begin. Instead, the spotlight found a diminutive woman in black lace walking across the stage.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, before the performance begins, I want to make a short announcement,’ she said. ‘As you are well aware, this gala performance is being held in aid of the Rebuild charity, which is committed to developing schools and playgrounds for children in war-torn areas around the world. Tonight, we are looking to raise ten million dollars for a primary school in Raqqa and your generosity in coming here tonight means we have already made a strong start in reaching that number.’
She looked around the auditorium, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. ‘So it gives me immense pleasure to be able to share with you all now, that the remaining sum has been donated in full by a benefactor who is a true friend both of Rebuild and the Met—’
A gasp zipped along the rows, an instant hum of whispers rising like cicadas at dusk.
‘—And whilst the donor has requested anonymity, it is only right that we should take a moment to give thanks for such an outstanding show of generosity and benevolence to which we are all hugely indebted. If you could all join me in a round of applause—’
She didn’t need to ask; the claps quickly became a thunder, people rising to their feet and cheering. A ten-million drop was not insignificant, even in a city with Manhattan’s wealth.
Alexander stood too, clapped too. Chloe looked across at him and he gave a small shrug and nod, as though impressed, as though surprised.
But she knew. Cut him and he would bleed. Because somewhere beneath that flint rock exterior was a very large, hard-beating heart.
Chapter Twelve
Squeaks and beeps. That was the soundtrack to the hospital. And blue was the colour palette – blue scrubs, blue chairs. The scent was antiseptic and fear.
Chloe sat where she was, watching the multitudes come in and leave in a never-ending carousel through the revolving doors, tears, panic and pain the universal tickets that gained entry no matter the race, religion, gender or age. She had been sitting here for almost two hours now and seen a little girl wheeled in, a paramedic kneeling on her chest; she had seen a man dragged between two friends, a bullet hole leaving a snail trail of blood behind him; she had seen a screaming little boy with clingfilm wrapped over his reddened torso. She had seen more than she had ever wanted, but she still hadn’t seen her friend.