The Debt. Jackie Ashenden

       CHAPTER ONE

       Ellie

      I WIPED MY palms surreptitiously down my black trousers and adjusted my black suit jacket, briefly touching my head to make sure the chauffeur’s cap was in place. Mentally, I went over the address the chauffeur company had given me: The Gustave Eiffel Suite of the Shangri-La, Paris.

      Yep. I was in the right place.

      I took a deep breath.

      Okay, here went nothing.

      It had taken me a month of careful planning to get to this point—including relocating from Australia to England—but now I was here I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip through my fingers.

      I had two days to convince one of the UK’s most difficult billionaires to give my father more time before withdrawing the venture capital his firm had invested in our family’s company. It was capital we desperately needed in order to stay solvent. And it was not going to be easy.

      Ash Evans, billionaire property developer, investor and slave driver, was as famous for his ruthlessness as he was for his temper, not to mention his unapologetic pride in the fact that he came from a poor background.

      He was also notorious for never forgiving a debt.

      Still, I liked a challenge and, apart from anything else, this was for Dad’s sake and for Australis, our super car company, and that was more important than any qualms I had about confronting some self-important rich guy.

      Not that I had qualms. I was a Little, and Littles were tough. We could get through anything. The key was to put your head down, not make a fuss, and keep going.

      Keeping my fuss-making to a minimum, I gave my jacket another tweak then raised my hand and knocked sharply on the suite door.

      There was no response.

      There was also no one around, which was unusual.

      I’d been driving for the rich and famous for a couple of years now—a second job to supplement my position as a designer at Australis because I liked driving—and I knew they tended to be always surrounded by people. Assistants, bodyguards and all kinds of hangers-on.

      Apparently not Mr Evans.

      But then, given what I knew about him from the research I’d done, that wasn’t completely unexpected.

      He was a self-made man who’d grown up in one of London’s most notorious council estates and who’d risen to the top through a combination of ruthlessness, hard-headed business sense and a fight-to-the-death attitude that people whispered had come from his days as a street fighter.

      A scary dude by all accounts.

      Took a lot to scare me, though—I had four brothers

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