Prologue
There was completesilence in the room. It was not a large room, more of asalonprivé, and it was dominated by the baize-covered table around which the players were sitting. For a moment, the scene held like a living tableau. The croupier sat in his position, quite motionless, face professionally blank. Players holding their cards with piles of chips and rolls of cash of assorted sizes in front of them. And sitting in the centre of the table was a loose heap of chips and cash, reaching sky-high denominations, along with a hand written note.
The only two players with hands still being played stared at each other across the table. One of the players held his cards in a grip so tight that his nails had left indentations in them. The tension in him was reflected vividly in his reddened, puffy cheeks, the venomous stare in his pouched eyes and the press of his fleshy lips.
The other player was leaning back in his gilt chair, holding his cards with nothing showing in his face. He might have been a stone statue carved by a master sculptor who had delineated the hard planes of his high cheekbones, the blade of his nose, the compressed line of his mouth and the chiselled line of his jaw, shadowing now once more at this late hour. Only his eyes could not have been captured by the sculptor. Half-lidded, very slightly narrowed and dark as night. And with no emotion showing in them. Nothing at all.
‘Messieurs?’
The neutral prompt by the croupier made the tenser of the players clench his cards tightly with a jerk. His expression changed. He saw the chance to make a greedy, triumphant thrust at his opponent. He put down his hand.
A subliminal collective murmuration came from the other players present and, as one, their eyes turned to the other player. For a microsecond, even a microsecond of a microsecond, he still did not move. The look of greedy triumph in the other man’s face intensified. Behind the triumph was another expression—relief. Sweat visibly beaded on his brow. A pulse throbbed at his neck.
Then his opponent, with a movement so slight he might only have been flicking a speck of dust from the table, laid down his hand. There was still nothing in his eyes. Nothing at all.
An audible gasp sounded from those watching and an audible murmur of disbelief came from one.
‘The Wolf wins—again.’
Chapter One
Earlier that day
Arielle stood fromwhere she had been crouched deadheading the vivid, vermillion geraniums. They grew in terracotta pots lining the low wall that separated the wide paved terrace in front of the house from the garden beyond. The garden itself was rich with Provençal beauty, from the glossy dark leaves of the oleanders and olive trees framing the space, to the citrus, peach and mulberry trees behind. Arielle’s gaze swept over the vista. A garden bathed in the warm, late afternoon sunshine. So familiar. So loved. And so soon to be lost.
How will I bear it?
The thought made her heart clench but she crushed it down.
All I can do is make the very most, while I can, of my beloved home.
Before it was sold.
Because sold it would be. Her stepbrother, Gerald, would see to it. So would his mother—Arielle’s stepmother. Arielle’s eyes darkened. A woman more different from her own unworldly, gentle mother, her father’s first wife, was impossible to imagine. Naomi was as hard as nails and avaricious to the core. Her one soft spot was for her detestable son, Gerald. She doted on him, indulged him, funded him. Not with her own money of course, but with her husbands’.Husbands, pluralArielle thought bitterly.
Naomi’s third husband had been Arielle’s father, Charles Frobisher.
He had made his money in property—making him wealthy enough to tempt Naomi Maitland to get her claws into him when he’d been widowed. When he’d shockingly succumbed to a heart attack eighteen months previously, Arielle had discovered that in his new will he’d left everything he’d possessed to Naomi. His daughter had inherited nothing.
The clenching of her heart was like a vice now as Arielle’s eyes swept round, up from the garden and over to the house behind it. The beautiful, honey-coloured old stone Provençal farmhouse, with its tiled roof and its wooden-shuttered windows. The house she loved, so, so much. TheMas Delfine.
It had been her mother’s house, inherited down the generations, but had become the property of Arielle’s stepmother. Bestowed upon Naomi by Arielle’s own father.
How could he do it to me? How?
Unlike the close relationship she’d had with her mother, Arielle had never been as close to her father, focussed as he was on amassing the wealth he’d made in property. But she had been his only child and he’d been casually affectionate towards her. She’d always understood that themasshe’d loved so much, where she had spent the summer holidays with her mother from boarding school in England, would one day come to her, passing down the female line.
But when her mother had died, so tragically three years ago, she’d discovered that themaswas actually her father’s property. Even then, she had assumed that her father would leave it to her, his daughter. But it had gone to Naomi, along with the rest of his estate. Naomi had then promptly bestowed the house upon the son she doted on. Whereupon Gerald had spitefully informed Arielle that he would sell it as soon as he could find a buyer who would pay the price he wanted for it and there would be nothing, absolutely nothing, she could do about it.
But until that happened…
Until then I will stay here, with my memories, and make the most of this time. My last summer—
Anguish made her heart clench again.
Lycos Dimistrios strolled out of the casino. A mix of satisfaction and contempt filled him. It was a familiar combination. One that had been known to him since he had first embarked upon his ascent from poverty to the world he now lived in—the world of the rich. He glanced over the scene in front of him. The seafront promenade here on the French Riviera overlooked a marina that was filled with luxury yachts, all glittering with lights and throbbing with the sounds from the onboard parties still going at this hour, gone midnight.
As Lycos waited for his valet-parked car to arrive he was conscious of the folded piece of paper in the inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket. It might have been an unusual win, but a notary would find it all in order. Lycos had made sure of that.
