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He studied her. It had never crossed his mind that she might be, but now, looking at her, he wondered. When he’d held her in his arms he’d thought her wand-slim—was her slenderness the shedding of flesh that drugs could cause? Just as they could cause penury and desperation—enough to make her risk working as an escort?
Did she tell me she was paying off credit-card debts, or was that just my assumption? Was she really paying for drugs?
The shake of her head was infinitesimal, but it was there all the same, and Nikos found relief snaking through him. Then incomprehension took over again. So why was she living like this?
‘Does your father know this is where you live?’
The question seemed to send a jolt through her, and emotion jagged in her eyes for a second. There was another imperceptible shake of her head. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were bandaging her body. As if she were wounded.
Something was wrong, Nikos knew, with foreboding. Very wrong.
‘Why haven’t you told your father, Sophie?’ His voice was low. ‘He couldn’t possibly want you to live here! He would help you get on your feet—you know he would! Maybe you feel you should be independent at your age, not rely on him financially, but—’
A sound broke from her. It might have been a laugh, but Nikos knew it was not. She looked at him. Straight at him.
‘He hasn’t got any money,’ she said. Her arms seemed to tighten around her, and the wildness in her eyes intensified. She was under huge emotional stress, Nikos could see, and he knew he had to tread very, very carefully or she would break into pieces.
He looked at her. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said carefully.
This time she did laugh. But it was hollow and wild. ‘Don’t you? Tell me, Nikos, you who operate up in the financial stratosphere, does your fiscal expertise go downmarket at all? Do you, running a company the size of Kazandros, ever come across any slang jargon in the financial field? Does the term “boiler room” mean anything to you?’ Her voice was cruel, and vicious. But again it was not him she was aiming at.
He stilled. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Boiler room—slang for financial operations so fraudulent the financial authorities were forever struggling to combat them. Like fetid mushrooms, as soon as one was closed down another sprang up to take its place. Shady in the extreme, and highly, obscenely profitable for those who ran them. Always hungry for more and yet more investors, persuading them by slick, sophisticated marketing to invest in worthless bogus shares and then, when the promised returns did not materialise, persuading them to invest more and yet more to recoup their original investment, to get to the magic pot of gold at the end of the shoddy rainbow.
Until they had no more money left to invest. Until they had been bled dry. And then the scam merchants moved on to the next victim.
Nikos’s brows drew together in puzzlement. Surely Edward Granton, a long-term, big-league corporate player, would have recognised a boiler-room scam? Known not to go near it? So how the hell had he got trapped in its fraudulent coils?
He pushed the question aside. Right now it wasn’t important. Right now only one thing was important. His gaze swept condemningly around the dingy bedsit. Revulsion rose in him. He took her elbow.
‘We’re getting out of here,’ he said.
Her eyes flared suddenly, and then, like a shadow falling, they went blank again.
‘You go, Nikos,’ she said, in that low, dead voice.
He gave a brief, rasping laugh. ‘There is no way on earth, Sophie, that I am leaving you in this dump. Get your things—we’re going.’ He glanced around again at the bare room. ‘There can’t be much here, and anyway—’ his voice tightened ‘—I have the things you left at Belledon.’
‘I…I’ll come and collect them,’ she said falteringly.
‘They’re only fit for the trash,’ he riposted.
‘They’re all I’ve got. Please.’ Her voice sounded anxious. ‘Please let me collect them—don’t throw them away. I need them. And,’ she went on, forcing herself, ‘I’m fine here—honestly. I’m used to it.’
She took another razoring breath. She needed him to go. Just go. She was starting to break, and she mustn’t break in front of him—she just mustn’t. The stark shock of his approach on the street was wearing off, leaving in its place only an urgency to get rid of him. She had to get rid of him. She had to. It had taken all the strength she possessed to leave him that fateful morning, to force herself to walk away, down the long, long road back to the bleak, hopeless life to which she was condemned and from which there could be no escape.
