hers, and the uneasiness she’d felt the first time she’d met him grew. Charming he might be, but there was a bite behind the charm, despite his youth. And he didn’t like women. The thought dropped into Esther’s mind, irrelevant, maybe, but interesting. Every other man in the room responded to her long red dress, the faint hint of cleavage and the diamonds, and no doubt the stereotypical image the media had always projected of her as the glamorous, pampered wife of “Mr. Midas.” But Alex Lopez hadn’t wanted to touch her. When he’d met her gaze, fleeting as the contact was, his eyes had been flat and opaque.
On the surface he was an all-American male, right down to the Boston accent, handsome except for an overly heavy jaw, but his attitude didn’t fit. Idly, she wondered if he was gay, then dismissed the notion. She had no doubt women had a place in his life, but, like everything else, sex would be coldly controlled and only on his terms.
As she greeted the second man, Dennison, the annoying sense of recognition lingered. She had seen Lopez before. She couldn’t put her finger on where or when, but it would come to her.
The third guest was a different matter. As she extended her hand in greeting, a newspaper article popped into her mind. The photographs had been grainy black and whites, the incident, just over twelve years ago, horrific. The article had been part of her research into a client attempting to move an extraordinarily large sum of money.
Esther’s breath stopped in her throat, every cell in her body on high alert. She couldn’t place Alex Lopez, but she had no problem placing his accountant.
The handclasp was brief, but even so her stomach turned, and for a moment she wondered if she was going to throw up. She remembered the village in Colombia—Los Mendez. Families casually machine-gunned; a baby left crying in the mud.
The accountant might call himself Mike Vitali, but his real name was Miguel Perez, one of a coterie of men surrounding Colombian drug lord and all-round cold-blooded murderer, Marco Chavez. It had been Chavez who had been attempting to move the funds. They had turned him down. An investigation by Interpol wasn’t the best credential in the international banking community.
Cesar threw her an annoyed glance. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Esther forced a smile. Touching Perez had been like dipping her hand into a sewer. She needed to wash, and she needed to get him—all of them—out of her house. But she couldn’t afford the simple luxury of ejecting them; she would have to tread carefully. Perez was a butcher. If he suspected that she knew who he was, she would place them all in jeopardy. “I just felt dizzy for a second.”
She sent Cesar a hard stare, indicating she needed to talk with him now, in private.
His brows shot up as he misinterpreted her expression, and for a moment the distance that had grown between them over the past few months dissolved and she caught a glimpse of the “old” Cesar, the arrogant financial wizard who had swept her off her feet. The only time in her life she had been dizzy had been when she was pregnant, but they were both well aware it couldn’t be that. Lately, they had been either too preoccupied or too busy for even casual conversation, let alone sex.
They had problems. Big problems. Over the past year almost everything they had touched had fallen through. Their net worth had more than halved. In the past two months their position had worsened, unbelievably, to the point that they now faced losing everything. Esther had abandoned her own projects and had been working overtime, researching the labyrinthine twists and turns of the contracts Cesar had signed in an effort to stave off a massive loss on a development that had collapsed when a major investor had withdrawn. Cesar had gambled heavily on the failed Ellis Street project—they both had, throwing all of their resources behind the mall complex in a bid to recoup their losses. He should have succeeded; she had checked the deal herself. Incredibly, he had lost. Now they were facing the imminent failure of a second project. Even liquidating her own considerable assets, they were so close to bankruptcy she could feel the chill at her back.
Drinks were stilted. Cesar was unruffled, always the elegant host. Esther forced a smile and circulated with canapés, trying to isolate Cesar, but he continued to ignore her signals.
Frustrated by Cesar’s stubborn refusal to wangle a few seconds alone with her, Esther deliberately spilled wine on his sleeve. Seconds later, in the privacy of a downstairs powder room, she grabbed a bunch of tissues and sponged the wine. “Do you have any idea who Vitali is?”
“Lopez’s accountant.”
Jaw tight, she filled him in on Vitali’s real name and history. Cesar went pale, but something about his expression was just a little too wooden. “Please don’t tell me you knew that already.”
His gaze flashed. “Of course I didn’t. I didn’t pay him much attention—he’s Lopez’s accountant. I’ve met him briefly, maybe twice.”
She tossed the tissues in the trash can. “After tonight, cut ties. Don’t get involved with any of them, including Lopez.”
Cesar’s expression was evasive. “There’s a problem. Remember the Pembroke Project?”
How could she forget? It was the second of their major property developments that was threatening to pancake. If that went down, they would go with it.
“Lopez wants in on the deal.”
“Does he know about Ellis Street?”
“He knows. Now do you understand my position? I can make Lopez get rid of Perez, but not right now.”
Not if there was a chance of salvaging Pembroke. Unpalatable as it was, Esther had to back down. If either she or Cesar made an issue of Perez now, Lopez might pull out of the project altogether. Esther didn’t like the idea of partnership with Lopez—the man was a snake—but in this instance Cesar was right. They were fighting for survival.
Dinner proceeded at an agonizingly slow pace. Carmita was harried because not one, but two of the kitchen hands she had employed for the night hadn’t turned up. Esther, unable to stomach small talk, helped Carmita serve and clear.
As she moved smoothly from table to kitchen, serving first an appetizer then the soup, she kept a weather eye on Rina, who had taken one look at the three visitors and retreated like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. Her baby might be quiet and a little dreamy, but the girl had instincts.
For the past half hour Rina had eaten what was placed in front of her and answered when spoken to. Other than the usual pleasantries, no one had paid her any attention, for which Esther was relieved. She didn’t like the ability Rina had to shut herself off at will, but at the same time, she didn’t want any of their guests to find anything at all interesting about her child—especially not Perez.
Every time she looked at his dark, narrow face, she thought about the dead children and her stomach turned. Accountant he might be, but he had been in Los Mendez when almost an entire village had been gunned down, allegedly on Chavez’s orders. The only survivors had been villagers who had been able to escape into the jungle. Horror-stricken by the attack, they had provided eyewitness reports, but, despite that testimony, Chavez hadn’t been indicted. Perez and a number of other members of the cartel had disappeared, escaping certain jail terms, but Chavez had remained in Colombia. According to a Reuters report, his influence within the government and more important, the military, had made him untouchable.
After the formality of the dining room, the kitchen was alive with heat and sound. Steam erupted from a pot as a lid was lifted and dishes clattered as bowls of vegetables and salads were loaded onto
