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CHAPTER ONE
THERE was an old-world elegance about the walnut-panelled room that somehow scorned the idea that anyone would be tasteless enough to raise their voice in anger in here. Under normal circumstances Anton Luis Ferreira Scott-Lee certainly would not have dreamt of doing it.
But there was nothing normal about this situation, and the anger was certainly here, pulsing away in the background, even if it was safely encased in ice right now.
‘I will have to resign,’ he announced, effectively throwing the two people in the room with him into a frozen state of horror and dismay.
His mother was too young, at fifty, and much too beautiful to be a widow—but apparently not too young, after marrying at the youthful age of nineteen, to have clocked up a murky past which had now come back to haunt her.
‘But—meu querido…’ She recovered first to speak shakily. ‘You cannot possibly resign!’
‘I don’t think that I have a damn choice.’
Maria Ferreira Scott-Lee flinched, her liquid brown eyes wrenching down and away from her son’s hard expression.
‘Don’t be crazy, boy,’ Maximilian Scott-Lee thrust out impatiently. ‘This has nothing to do with the bank! Let’s try to keep some perspective here.’
Max wanted perspective? Switching his gaze from his mother to the man he had lovingly called Uncle for all of his life, Anton felt a sudden rushing urge to smash a fist into his beloved face!
No perspective there, he thought as he swung away to aim his bitter black mood at the view beyond one of the long casement windows that lined the beautifully appointed study of this, the Scott-Lees’ Belgravia home.
It was a lousy day out there. The rain, lashing down from an iron-grey sky, was battering what leaves were left clinging to the trees down onto the square below. Anton knew how those leaves felt. Two hours ago a bright, calm winter day had been shining on London and he had been attending a board meeting, supremely confident in his place as chairman of the old and prestigious Scott-Lee Bank.
Now look at him, cast adrift like those storm-battered leaves out there.
A muscle flicked at his clenched jaw, emphasising the stubborn cleft in the centre of his chin…a cleft he had not thought to question until today, just as he had not thought of questioning many things about himself that were now staring him hard in the face.
And why should he have? Born the adored only child of Brazilian beauty Maria Ferreira and wealthy English banker Sebastian Scott-Lee…or so he’d believed until today…he’d naturally taken it for granted that he’d inherited his lean dark Latin looks from his Brazilian mother and his shrewd business mind from his late and still deeply missed English father.
At first, when he had read the letter from a Brazilian called Enrique Ramirez who was claiming to be his real father, he’d thought it was some kind of sick joke. It had taken this confrontation with his mother and his uncle to have his joke theory crushed right out of him. Now he was having to come to terms with the ugly fact that not only was this Ramirez guy telling the truth, but the man he’d always believed to be his real father had known about his mother’s affair with Enrique and that Anton was not his real son! A very hush-hush adoption had secured his legal place in Sebastian Scott-Lee’s life, along with the abiding wish that Anton should never find out the truth.
‘You know as well as I do that without you the bank will collapse,’ Max pushed into the thickened silence. ‘You are the bank, Anton. If you resign people will want to know why you’ve gone. The truth will inevitably come out, because juicy stuff like this always does, and the family name will be—’
‘This truth didn’t come out,’ Anton said harshly.
‘Because my brother was careful to make sure that it didn’t,’ the older man said. ‘Who the hell expected Ramirez to come along with his kiss-and-tell last will and testament?’
Kiss and tell, Anton echoed silently, hot, spitting bitterness rolling around inside him and spinning him about.
‘Did it never occur to you that I had a right to know?’ he fired directly at his mother.
Maria tensed, slender fingers mangling the handkerchief she held on her lap. ‘Your father did not want—’
‘Enrique bloody Ramirez is my father!’ Anton thundered with explosive force.
The words bounced around the room like the aftershock from an earthquake.
‘No.’ Maria quivered as she shook her head. ‘Enrique w-was a terrible mistake in my life, Anton! You did not need—’
‘—to know that I’ve been living a lie for all of my thirty-one years?’
Maria subsided, lifting the handkerchief up to cover her trembling mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
