Temptation Island

Diego stared down his own weapon. ‘You don’t know who I am,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

The gun didn’t waver.

Lori saw Diego hesitate, a ripple of fear behind his eyes.

‘Take your men away from here,’ the stranger said, in an accent she could not place. ‘And don’t ever come back. If you come back, you will disappear. Nobody will know what happened to you. Your wives will not know. Your friends will not know. Your brothers will not know. Your children will not know. Your lovers will wait for you in a cold room in a cold bed but you will never come. Do not doubt this will happen. If you come here again, it will happen to every last one of you.’

And in a rush that felt like flying, the stranger had taken her hand, she was with him, next to him, and they were moving, out of the door and into the blazing sun. She saw his car, a gleaming, purring Mercedes, black and silver, opened to an interior of plush, heavy-scented leather, a secret world. She hadn’t time to question her actions. They were inside, the door slammed shut; he was pushing a button and giving instructions to someone up front, concealed behind a screen of dark glass, to drive. He turned to her, eyes so blue, so blue.

‘I won’t let you go until I know it is over. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe with me.’

She found her voice, only it sounded like someone else’s. ‘Do I know you?’

‘No.’

The car was moving at speed. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am no one.’

Lori wanted to touch him. She wanted to touch him in a way she had never before encountered—raw, necessary, primal. The stranger was facing away, his profile still, his mouth set in a line of grim determination, as though he were trying to resist unseen temptation.

And then, she didn’t know how it happened, they were kissing each other, their bodies apart one second and together the next. His lips, his tongue, that scar she had noticed that felt, beneath her mouth, like danger. The smell of leather and the smell of him: his neck, his skin, the softness of his mouth and eyelashes. His hands held her face, one thumb on her chin where it was cut, the fingers behind her jaw, beneath her earlobes. She had never been kissed like that. She could kiss him for ever. She could kiss him till her mouth bled.

Not once did his hands move lower, though she ached for them to. She wanted him to touch her in all the places she had refused her boyfriend: all the emotions she was meant to feel with Rico but hadn’t, imagining something must be the matter with her. His fingers reached round and pressed the very top of her spine, his touch so deft, electricity, the heat of his body and the soft insistency of his mouth, and she felt the blood rush like fever, trembling, to between her legs. For the first time in her life, Lori experienced desire. Prolonged, exquisite, concentrated desire that entered her like a knife and twisted her heart, sliding its smooth blade down her stomach, opening her up to that place whose existence she had always denied.

The car stopped. The man pulled away, his expression closed, but angry, like an argument happening behind a shut door.

The only sound was their breathing, painfully intimate in the silence.

Lori sensed the certainty of their parting and grasped for more, abandoning restraint because that was what he had done to her.

‘I have to find a way to thank you—’

Sunlight flooded in, hurting her eyes. They were back outside Tres Hermanas. His driver stood on the sidewalk.

The man took her hand. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her, in that soft, strange accent. ‘I’ll make sure of it. I always will.’

Lori was helped on to the street, the light blinding: a new world. She was shaking.

His arm reached to close the door.

‘Wait! Will I see you again? What’s your name? You have to tell me. I have to know.’

The man lifted his mouth slightly, the corners, not much, like a cat that wakes from a deep sleep and raises his head once to look around before settling again. It wasn’t a smile. It didn’t come close to the eyes, whose look of benevolence had hardened like a frozen lake.

‘It does not matter who I am.’

And with a last, lingering stare, as quick as he’d come, he was gone.

14

Present Day

Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean

Four hours to departure

Reuben van der Meyde was a self-made industrial entrepreneur with tens of billions in the bank. He had come from nothing: orphaned as a baby, he had grown up with a lukewarm, uninterested foster family in the South African city of Johannesburg. At thirteen, after being expelled from school for bad behaviour, he had started his own trade on the streets, selling stolen cut-price jewellery to travelling businessmen. One such businessman, an unhappily married tycoon who had recently lost a son Reuben’s age, took him under his wing, trained him and served up a job in one of his fledgling telecommunications companies. With the Soweto sprawl in the seventies came massive investment in the suburbs—Reuben was in the thick of it and, as each year passed, his flair for business grew. Aged twenty, he launched VDM Communications. Soon he was rivalling the man who had taught him everything and, as his business swelled, so did his fortune, his reputation, and his ambition. Today, VDM was the most lucrative company in the world.

Reuben van der Meyde was not a man prepared to be taken down.

He paced the terrace, pausing occasionally to put his hands on the balustrade and glare darkly at the water. He checked his chunky silver watch, grimaced when the links caught the reddish hairs on his arms. Four hours. It wasn’t enough.

‘I’m telling you, JB, the damn thing’s got me in a sweat. I’m like a pig in shitting heat.’ He removed his cap and swiped at a persistent fly.

Jean-Baptiste Moreau loosened the knot on his tie and didn’t respond. He was facing the ocean, concentrated on calmer waters. Emerald palms rustled in the salty breeze.

‘I hope to fuck you’re coming up with a solution,’ said Reuben. ‘Because it’s not just me being threatened, boy, it’s you as well.’

JB remained where he was, on one of the high-backed wicker chairs that peppered the rugged veranda of his white-stone villa. Despite the sun, he did not perspire. His dark-blond hair was immaculate, neat at the neck, and his expression still. The only betrayal that he was deep in thought was the slight twitch to the scar across his top lip, a giveaway since he was a boy.

‘Shit!’ Reuben slammed down his fist. ‘After all the work I’ve put into this—’

‘It might not be what you think.’

‘What else could it be, hey? A fucking strip-o-gram birthday cake?’

Finally JB turned. The strength of his gaze compelled an already struggling Reuben to sit down. His eyes really were extraordinary, an untarnished blue with flecks of silver, uncannily light.

‘Nothing in that message suggests this person knows anything about what we’re trying to protect,’ JB told him. ‘Keep it together.’

Reuben laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t think I’m one of them has a certain ring to it?’ He ground his teeth. ‘I spent all night trying to look at it a different way. Bottom line is I’ve got a bad feeling. This person got into my private mail. When was the last time that happened?’ JB didn’t answer. Reuben sprang to his feet. ‘Let me tell you. Never.’

The Frenchman’s gaze slid back to the ocean. ‘You worry too much. We’re in control.’

‘It’s OK for you, isn’t it?’ Reuben blasted. ‘Swanning around Hollywood, scouting for pretty girls, while one of us is trying to run a business!’ JB didn’t react. ‘Damn! It’s my reputation on the line here, not yours.’

‘Are you insinuating I don’t have my own problems to deal with?’

Reuben caught the menace in his words. ‘It’s not my fault you’re hard up for the Spanish broad,’ he said. ‘I knew that girl was trouble from the start. Ones like her always are. Too wild for what we had in mind. Young, dumb and desperate—remember?’

‘You know nothing about her.’

Reuben grimaced. ‘I know she was meant to be a job, for Crissakes. Try tying your dick in a knot next time—it helps.’

JB stood. Instantly the shorter man, despite his wealth and power, took a step back. He’d regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. Moreau was not a man he wanted to piss off.

‘Keep your voice down,’ he said quietly. ‘Rebecca is inside. And stop cowering like a dog. Fear achieves nothing.’