LITMIR.BIZ

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movements since the lift, and had timed his approach to coincide with the fact that they were standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs well away from other people.

      And she didn’t like the uneasy sensation of feeling vulnerable to someone stronger than herself and clearly so sure of himself that he dared detain her like this.

      ‘Please let go of me,’ she said.

      His grip did tighten. Her pulse began to accelerate. ‘But if I let you go you will not learn how I became acquainted with your papa,’ he pointed out. ‘Or, perhaps more significantly, where I became acquainted with him…’

      ‘Where?’ she responded, aware that he was deliberately dangling the knowledge at her like a carrot on a stick.

      ‘Share a glass of wine with me,’ he urged. ‘And I will tell you.’

      And it was such a juicy carrot, she noted, one that was trying to make her go one way while every single instinct she possessed was telling her to run in the other.

      At which point anger took over, for if he believed she was open to this kind of coercion then he was severely mistaken! ‘I’m sure,’ she replied in her coldest voice, ‘that if my father thinks your meeting memorable enough he will tell me about it himself. Now, if you will excuse me?’ she concluded, and gave a hard enough tug at her captured wrist to free it, then walked stiffly up the steps without glancing back.

      But her insides felt shaky, and the nerves running along her spine were tingling, because she half expected him to come chasing after her. It was an unpleasant sensation, one that stayed with her all the way up that flight of steps and across the busy foyer into one of the waiting lifts. In fact it was only when the doors had shut her in without him joining her there that she began to feel safe again.

      And her wrist hurt. Glancing down at it, she wasn’t surprised to find the delicate white skin covering it was showing the beginnings of bruising. Who was he? she wondered. What was he to her father that made him believe it was okay to accost her like that?

      It was a concern that took her into her suite and immediately across to her father’s bedroom door with the grim intention of finding out. But, having knocked sharply and then pushed open the door, she knew she was going to be unlucky, when it became immediately apparent that he had already been here and gone again.

      And the way his clothes had been discarded on the floor told her he had changed in one heck of a hurry.

      So as to avoid her? Oh, yes, Caroline conceded heavily. He was trying to avoid her—which could only mean one thing.

      He had fallen off the rails again.

      In a fit of angry frustration she bent down to snatch up the pair of trousers he had dropped on the floor and was about to toss them onto the bed when something dropped out of one of the pockets. It landed with a paper-like thud on the toe of her shoe. Bending to pick it up, she discovered that she was holding what appeared to be a set of receipts, and with her fingers actually tingling with dread, she slowly unfurled them.

      After that she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t even think a coherent thought for long, long seconds. Then, with a calmness that bore no resemblance to what was actually taking place inside her, she began to check with the methodical intent of one well-practised at doing it, every pocket in every item of clothing he had brought with him to Marbella.

      Ten minutes later and she was standing there in the middle of her father’s room, staring into space like someone turned to stone. They had been here in Marbella for less than twenty-four hours and, going by the tally on the receipts, in that time her father had managed to gamble and lose the best part of one hundred thousand pounds…

      Standing by the window of his hi-tech control room, Luiz Vazquez looked down on the casino floor of this, the latest acquisition in his growing string of deluxe hotels.

      He could not be seen from down on the floor. The window allowed him to look out but did not let anyone look in. And behind him the really serious viewing was going on, via closed circuit television screens watched over by his eagle-eyed security staff. The window was merely a secondary source by which the casino floor as a whole could be observed.

      Luiz preferred to check out the floor with his own eyes like this. It came from once being a serious gambler and trusting nothing he could not see for himself. Now things were different. Now he didn’t need to gamble to earn enough money to live. He had wealth and he had power and a kind of deeply satisfying sense of self-respect that had taken a whole lot of earning and yet…

      A frown brought the two dark silk strips of his brows together across the bridge of his long nose. Possessing respect in oneself did not automatically win you the respect of others. A salutary lesson he had learned the hard way, and one he intended to rectify very soon.

      It was, in fact, his next major project.

      Vito Martinez, the hotel’s Head of Security, came to stand beside him. ‘She’s gone back to her room,’ he said. ‘He’s just arrived in the casino bar.’

      ‘Tense?’ Luiz asked.

      ‘Yeah,’ Vito replied, ‘humming with it. Ripe, I’d say,’ he added, the evidence of his on-the-street New York upbringing more pronounced in the dry-edged judgement.

      A single nod in acknowledgement and Luiz Vazquez was turning away from the window, his expression, as always, a tightly closed book—not surprising for a man who’d used to play poker as lethally as he had.

      ‘Buzz me when he comes to the tables,’ was all he said. Then he was walking out of the control room, his long, lean level stride taking him across the elegant cream and black marbled floor of this tightly secured inner sanctum, then in through another door, which he closed behind him.

      Silence suddenly prevailed.

      Where the other room had been alive with a busy hum of activity, this room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop on the thick cream carpet covering its huge expanse. It was a luxuriously furnished room, plain but dramatic, with its modern black lacquered and leather furnishings enhanced by the simplicity of cream-painted walls.

      Like the man himself, the room revealed nothing of his true personality. Except, maybe, for the black-framed picture hanging on the wall behind a large black-lacquered desk.

      In its own way the picture was as dramatically plain as everything else in here—nothing more than the faint gold outline of a scorpion clinging to a white background with its lethal-looking tail curving upwards and over its scaly body in preparation to strike.

      But it made the blood run cold just to look at it. For, although it was Luiz Vazquez’s chair that was situated directly beneath that lethal claw, it was not him the scorpion seemed to threaten—but whoever was unlucky enough to sit in the chair placed on the other side of the desk.

      Its message was clear. Mess with me and I strike.

      It was his mark—his logo. Or one of them, at least. But once upon a time the sign of the golden scorpion had used to adorn everything Luiz Vazquez was involved in. He had since learned to be much more subtle. And he just kept this one picture around him for personal reasons now—and as a warning to anyone who was unfortunate enough to find themselves summoned to these private rooms, that the cool-headed, soft-talking Luiz Vazquez still had a vicious sting in his tail.

      But these days he was known better for his new logo. The one which gave his string of exclusive, internationally renowned hotels their name and had earned him quite a reputation for quality service and comfort during the last ten years.

      For this was an Angel Hotel. Angel as in Luiz Angeles de Vazquez. Angel as in good, honest and true.

      The sublime to the ridiculous. And an example of what good marketing could do because all of his hotels possessed in-house casinos which were the real draw. The luxury his admittedly well-heeled guests enjoyed while they played was just an added bonus.

      The scorpion was probably a far more honest representation of what Luiz Vazquez really was.

      Luiz

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