Platinum Coast. Lynne Pemberton

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ