Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire

by M. J. Lawless

  “You were working for him?” Kris bit down the sudden pang of jealousy she felt and tried to return the conversation to something she could deal with less emotionally.

  Miranda nodded. “He needed someone to trust, and he trusted me completely. He was hungry, hungry for everything—and I couldn’t give him everything he needed, but I helped him willingly, even against my better judgement.” Her face darkened at this thought. “Which brings me to why we’re here.”

  She reached down to the briefcase and placed it on the table, opening the locks and swinging up the black top. Inside was a file with a sheaf of papers, which she placed on the table alongside a small thumb drive.

  “These are the most important papers. They’re copies I printed out, but all the information you need is on this drive. It’s encrypted so no one will be able to read it unless they have the password. The only other person who has all of them is me. They’re a kind of insurance.”

  Kris reached across to take hold of the file but Miranda’s hand came down over hers and held it tightly. The emerald bracelet refracted sunbeams brightly in the noon light.

  “Just be sure that you want these,” the older woman said quietly. “Once you know what’s in here, you can’t forget it.”

  Kris pulled her hand backwards and Miranda released it instantly. “What do they contain?”

  Miranda paused and breathed in deeply. “This information is... toxic. As I say, I couldn’t give Daniel everything he wanted, but Maximilian Roth thought he could.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, I don’t believe for a moment that Daniel was innocent, but if he was Faust then Maximilian was Mephistopheles. Have you ever met him?”

  Kris nodded and Miranda looked at her thoughtfully for a few seconds.

  “I don’t think evil is the right word to describe him. Calculating, ruthless, utterly passionless. In the end, everything comes down to money with Maximilian Roth: nothing else matters to him, not his wives, not friendship, not even that bastard son of his.” Miranda’s face went into a spasm as she referred to Francis and a look of utter revulsion filled her eyes for a second, but she quickly gained self-control.

  No longer looking at Kris, she opened the file. “The company was Pharzon—it was a very successful holding company, involved in energy, pharmaceuticals, electronics. Actually, what Roth and Daniel realised was that what it ostensibly created and traded was much less important than what it provided cover for.”

  Kris frowned. “I remember the name from somewhere,” she said.

  “So you should. There was a scandal three years ago. One of the biggest bankruptcies in US history—more than 50 billion. The case is still going through the courts and it’s an unholy mess. Pharzon had made use of all sorts of accounting loopholes and special purpose entities, as well as outright fraud, to hide a huge number of bad debts.”

  “And what... what does this have to do with Daniel?”

  Miranda smiled thinly. “Fortunately, not as much as could have been the case. Shortly before I met Daniel, he and Maximilian had hatched a scheme to leverage some of Pharzon’s debt as well as the substantial pension holdings it had. Roth wanted to become a major shareholder, with the promise of even more billions to add to his wealth. When he met me, Daniel put me onto the team that was involved in a takeover bid: in the end it didn’t go as planned—fortunately for Daniel as it happened.”

  Kris looked at the papers in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

  Miranda watched her carefully for a few moments, letting her hand rest on the file in front of her. “For more than six months, I had access to a huge wealth of information. I was infatuated with Daniel, but even that infatuation couldn’t blind me to the fact that what he and Maximilian were planning was illegal, and that Roth had been caught up in a whole series of crooked deals for years.”

  “What did Daniel do?”

  “At first, nothing. He was blinded by greed, to be honest. And I think he was blinded by Maximilian, too. The man is a genius, even I have to give him that. He’d cooked up such a Byzantine scheme that it would take years to work out. So I just kept copies of everything, made my own personal file—a kind of security.” Miranda gave another slightly cynical laugh. “I guess I was less infatuated than I’d led myself to believe. Anyway, when the buyout started to go sour, I think that was when—at last—Daniel started to listen to me. It was also the beginning of the end for his close liaisons with Maximilian Roth.”

  Kris suddenly had a flash of insight. “That’s how it ended, isn’t it, with you and Daniel?”

  Miranda paused before replying. “Yes,” she said at last. “I was... unfinished business, and I had to be removed from the scene. Maximilian found a way to use one of Daniel’s former lovers to engineer a breakup between us...” Her face suddenly flushing with anger, Miranda paused. “I’m sorry, it’s better I don’t talk about that.”

  Kris nodded but said nothing, her heart swelling with sympathy for the other woman.

  “In any case, these files contain more than enough to tie Roth and Felix to the Pharzon debacle, Daniel too, unfortunately. As I said, he wasn’t exactly the innocent party, though I think he saw the light by the end of it.”

  Kris remembered her last conversation with Maria Gosselin. “They want to pin it all on Daniel, don’t they.”

  The other woman nodded. “They thought they’d destroyed any other evidence linking them to the debacle.”

  “Why haven’t you done anything with it before?”

  Miranda shrugged, and Kris was amazed to see tears gathering in her eyes.

  “If I used this, it would hurt Daniel. Hell, it would have hurt me too. I don’t think any of us would escape prison. Roth’s being trying to clean up his tracks for years.”

  “Okay, I understand that, but why now?”

  Miranda’s smile was bitter, her face suddenly looking pale and much older. “Part of it is for Daniel’s sake. I still... I still love him. I’m sorry to say that. I wish it wasn’t true. But I know that Roth is out to get him. Daniel is still unfinished business, just as I was. And I want revenge.”

  Kris’s head was spinning faster now. “Revenge? Revenge against Maximilian Roth?”

  “No. Francis.”

  All around her, the restaurant appeared to whirl about Kris before suddenly coming to a crashing halt as she stared directly into Miranda’s pained eyes. She felt sick in her stomach as she finally understood.

  “He...” She could not bring herself to complete the sentence.

  Miranda nodded, a tight gesture. “Three years ago. I had no idea why we met at the time, but I’ve since realised that he engineered it. He’s obsessed with Daniel, wants to be Daniel, wants to... have everything that Daniel has or has had. When he realised I had been Daniel’s... property, as he so charmingly expressed it, then he had to have me. When I refused...” Miranda suddenly choked off the sentence and raised a hand to her mouth.

  Kris nodded slowly, everything moving into clearer resolution. “I suppose you didn’t go to the police, did you?”

  The other woman gave a brief, bitter laugh. “As you’ve learned, no one goes against the Roths and wins, not unless you’re the US government, which is what it’ll take to bring down their empire.”

  “Then why this, why now?” Kris gestured to the file.

  Miranda paused, staring at the papers and thumb drive while regaining her self control.

  “If Daniel uses this,” she said very steadily, “it will ruin him, but his fall won’t be anything like that of Maximilian Roth’s. There’s part of me... there’s part of me that would love that more than anything, even if it means my ruin as well.” She sniffed slightly, then looked at Kris more calmly. “This is Daniel’s nuclear deterrent. I... I suggest you don’t give it to him. The temptation will be too great, but if you find some way of letting... Francis know about it, it may be enough to spoil whatever plans he and his father have against Daniel. It’s a petty revenge in the end, perhaps, but just maybe Maximilian Roth will
know what it means to feel fear.”

  She looked at the menu and let it fall back to the table. “Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my appetite.”

  Kris nodded, saying nothing. The file in front of her was mysterious, its mundane exterior hiding all sorts of forbidden knowledge that she realised she would never completely understand, but which also contained a possibility for her husband—a terrible opportunity—that she could not let pass. She picked up the small drive, so light in her fingers.

  “You said there was a password.”

  Miranda nodded. “Emeralds1964,” she said. Kris looked slightly confused and Miranda gave a slightly sad laugh. “The year of my birth.”

  After another hour of discussion, Kris left the Hotel Russell and made her way to a bank in the west end of London. Daniel had established an account for her there previously, offering her a safe vault to store any valuables that she wished to take care of. It was there she deposited the drive and file, taking a couple of sheets of the pages with her. As Miranda had told her, the file was toxic and, for a short time at least, she wanted to handle it as little as possible.

  When she returned to the apartment in Chelsea, it was late afternoon but Daniel had not yet returned from his meetings with lawyers. Kris suddenly felt immensely tired and, after making herself a drink, took it through to the bedroom. Stripping out of her expensive clothes that had protected her like armour, she showered and climbed into bed, sipping at her coffee while she looked through the sheets of paper she had brought with her. The information was cryptic enough, but even her own limited experience of business told her that this clearly linked Maximilian Roth, Felix Coltraine and Daniel Stone to financial irregularities.

  “Oh Daniel,” she said to herself softly. “What have you done?”

  She folded the sheets and placed them in a purse which she hid in the drawer next to her bed. Fortunately, whatever obsessions Daniel may have developed towards her in the past, he was extremely relaxed about any possessions of hers. Her only worry was that a maid might disturb the papers while cleaning but she trusted them not to go through her personal belongings.

  She had fallen asleep when she was disturbed by a motion at the end of the bed. Stirring sleepily, she lifted her head to see Daniel seated beside her feet, looking down at her. The room was still half-lit as the sun was descending now, and she could see that he was still in a suit, his tie hanging loosely from his neck. His face was tired, his hair slightly dishevelled, but he smiled as he looked down at her.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “That’s okay. How did it go?”

  He shrugged. “Long. Long and tedious. Roth is trying to wear me down. It’s strange, but I don’t think Felix’s heart is into this as much as I originally suspected. That little bastard, however, is trying to get me to sell up for nothing. He knows that he can’t win, but he’s working on the assumption that I’ll run out of options.”

  Kris reached out with her hand, taking hold of his, feeling the warmth of his fingers in her own. She squeezed him gently.

  “Don’t you ever wish you could leave all this?”

  His smile was sadder now. “I wish it more than anything. There are... there are too many skeletons, though. If I don’t fight, they’ll destroy me.”

  He returned her squeeze with an affectionate one of his own, then stood, taking off his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. Continuing to look at her, he began to speak softly. “There was a merchant, looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he sold everything he had to buy it.”

  She said nothing, but watched him undress, his body naked and glorious in the half light. As he climbed into bed against her, he nuzzled against her neck and she pressed her buttocks back against his half-erect loins, but while he kissed her she could feel the exhaustion claiming his body. Their lovemaking was brief but tender, him holding her shoulders tightly as he penetrated her.

  As he fell asleep behind her, his arm folded across her torso, she lay awake for a long time, staring at the night through the window. Even in the glow of the London skyline she could make out Venus, shining like a solitary, hard diamond against the deepening blue.

  Chapter twenty-five

  If there were two men in the world she wanted to see less—at this or at any other moment—she could not think who they were.

  The meeting had been surprisingly easy to arrange, although Kris had allowed herself a few days to ponder the full significance of what Miranda Karstans had told her. When she decided she was ready, she had contacted Felix Coltraine who seemed incredibly eager to meet her.

  In truth, it would have been easier for her to have seen him alone, but she also realised that to achieve what she wanted then she had to face both Felix and Francis Roth together.

  And so it was that she found herself sitting at a desk a little way from the two men in an office high in the eyrie of Stone Enterprises. The room was large, with a polished floor of Travertine marble and two abstract sculptures of iron and smooth granite on either side of the room, stern sentries warning anyone who entered here. The desk before her was a large slab of walnut, burnished so that its surface was almost like a mirror.

  She knew from the description that this was Daniel’s former office, the severe lines an external sign of the discipline that had formed the tracks of his mind. Discipline. That had been a keyword between them when first they met, the establishment of an order within her chaotic life that had saved Kris from the wreckage of herself. Unbidden, Miranda’s words came back to her: If he wrecked me, he also lifted me up, gave me something new, something better.

  Discipline was what she required now, a stern self-control as severe as any trace Daniel had left of himself within this office from which he was now exiled. Inside her chest, her heart was beating rapidly, and she was certain that a faint blush of fear and nervousness was creeping up from her breasts and neck, but she forced down any sense of uncertainty with an effort of her will.

  Felix was seated behind the desk, staring at her with an ambiguous gaze. His eyes were fixed on her, but the contempt that she had seen in those pale orbs on previous occasions was now missing, she realised. If anything, she noticed more the lines that creased his eyes and his mouth, and that his hair which had previously looked so silver and distinguished now appeared grey. Altogether, he looked older, more careworn and tired than before, and his attitude was far more difficult to read than she had expected.

  Francis, by contrast, was cocksure and arrogant, sitting on the desk with a pose that made his disdain not only for her but also for the office in which he sat completely obvious. Unlike Felix, he had removed his jacket and slung it over a chair in one corner, a small sign of his dismissiveness towards Stone Enterprises and everything it stood for. She tried not to look at him, attempting to ignore the sickness she felt in her stomach at having to be so close to him. His sandy hair, smaller, pudgier frame and that horrible, overfull mouth which she had disliked when first she saw it, these and so many other signs indicated what a pathetic imitation of Daniel he really was.

  For her part, Kris had dressed in an extremely conservative two piece suit, navy blue skirt to her knees and a jacket that was designed to be as smart but also as anonymous as possible. She had not had time to have it tailored from scratch, but she had taken the opportunity of a few days between deciding upon the meeting to have the suit modified to her blossoming body. Thus while, to a casual observer, she may have appeared more vulnerable, this carefully prepared suit of armour gave her greater confidence. She could not hide from the gaze of these two men, but she wanted to give them nothing of her personality—her real self—to hold onto.

  Her hair was, once more, scraped tightly into a bun, this time so vicious that it almost hurt her as it pulled at the skin around the nape of her neck and her ears. That was fine. A little pain would focus her mind on the task in hand, a little discomfort would enable her to exercise the requisite discipline. She had learne
d that about herself. Beside her seat was the briefcase she had brought with her to the meeting.

  “I’m glad you could come,” Felix told her in a quiet voice that was almost kind. The tone of it surprised her, but she gave a very slight flick of her head. To him, it would appear that she was acknowledging this platitude, but really she was flicking aside any distractions of emotion that could interfere with what she had to do.

  “Couldn’t face us himself, could he?” The sneer was from Francis and for an instant Kris almost lost her self control. Nonetheless, she maintained her composure and forced herself to look at him, fully. In that moment, she had the strangest feeling. His eyes were flickering across her body, a strange mixture of disgust at her thickening limbs and waist with barely repressed lust. There was a part of her that wanted to scream at him, to howl in anger at this pig of a man, to be sick even. At the same time, the self-control she had forced upon herself took over her so that it seemed as though her conscious mind was being sucked backwards out of her immediate frame of vision. She felt a little lightheaded at the experience, almost floating above herself, utterly detached from any immediate harm.

  And she also saw clearly.

  Beneath the softness of his cheeks, the slightly overwrought layer of skin that covered a body that struggled to maintain the muscular dimensions it so evidently desired, beneath the expensive shirt and carefully pressed trousers, the manicured hands and well-maintained, even prissy hair, she saw clearly what Francis Roth was and how he saw himself.

  He was stupid.

  No, that was not entirely true. He was not stupid, but he was not as clever as he wanted to be, wanted to think himself to be. All his life had been an attempt to impress a cold and calculating father who thought of him as no more than a line in the family ledger of debits and credits. He had so wanted the love of a man who knew nothing of love unless it was for money, and then—so effortlessly—a stranger had entered his life and supplanted his father’s affections as easily as breathing, as quickly as sunlight entering a room when the blinds are drawn. She remembered something that Maximilian Roth had said to her: Daniel was exceptional. I would have been proud to call him my son.