‘I want you to come and sit down,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got much time. And now that you understand just why you are here we may as well get down to business…’
Business. The word sent an icy chill chasing down her spine. As she walked across the room towards him on legs that were shaking badly Luiz sat himself down, opened the dossier, selected a piece of paper from it, then slid it towards her as she sank into the chair placed opposite him.
‘Tell me if you agree with what’s written on there,’ he invited.
Eyes flickering in an effort to get them to focus, heart slowed by the weight of what was unfolding in front of her now, Caroline pulled the piece of paper towards her, then picked it up in trembling fingers and forced herself to read.
Finely listed, tightly lined, it was a very precise inventory of every penny she already knew they owed—and a whole lot more that she actually hadn’t known about, but she couldn’t doubt their authenticity when the names of all her father’s favourite London haunts were inscribed next to them.
And the bottom figure was so utterly repellent that her skin began to crawl. ‘Could I have some water, please?’ she breathed.
Without a single word, Luiz got up and walked over to a black-lacquered sideboard. He returned in seconds to place a frosted glass of iced water down in front of her, then just as silently returned to his chair while she picked up the water and sipped at it sparingly.
‘We can’t pay you, Luiz,’ she told him, once she’d found enough voice to speak. ‘N-not all of it anyway.’
‘I know that,’ he returned.
She swallowed thickly, and took a couple more sips of water before making herself go on. ‘If you refuse to play him at cards tonight, then the money he won in the casino plus some money I have of my own should clear a small part of this.’ But not all, she added with a silent bleakness. Not anywhere near all…
‘The planned card game and this are two separate issues,’ he informed her. ‘And I never—ever—mix business with pleasure, Caroline. Understand me?’
Understand? No she didn’t! ‘But we have the means to clear s-some of this, Luiz!’ she cried, tossing the wretched debt list back at him. ‘And you want to play card games just for the hell of it? Where is the business sense in that?’
Sitting back in his chair, Luiz didn’t even deign to watch as the piece of paper skidded across the table then floated down onto his lap. His face was inscrutable, his manner relaxed. ‘Where is your own block of money coming from?’ Smooth as silk, he kept the discussion fixed to his own agenda.
Her breath shuddered on an overwrought sigh. ‘None of your business,’ she muttered, then got up and paced tensely away from the desk.
‘It is if you borrowed from Peter to pay back Paul, so to speak,’ he pointed out. ‘Which would only make the bottom figure here worse, not better.’
‘I have money left over from my mother’s bequest,’ she told him reluctantly.
‘No you don’t.’
‘What—?’ Stung by his quiet certainty she spun to stare at him.
Instantly she felt under attack. It was his eyes, and the knowledge of truth she could see written in them.
‘Your mother’s money went on paying back debts years ago,’ he informed her. ‘After that you spent the next few years selling off the family heirlooms one by one, until there were very few left worth selling. Then came the quiet period when your father behaved himself for a couple of years—or so you believed. When it all started up again, you resorted to selling off small plots of land on the far edges of your family estate to wealthy businessmen who were looking for somewhere to build a country retreat. But the council eventually put a stop to that, quoting the rape of country heritage law or some such thing.
‘So what’s left to sell, Caroline?’ he asked. ‘The ancestral home, which is already mortgaged to the hilt? Or the few heirlooms that are left—which probably belong to the bank already, on paper at least? Or maybe you were thinking of paying me back with the commission you earn working for those London-based interior designers who pay you peanuts for your considerable knowledge of all things aesthetic, to hunt out pieces of artwork and various objets d’art to decorate the homes of their wealthy clients?’
It was like being pummelled into the ground by a very large mallet. She had never felt so small in her whole life.
‘What next, Caroline?’ He pummelled her some more with the soft pound of his ruthless voice. ‘What could you possibly have left that would appease any bank holding a debt the size of yours? Yourself, maybe?’ he suggested silkily. ‘Are you thinking of prostituting yourself to the highest bidder so that Daddy can keep on feeding his addiction because he can’t help himself?’