Vengeful Love: Black Diamonds (2 page)

Nick Henshaw is still fishing around, trying to get his claws on more money for the shares he sold back to the company when I forced him to resign—there’s a threat I’m still fending off.

“Who’s the owner of the Black Diamonds software, Jean-Paul?” The question comes from Zara Vanderbilt-Delores, the only female director. Sometimes I wish there were ten of her. She’s shit hot. Really knows her stuff, gets markets and business. Her knowledge tears strips off some of the men and God is she vicious when she wants to be. She’s in camp
You’ve Got to be a Bitch to Get Things Done
.
I would’ve said that was true of all successful women before Scarlett Heath. As a lawyer, Scarlett knows her stuff, she’s quick and her advice is pragmatic, she’s rightfully a high-flyer but she’s not a bitch. She’s territorial. She’ll fight for the people she loves. But she won’t hurt someone until she’s pushed to the edge, she won’t shit on someone just to get what she wants.

Stick with it, Ryans, eye on the ball.

“That’s the crazy thing,” Jean-Paul responds. “It seems to be a young man, a boy. Nineteen. Zimbabwean.”

“Let’s buy it,” I bite, taking my frustration out on Jean-Paul.

“Ah, err, we’ve tried, Gregory. The boy’s lawyers aren’t interested.”

“How much did you offer?”

“Five hundred thousand. They wouldn’t even speak to us.”

I internally snarl at him. If you want a job done properly... “Set me up a meeting. I’ll close it.”

“We’ll need a lawyer,” Williams says. His voice is wary. As it should be. I know what he’s thinking.

“Then find one.” I glare at him, daring him to challenge me.

“What about—”

“No.”

Lawrence breaks the stand-off by announcing the next company on the agenda. I watch the slides click over to another financial graph that I’ve already seen.

All eyes focus on me as I push my chair out and move to the window. I nod and the room gets back to business as I stare at the first drops of rain dusting the glass pane in front of me. She
thinks
she loves me. She doesn’t know me. She knows the man who gets impossible tickets to the Dame Judi Dench play she’s desperate to see, the man who whisks her away to a vineyard because she used to enjoy fine wines with her father, the man who flies her to the opera.
I don’t even know where that man came from.

She doesn’t know
me
.
Maybe I should go to Dubai and tell her. Tell her everything. Tell her who I really am. Then she’ll see that I’m not a man to be loved and I’m a man who can’t love. I should’ve told her. She wanted to know. She kept pushing and I was too...what...afraid? If I’d told her it would’ve ended us. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. Just like I wished I’d left her alone after she first pitched to be my lawyer. But I couldn’t.

Who am I kidding? She’ll have moved on. I’m the fucking idiot still pining after a woman who I knew for a matter of weeks. Soon I’ll have been without her for as long as I was with her.

A sudden ache strikes my chest and I have to push my palm against my pec.

“Do you have a view, Gregory?” Zara is burning two big dark-blue eyes into me when I turn to face the table.

Fuck! She was last on the agenda.

“Zara, we’ve discussed this before. Your role is to head up Corporate Social Responsibility within the remit I give you.”

“I appreciate that, Gregory, but we’ve followed the same charities for four years running. I think it would be a positive message if we spread our funding to some other areas of need, open up to a fair procedure, ask charities to pitch to us.”

Is she challenging me? Seriously?

“No. We stick with the children’s hospital and domestic violence in Africa. Consider that item closed.”

Zara’s mouth opens. For a split second, I think she’s considering pushing my buttons further. She wisely backs down. She thinks I’m a dick. Good. I am.

Lawrence closes the AGM and dials reception to have lunch brought through. I don’t hang around for small talk.

Loosening my tie a notch, I take a seat behind my desk. The live feeds to the Dow Jones, FTSE and other markets in which I dabble are playing on flat screens around the room. On my screen saver, Scarlett looks truly mesmerising in her black gown, the diamond choker around her neck outshined by those devastating eyes. It’s a press shot. We’re on the red carpet outside my mother’s house. The annual gala.
That
night.

I remember how awkward she felt, how she didn’t want to get out of the Bentley. She was nervous she wasn’t good enough. What a joke! She was the most beautiful woman at the gala. Screw that, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out. The fucking dull ache throbs in my chest again.

“Greg.” Williams opens my office door and walks straight in. “Where were you today? Because you weren’t in the AGM.”

I give him a sigh that reflects how truly exasperated I feel. “I’d already seen the papers.”

He stalks towards me and takes a seat on the opposite side of my desk, pulling up his trousers at the knee as he sits.

“I’m not in the mood to hear it, Williams.”

“Well, you’re never in the mood, old boy, so now seems as good a time as any. Amanda speaks to her every day, Greg, she’s a mess. She loves you. She’s
in
love with you.”

She doesn’t know me. But does that mean there’s hope? No, Ryans, you pushed her away for good reason. Forget it.

“It’s over, Williams. Done. She’s better off, she just doesn’t know it yet. Now, we need to talk about that hair of yours.”

“Changing the subject?”

“Too right, changing it to something you
can
control. That fucking hair has got to go before you’re a dad. You look like a fucking gap year student.”

He chortles and, despite myself, my lips turn up, too.

“Speaking of which. We had our first scan. Want to see?”

“Ja, of course.”

He pulls out his iPhone and shows me a black and white image, a picture of a picture of a large baked bean. But he’s beaming at me, so proud he might burst, so I smile back. “That’s a damn cute bean.”

We talk for five minutes about the bean and how Williams is coping with Amanda moving into his place. Then he leaves and I can get back to staring at the picture on my screen. Everything about her is perfect and effortless. She’s a natural beauty, not like the dolls walking around my offices or the women who bat their lids in restaurants, bars, wherever I go. All those women see is my exterior and my money.

I came close to falling in love with her, too damn close. But it could never be true. I don’t fall in love. She made me want to be something I’m not. She made me want to be a decent person and, hell, I wanted to tell her the three words she was so desperate to hear. But it would’ve been a mistake.

I knew the night she got drunk and told me about the Dubai secondment, I knew then if she couldn’t see it for herself, I had to make sure she went. We had to get the murder charge over with first. She had to see that the CPS wouldn’t charge me, that we’d be free because no matter which one of us took the fatal shot, it was self-defence, my father would have killed us. She had to see that so she could move on knowing she’d done the right thing in the eyes of the law.

Then she told me she wanted to confess to sending my bastard father, my black past, to hell. She wanted to save me, again. It tore me up inside. The thought of losing her. The thought of her locked behind bars for doing nothing other than falling in love with me and getting caught in my web of darkness.

When John Harrison called with the CPS decision, everything came crashing to me, everything I’d felt for the last twenty years. I hadn’t cried since I was ten years old but holding her in my arms, knowing it was over, that she could move on and, yes, that I hadn’t lost her, I sobbed. It’s not manly. It’s not
Gregory Ryans
but I couldn’t stop the tears from fucking falling. I knew then. I knew I was going to send her away because I’d let it go too far, I had to be fair to her. She’d had enough. I’d broken her and she was better than that, better than me.

I shouldn’t have taken her to the opera. It was selfish. I convinced myself it was for her, so she could have one night, the fairy tale. But damn it, I just couldn’t let her go. And all night I fought with myself. I had to remember the plan but, Christ, I wanted to say those three words she needed to hear. I wanted to say them so damn much it killed me not to.

Chapter Two

I made the right decision to take the first flight out, checking into an airport hotel once I left the Shard. I held it together long enough to look sane at check-in. Then I got to my room and broke down. At some point, sleep took over, because when Reception called to wake me for my taxi to Heathrow early the next morning, I was still dressed.

That was five weeks ago. I’ve gotten better. Since the first week, I haven’t cried myself to sleep every night. Now grief comes over me only in waves, though when it comes, it brings with it the same excruciating pain in my abdomen and the same crippling ache in my chest.

I’ve developed a routine in Dubai. Sunday through Thursday I’m in the hotel gym around five in the morning. I mull over the international newspapers in the main restaurant and take coffee with continental breakfast. Then I head to Mr. Ghurair’s office around eight. With two deals running concurrently, I have more than enough to keep me busy all day.

I’ve gotten used to the dry heat I’d found stifling when I stepped off the aeroplane and took my first steps on the dry Middle Eastern ground. Despite the winter, the temperature is in the midtwenties Celsius and a dramatic hike from the below freezing temperatures in England.

After work, I call Sandy or Amanda—or both—and head to dinner. I try to rotate between the four restaurants in the hotel so I don’t get bored of eating the same thing, although half the time I only push the food around my plate. In fact, the chef in Hoi An, the Vietnamese restaurant, has started giving me smaller portions so I don’t insult him by leaving his food. After dinner, every night except Thursday and Friday when it’s a little more rowdy, I head to the outdoor pool bar. I order a drink and sip it, sitting on a white leather sofa staring out at the lights of Dubai and the magnificence of Burj Khalifa. The menacing spike of the tallest building in the world dominates the opulent skyline. Like everything in Dubai, it’s big, it sparkles and it screams
money
.

On Thursdays and Fridays I take my drink indoors, in Broadway, a 1940’s New York-themed restaurant/bar. It’s quirky, dark wooden rails separate sections of the bar and there’s a stage at one end of the room where theatre shows take place. It’s different to the marble floors and elegance of the other public areas of the hotel. Tonight is Thursday, so I’m heading to Broadway, having enjoyed two small plates in the Michelin-equivalent Indian restaurant—spiced scallops and soft shell crab.

I spot Paddy behind the bar and give him a half smile, then hitch up the hem of my fitted cream dress and slide onto a red leather stool in the corner of the bar, placing the toes of my strappy heels on the rim. The lights are dimmed for the production of
Chicago
that’s about to start.

Paddy finishes making a Manhattan by topping the drink with a Maraschino cherry, then slides it towards a waiter to serve.

“Hey lady,” he says with his cute Dublin accent as he makes a beeline for me, tossing a white cloth over his shoulder. With the back of his hand he knocks a rogue brown hair back into his messy mass of chin-length waves.

Paddy rotates shifts between the hotel’s pool bar and Broadway. He doesn’t like working in the pool bar when the DJs are pumping out tunes on Thursdays and Fridays, so he moves to Broadway those days. He’s not, incidentally, why I rotate but I can’t deny it’s nice to have someone to talk to.

“Hi Paddy, how are you?”

“Not bad. Tired. I’ve already worked breakfast and lunch today. How you doing?”

“Fine.”

He shakes his head on a short laugh. “The lady is always
fine
.”

“I’m not in the mood for counselling, Paddy.”

“You never are, sweetheart, but one day you’ll tell me what broke your heart.”

I lean a forearm on the bar and turn my stool, subtly angling away from him. “What makes you think I have a broken heart?”

“Oh, let me see. You sit alone every night looking miserable, nursing one cocktail for an hour, sometimes two cocktails on a weekend, heaven forbid. You never want to talk about it. You’re always
fine
and those eyes of yours drift off to another place. Ex-pats come to Dubai for two reasons. One, tax relief. And you’re not getting that whilst you’re on secondment. Two, to cure a broken heart.”

“Mmm-hmm, well I drink alone because you’re the only person I really know in Dubai. I am
fine
and I drift off because your conversation is monotonous.”

“Oh, she’s in feisty mode tonight. I like it,” he says with a cheeky wink, making me laugh. “Dry or dirty?”

“What did I have last night?”

“Dirty last night, dry the night before that, dirty the night before that, dry the night be—”

“Okay, I get the point. Dry then, please.”

“Sure thing.” He moves down the bar, pulling a bottle of Tanqueray and a bottle of vermouth from the mirrored wall.

“My finest,” he says when he places the cocktail on a black napkin in front of me. He plants his hands on the bar, waiting for me to taste test.

“Fine,” I say with a smirk as the first sip travels straight to my head.

“You’re a tough woman.”

“Thanks. So, what about you? Tax or heartbreak?”

He flashes me a look that says he’s not giving me an answer, so I change course. “What’s your real name?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

“Because I don’t believe you’re really called Paddy. Too stereotypical.”

He laughs and moves off to serve, casting me an amused look across his shoulder as he goes.

I sit back into my stool and sip my dry martini as the curtain rises on the opening scene of
Chicago
.

This is the most dangerous time of my day. It’s the time, without fail, that my mind finds Gregory and the pain comes back—my stomach, my chest, my head. It’s when I think about how lost I am, how nothing makes sense without him.

I miss everything about him.
All
his personalities and quirks. The way he would pull the cuffs of his shirt slightly lower than the edge of his suit jacket. That stance. His hips flexed slightly forward so his strong calves pull the material of his trousers taut. His shoulders back, tall and broad. That half smile. God, he could liquefy me with that half smile. The way his hair feels like silk through my fingers when we’re making love.

I stroke my lips where I wish I could feel his soft skin again. The familiar lump is building in my throat. I swallow it away with a sip of dry martini. He could drive me wild with just a single touch. And his scent. Rich, fresh. I close my eyes, remembering.

The stage darkens and a spotlight hovers on the actress playing Roxie as the band strikes up “Cell Block Tango
.
”
Her soft, blond bob bounces and her innocence disappears as she sings, “He had it coming.” There’s a sinister edge to her stage voice.
He only had himself to blame.
She’s captivating. It’s not enough to distract me from my thoughts.

What I crave more than anything is the feeling of completeness. I never realised I needed something else in my life. I don’t think I did, anyway. Not until I met Gregory and, maybe for the first time, felt awake, alive, truly alive. Being near him was an adrenalin rush. Blood pumped in my veins, the way it does now. Just thinking about him raises my heart rate and sparks a dull yearning low in my abdomen.

I knew he was flawed. I just didn’t think he was...well, I guess I just didn’t think. I lost all reason with Gregory. I became a different version of me, a Scarlett Heath who operated in the grey. I struggled to move away from right and wrong, the black and white I’d always known and clung to. I’ve had five weeks to realise that I prefer that version of myself. I prefer the grey. I prefer who I am when I’m with him.

Our relationship was a mess, doomed from the beginning. We didn’t do anything in the conventional way. The takeover. My father. Murder.

“Scarlett.”

I jump as Paddy’s voice brings me back to real time. “Yes?”

“Here.” He slides a dry martini next to the one I’m currently drinking. “From table fourteen.”

“Thanks but I don’t accept drinks from strangers.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“Her? That’s new.”

“She told me to tell you it’s from Trina.”

I try to locate the name, then the face in my mind. “Trina. Katrina Martin?”

Paddy shrugs.

“It’s nice to see you again, Miss Heath.”

She’s standing over my left shoulder. Her ill-fitting black suit and scuffed leather flats have been replaced with linen trousers and royal blue deck shoes. The belt that would normally host her police badge has been switched with a dark brown number that’s too big and chunky for the delicate fabric of her trousers. If I were to judge her on appearance alone, I’d say she’s butch, maybe even a bitch. Wait, that’s my
actual
, informed view.

“I wish I could say the same,” I mumble. “I suspect it isn’t coincidence that you happen to be at the Crystal Grand in Dubai.”

“I knew you were smart.” She smirks and pulls a neighbouring stool close to mine, uninvited, definitely not welcome, but sitting nonetheless. “That’s why I knew you’d leave him eventually.”

I take a sip of my cocktail, a delay tactic whilst I muster some composure. “What do you want, Trina?”

“I wanted to let you in on a secret.” She leans towards me, her forearm resting on the bar, her fingers wrapped around a half pint of beer.

“Yeah, well, I’ve had my fill of secrets. Thanks anyway.”

She leans back now and pushes a hand into the pocket of her trousers. “There I was thinking Scarlett Heath is a good girl. That she was lured into something she didn’t understand. I guess I was mistaken. You were in on it all along.”

I drain my glass and step down from my stool. “I’m not interested, Trina.”

I make to walk past her but she clamps a sweaty palm down on my wrist. “Oh, I beg to differ. You see, if I’m right, your precious little career as a lawyer will be over.”

Does she know?

Snatching my wrist back, I growl through my teeth. “If you’ve got something to accuse me of, do it. Give me your best accusation.”

She smiles. A sadistic grin. Then takes a swig from her beer. “Sit.”

“I’ll stand.”

She wipes beer from her lips with the back of her hand. “Alright. I think your fancy pants boyfriend paid off Barnes. And I think one or both of them paid off the CPS. That’s what I think.”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of her words. “What are you talking about?”

That sardonic grin is back and I want to slap her face. “I was right. You didn’t know.”

My heart is pounding in my chest as my brain makes sense of her statement.
Gregory paid off D.I. Barnes?
I don’t want to believe it. I don’t believe it. I snatch up the drink Trina bought for me and take a gulp. Then I lean into her ear. “You know what, Katrina Martin, you’re full of shit.” I place my glass to the bar with a thud. “Enjoy the rest of your stay in Dubai.”

“Scarlett.” I’m walking away but, for some unbeknown reason, I turn to face her. “I think you know I’m not talking shit and I think your breathing has quickened and the skin around your neck flushed pink because this is the first you’ve heard of it. Bribes, Scarlett. Bribes of the most corrupt sort. Bribes with government officials. Bribes that would ruin your career and put you all behind bars for a
very
long time. Unless, of course, you wanted to make a statement. I could get you leniency.”

“Fuck you.” The words grate through my teeth and locked jaw.

She throws her head back on a laugh. “Yep, fuck me. But you just think about it. The CPS didn’t bat so much as an eyelid over a murder and, moreover, a murder with a gun? Two ballistics reports are ordered for no good justification and what d’ya know, they conflict.” It’s her turn to drain her drink. “You’re a smart girl.”

With that, she leaves and I stagger back towards my stool where I down the last of my second cocktail in one.

I want to think she’s a liar but there were things I brushed over, things I didn’t put my mind to. Like D.I. Barnes’s connection to Jackson. The way he was nice to me when he turned off the tape during my questioning. How pissed off he got when Trina started badgering me, digging deeper for answers. He shouted at her. He kicked her out of the room.

Sunday night, after Gregory and I had returned from that godawful foxhunt. D.I. Barnes turned up unannounced at the Shard to tell Gregory and Jackson about the ballistics report.
How? Why?
I’d thought he was just forewarning Jackson, being a good friend. But I remember now that he was angry. He said they’d been lying to him, Jackson and Gregory, that they’d hidden things from him.

I raise a hand until I have Paddy’s attention, then I gesture to my empty glass.

“Three in one night,” Paddy says, sliding the third martini in front of me.

Without even thinking, I drain it. “Make it four.”

“Whoa, steady on. Is everything okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

Whatever look I give him makes him hold up two flat palms. “To be sure. Number four’s coming up.”

I can’t believe I was so blind. So intentionally blind to what was happening. Gregory said he went to the police for me, so I could move on. He made me promise that if the Crown Prosecution Service made a decision not to charge him, I would accept that shooting Kevin Pearson was the right thing to do. That I would accept the decision meant
I
shouldn’t be charged, that
I
did the right thing. If Katrina Martin’s theory is true, it was all a lie.

Five weeks ago, I had Gregory. I deserved to be punished for what I did, for killing a man, but I thought I could get over it because I’d saved Gregory’s life. For the last five weeks, I’ve been trying to make sense of everything that happened and the only conclusion I’ve drawn is that nothing makes sense without him. Not my involvement in the hostile takeover, not my father being murdered as a result, not my burning desire to seek revenge, and not my incurable need to touch and feel
that
man
.