LITMIR.BIZ

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Spain. Dread filled her. Her mother was at the Marbella villa, where Talia had taken her in those first nightmare days after her father’s disappearance and financial ruin.

      It had been painstakingly explained to her by the blank-faced lawyer who had summoned her to her father’s former City HQ, where she’d been able to see through the glass door all the deserted offices being dismantled and stripped of their furnishings by burly men. Her father’s ruin encompassed not only the corporate assets, but Gerald Grantham’s personal assets too.

      ‘Your father put everything he owned into the company—initially for tax advantages and latterly to shore up the accounts. Consequently...’ the man had looked impassively at Talia, who had stared back at him white-faced ‘...it all now passes to the acquiring owner.’ He’d paused, then said unblinkingly, ‘Including, of course, the riverside mansion in the Thames Valley and all its contents.’

      Talia had paled even more, as the man had gone on.

      ‘Vacant possession is required by the end of the week.’

      So she’d taken her mother to Spain, thanking heaven that the villa seemed to have been spared. It appeared to be owned by a different corporation—an offshore shell company her father had set up.

      In Spain, she’d tried to sort out the pathetic remnants of what they had left—which was almost nothing. All their bank accounts had been frozen, and all the credit cards. Had it not been for Talia’s secret personal account—the one she’d opened in defiance of her father’s diktats—she would not even have been able to buy air tickets or food. Or to pay Maria, the only member of staff in Spain she’d been able to keep on. She needed Maria as her mother’s only support when she went back to London to see if there was news about anything else she could salvage.

      But it had turned out to be the reverse. Now, with dread mounting in her, she knew she would have to give her mother the worst news of all. The Marbella villa was being taken from them...

      They had been given a fortnight to get out, and in that time Talia was going to have to find them somewhere else to live and keep her mother from collapsing totally. It would finish her, she knew, to lose the villa as well as everything else—as well as her husband. Which was a loss she simply could not and would not believe.

      ‘He’ll come back to us, darling!’ Her mother’s pitiful words rang in Talia’s ears. ‘He’s just sorting things out, making it all right, and then everything will be back to normal again!’

      Talia knew better. Her father was not coming back. He’d saved his own skin, leaving his wife and daughter to face utter ruin.

      Her mother repeated her pathetic hopes again that evening, when Talia arrived at the palatial villa, its opulence mocking her. Talia said nothing, only hugged her mother, who seemed thinner than she had ever been, her face haggard. She looked ill and Maria, taking Talia aside, expressed concern for Maxine Grantham’s health.

      Talia could only shake her head, feeling dread inside her at the news she must tell her mother.

      She let her mother chatter on in her staccato, nervy fashion, telling her how the pool needed to be cleaned, and how Maria had to have help because she couldn’t cope with such a huge house on her own, and that she must get to Rafael, in Marbella town, who was the only person she trusted with her hair, because she couldn’t possibly let her husband see her with such a rats’ nest when he came back—as surely he would, very soon now.

      Surely Talia must have heard from her father by now, she said. For she herself had not, and she was worried sick about him, because something dreadful must have happened for him not to be in touch...

      Talia put up with it as best she could, saying soothing, meaningless things to her mother. As they sat down to eat the meal Maria had prepared Talia encouraged her mother to take more than the few meagre mouthfuls that was all she seemed to want. She had to force herself to eat, too, because above all she had to keep her strength up.

       I’ve got to keep it together—I can’t fall apart! I can’t!

      It was an invocation she had to repeat when, after dinner, she sat her mother down in the opulent drawing room and told her she must speak to her.

      ‘LX Holdings has made a successful claim on the offshore company which...’ she took a breath ‘...which owns this villa. Which means...’

      She faltered. Her mother’s complexion had turned the colour of whey.

      Talia’s voice was hollow as she made herself finish what she had to say. ‘We have to move out. They’re taking the villa from us as well.’ Her voice broke. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I’m so, so sorry—’

      A cry broke from her mother, high and keening. And then, as if in slow motion, Talia saw her mother’s expression change, her hand fly to her chest. Her whole body convulsed and she shook like a leaf.

      ‘No! I can’t! I can’t! I can’t lose this villa too! Not this too! I can’t! Oh, God, I can’t!’

      There was desperation in her mother’s voice, and then she collapsed into a sobbing, hysterical mess, clutching at Talia. But Maxine Grantham was beyond any kind of soothing...beyond anything except complete collapse.

      * * *

      Restlessly, Luke seized the file from his in-tray, flicked it open, and stared down at the photos it contained. He frowned. Was this really a project he should go ahead with? It would take a lot of investment, a lot of work, and the return was uncertain.

      Yet there was something in the photos that called to him. The state of brutal ruination inflicted by nature that the photos showed echoed across the years. Not earthquake damage this time, as in his memories, but the terrifying force of wind destroying whatever stood in its path.

      His thoughts were bitter. Taking on such a project halfway across the world would help him put out of his mind what kept trying to occupy it—the infernal memory he needed to banish.

       She didn’t want me—didn’t want what I wanted. Didn’t want anything about me.

      He cut the endless loop that wanted to play and play inside his head and went back to staring at the photos, making himself read the notes compiled for him by his agent. He needed something to fill the emptiness inside him now that his enemy was destroyed and the burning ambition that had driven him all his adult life had been finally fulfilled.

      The low ring of the phone on his desk interrupted his concentration and he reached for the handset absently. It was his PA, and her voice was uncertain.

      ‘There is someone here, Mr Xenakis, who is asking to see you. She has no appointment, and will not give her name, but she is very insistent. I told her it was impossible, but—’

      Luke cut across her. He had no interest in whoever it was. ‘Send her away,’ he said curtly. ‘Oh, and is my flight booked and the villa reservation made?’

      ‘Yes, of course, Mr Xenakis, it is all done.’

      ‘Good. Thank you.’

      He dropped the phone down on the desk, but as he did so there was a loud noise by the door to the outer office and it was suddenly flung open. The voice of his PA was protesting vigorously in English, not the French in which she spoke to Luke.

      His head shot up, anger spiking at the intrusion. But the emotion died instantly when he saw who was pushing through the open door, his PA behind her, trying to stop her.

      She stopped dead.

      For a second there was complete silence, even from his PA. Then Luke spoke.

      ‘Leave us.’

      But it was his PA he addressed. Not the woman who had forced herself into his office.

      Not Talia.

      * * *

      Blankness filled Talia’s mind, wiping out every turbid emotion that had been raging inside her head since

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