by Aitana Moore
License Notes
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Copyright © 2018 by Aitana Moore
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Making or distributing copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
Other books by the same author:
Historical romance as Lara Blunte:
The Last Earl
The Abyss
True Born
To Be King
(Winner of the Wattys 2015)
Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:
A Man in Africa
ONE
Her hair had been dyed, cut and dried, and she appraised the result.
An eager salon assistant moved around her with a small mirror to display her head from all sides. The hairdresser stood with an eyebrow raised, as if daring her not to like his work.
The color was an achievement. There was an icy patina to her yellow hair, but he had preserved its luster. Her eyebrows, too, were the right shade — not light, not dark — and the cut had left her with a well-behaved mane that reached her shoulders.
She nodded, although she didn't much like blonde hair. It was almost invariably fake, and in her real life she liked what was authentic. Women changed completely when they dyed their hair, becoming someone they were not, and for many that was the point.
It was certainly the point for Lee. Four months before she had been a blue-eyed redhead with long hair, then brown-haired and dark-eyed, and now she was a blonde with her own green eyes.
The hair color would take some maintenance. She supposed her roots would show after three weeks, and she was booked in a rehab clinic for four. Well, she had done more difficult things in her life than figuring out how to cover up roots.
The price tag for her new hair, manicure and foot spa was almost five hundred euros. Her nails, painted a light taupe, lent elegance to her every movement as she distributed tips.
The receptionist smiled, having learned to use clients' names as much as possible. "Merci, Mademoiselle Walker!"
“C’est moi qui vous remercie,” Lee said. On the contrary, thank you.
Lee’s new name was Vivien Walker. A first name that would sound good to a man, combined with a common last name. In the middle she had stuck something faintly religious and just a little pretentious, Marie. Vivien Marie Walker.
Vivien’s mother would have been a faintly religious, slightly pretentious woman and would have insisted on Marie. Her father would have come from an honest English family that once crossed the sea to America, and he would have worked hard to afford decent suburban comforts.
Vivien would be much more ambitious than her parents.
"Merci, Mademoiselle Walker," the assistant repeated, opening the door for her.
Lee smiled at the name that wasn’t hers.
TWO
Geneva was an old, old city, and over time had harbored many talented delinquents. If you quietly stole a rare object, you could probably fence it there. Collectors gathered in Geneva, or sent their representatives to acquire jewels, works of art and ancient artifacts they were not supposed to own.
Most of the collectors could be trusted. They liked to keep beautiful things for their eyes only. A few couldn’t resist showing off, like King Candaules revealing the nakedness of his wife to a servant. Those people might be caught, the precious object of their passion removed, and a bevy of lawyers set in motion to prove their innocence.
But there was a certain latitude for genteel criminals in Geneva, Lee thought as she walked along the lake to the Four Seasons. It was only seven in the morning, and only May. In the distance, the French Alps were snowcapped, but then they always were, and the air was still decidedly chilly. Shielding her eyes from the silver flash of sunlight with sunglasses, she held the high neck of her cream cashmere coat around her throat until she had entered the lobby of the hotel and moved confidently to the restaurant.
It was half full. Businesspeople in crisp suits were already talking of money. Women in expensive track suits, fine jewelry and no makeup carefully chose what to eat from the low-calorie side bar. And millionaires who had no work to do sat with their families or entourages, probably nursing jet lags.
Such as the Saudi millionaire she had come to see, who occupied a table for six in the center of the room. Of course he would be there; he liked the buffet too much to have breakfast in his room.
“Good morning,” the hostess said in a soft voice. “Breakfast?”
“Yes, please,” Lee said.
The girl consulted a sheet as she asked, “May I have your room number?”
“I’m not staying at the hotel.”
The hostess’ smile didn’t waver. “Welcome to the Four Seasons. Please follow me.”
She would have led Lee away from Mansour Al Madhi, but Lee delicately pointed to a table a little beyond his group, near the window.
“Can I sit here?”
“Of course,” the hostess said.
Lee’s high heels gave her a different walk than Cathy’s, the version of her that Al Madhi knew. Cathy had been the redhead, a happy-go-lucky Texan who had favored bikinis, resort clothes and bare feet in his yacht. They had stayed anchored off the coast of Phuket for the three weeks they had known each other, four months ago.
Cathy hadn’t ever worn perfume, whereas Vivien liked Chanel No. 19. As Lee swayed by his table, Mansour sniffed the air. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, that he was looking at her.
Her heart thudded hard, until it almost choked her. The feeling made her dizzy, but her steps didn’t falter.
“Here?” The hostess indicated a small table with spotless linen, delicate china and white roses in a small silver vase.
Lee loved white roses. She smiled. “Perfect.”
“Will you enjoy the buffet or—”
“Yes, I’ll have the buffet, thanks.”
“May I have coffee or tea brought to the table in the meantime?”
“Coffee, please. And a bottle of Evian.”
She didn’t have to say it shouldn’t come in plastic. As the hostess walked away, Lee calmly removed her sunglasses, and didn’t look up to see if she was being watched by the man whose jewel she had stolen. It had been a heart-shaped Burmese ruby pendant surrounded by diamonds, hanging from a platinum chain. Mansour had bought it for two million dollars, and Lee’s associate had had to fence it for a fourth of that price.
Still, she could easily recall the feeling of the ruby resting between her breasts. The stone had been deep red against her tan, doing justice to its color: pigeon’s blood. The small diamonds had flashed at the slightest of her movements. Her heart beat fast again at the memory. It had felt better than anything, to wear that pendant, but she never spent much time with the jewels she stole. She had passed it on to Quinn almost immediately, and the only trace left of it were the hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that appeared in her account, weeks later.
Not a bad payday for a three-week job. Just not good enough.
Still without raising her eyes, she took her phone from her designer bag and found the file with the report she needed to study.
The first image in it showed a multi-faceted, cushion-cut blue diamond, flanked by tiny red diamonds in a platinum setting. A fancy vivid blue diamond, with internally flawless clarity grade.
Feeling her eyes moisten from staring at the ring without blinking, Lee reflected for the hundredth time that a fancy vivid blue diamond of that size and clarity was just about as rare as a rock could get. And the pink-red diamonds, although small, were not to be sniffed at, as the color was even rarer than blue.
The ring had been auctioned by Christie’s for twelve million dollars only a year ago and had already appreciated. Now it was probably worth fifteen million.
Lee glanced up, pretending to study the buffet, and found that Mansour was looking at her. The pulse in her throat beat again, like a tiny hammer against her skin. There was a reason for her to sit openly in front of a man she had recently robbed. Her associate, Quinn, would faint in horror, had he known what she was doing — because it was an insane reason.
Before she decided that she was ready to steal fifteen million dollars, she needed to see if she could get away with it.
She stood and once more walked toward Mansour. He sniffed her again as she passed his table and stood with her back to him, considering her choice of fruit and pastries. Lee didn’t look back, but she could feel his eyes following her as she returned to her table.
Her throat was dry, but her hand didn’t tremble as she picked up a fork and stabbed a piece of melon, taking it to her lips. It didn’t tremble as she scrolled on her phone to read more of the information Quinn had compiled for her.
The photograph of a handsome, dark-haired man frowning at the camera substituted the image of the ring.
James Anthony St. Bryce.
For a second, she got lost in the eyes staring back at hers, as if from that photo he could already see her. There was strength in those eyes; there was pain. There was a sort of wildness — or was she making things up?
Lee looked up again to find Al Mansour studying her, and she didn’t look away. She gave a small frown, as if to let him know that he was being inconvenient. Still he stared, but her heartbeat didn’t accelerate or her temperature change, because there was no recognition in his face.
People saw what they wanted, and Al Madhi would never believe the woman who had stolen from him so brazen as to seek him out like this. Her experiment, such as it was, had ended. Al Madhi could provoke no more fear or excitement in her. He was the past.
The future was James St.Bryce.
Lee’s finger flipped the man’s photograph up to land on another — a tabloid cover featuring St. Bryce, still frowning. But this time, a red banner on top of his body read: KILLER?
THREE
“Why do you want to look like everyone else?” Cora wailed again. Her blue eyes widened. “Is someone after you?”
Lee smiled at her sister. “I’ve told you, no one will ever come after me. That’s not how things work.”
“Are you sure?”
Entering the biggest job of her career meant more danger than usual for Lee, but a tranquilizer had rounded off the sharp edge of her anxiety. As the ski lift took the sisters to a slope of medium difficulty, she thought of James St. Bryce with the same detachment that she watched the white expanse of snow below them.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Why are you blonde, then?”
“Just for a change."
“At least don’t do that thing to your lips anymore.”
Cora was only fourteen, but she was waking up to the world and becoming certain that Lee’s constant fiddling with her looks meant that she was unhappy.
Lee couldn’t tell her the truth — that she had to change because of her career as a criminal. She wished she could keep all bad things from her sister, always, but she supposed it was better for Cora to think that she was unsure of her attractiveness than that she seduced men and stole from them for a living.
“You don’t look bad,” Cora allowed. “You just always look best the way you really are.”
“I think I’ll dye it back soon.”
“And your new boss?” Cora asked eagerly. “Is he Italian?”
“Very English.”
“How much is he worth?”
Lee smiled. Cora didn’t ask out of greed; it was a game they played.
“A billion dollars,” Lee said, smiling. “Or thereabouts.”
“And what will you do for him?”
“Well, it’s really interesting, actually.”
“Is it?” Cora asked doubtfully. She had certainly not heard that before.
“Yes. He’s not a businessman. He’s an anthropologist. Went to live with tribes in Africa and Asia. Papua New Guinea, I think, as well. Spent years doing that.”
Cora’s interest was finally piqued, and she began to listen with more attention. “What, like Tarzan or something?”
“Or Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Lee smiled as Cora grimaced at her bad joke and continued, “Then he lived in a Buddhist monastery for a year, so he knows quite a bit about that, too. He wants help organizing his notes and doing more research so he can write about what he saw and lived through. A mutual friend put us in touch, and he liked me. It’s less well paid than usual, but more interesting work.”
It wasn’t all lies, but while James St. Bryce had studied anthropology and spent years living in jungles and deserts, and while he had studied Buddhism in a Japanese monastery, he wasn’t writing any book — as far as Lee knew.
Yet if she managed this job, it would be better paid than anything she had ever done. She reckoned she might be able to keep at least five million of the fifteen million pounds the ring was worth. Whoever bought it would have to risk selling a recognizable jewel or would have to break it into at least a couple of pieces. That would be the real crime.
She would just have to keep talking to Cora of her jobs as personal assistant to the very rich as highly paid, and of Quinn as a financial wizard who multiplied her money. And when she had millions, she would make up some other story to explain the windfall. But Cora was waiting for more details about her new boss.
“The poor man moves about with a cane and is always in pain,” Lee said.
That was true enough. Bryce (she had found out the man never used the “Saint” part of his name, probably because he had always been at odds with his family) had crashed his car under the influence of drugs and alcohol and had gone through three knee surgeries. As instructed by a judge in London, he was checking into an exclusive rehab center to get rid of a Tramadol addiction.
The center was in Italy, and Lee had also checked into it, to get rid of her own fake addiction. She had started taking Tramadol three weeks before so she could convincingly play the part of an opioid user
. It was a good thing that her mark was headed for rehab, as Lee hated drugs of any sort.
“Is he handsome?” Cora asked.
Bryce’s face flashed through Lee’s mind before she gave a small, dismissive laugh. “He’s in his sixties!”
Cora grimaced again. She had probably imagined something closer to the truth, and Lee needed to steer her away from that idea, or she would google “billionaire anthropologist” and find Bryce. The Tramadol was making Lee talk too much, but there was nothing like the mention of age to entirely lose the interest of the young.
“What if he likes you?” Cora asked, wrinkling her nose. “Men are a bit pigs.”
They’re all wholesale pigs, Lee thought — but she didn’t want Cora to believe that. Good things could still happen for her. She could still love and be loved.
“His wife will be with us,” Lee said. “And he’s very shy. And even if he made any sort of a grab, I can run faster than a man with a bad leg.”
“Or hit him with the cane!”
They laughed as they got off the lift and started their descent on skis.
As she watched Cora’s blonde ponytail fly behind her, Lee reflected that even the worst person in the world — and she might be close to that, some days — held something sacred, and Cora was sacred to her. Cora was the only sacred thing.
Skiing with her sister took Lee’s mind off things, and she didn’t have much time to think of Bryce. Still, when two days later she dropped Cora off at boarding school, there were tears in the girl’s eyes. I wish we could always be together, Lee thought.
“After Umbria, I'll be out of coverage four weeks,” Lee said. “But I’ll find a way of calling you.”
“Your bosses are always out of coverage.”
“Rich people are weird. And they never want to be found, so they don’t care how far away their holiday homes are. But I’ll call you. In the meantime, you know the drill: if you can’t reach me, reach Quinn.”
