AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I HAVE A pole up my arse? Me? How dare he? As if I should be nice to him. As if I want him to be nice to me.
I’ve silently fumed my way through the main course, refusing to speak or even look at Clark. Now he’s leaving the table looking completely fed up, and I kind of feel bad for him, moronically.
I watch him go, wondering if I should follow him and apologise. Knowing I shouldn’t. When I turn back to the table, Caspar Kahn’s attention is focussed on me, the ghost of a dark smile around his thin lips.
Caspar’s presence at the table was enough to knock me off kilter. I delivered my speech with a weakness I hadn’t had in my voice when I’d rehearsed. But I stood up to him. I stood up to them all. I didn’t show how he affects me, how he makes me feel like I’m drowning in my own blood, how my neck feels like it’s constricting under the force of a rope when I’m near him. I stood up for myself, knowing he wouldn’t like it.
Now the conceited prick looks satisfied and smug.
I refuse to shift my line of sight as I take my linen napkin from my lap and dab the corner against my lips. He’s staring me out, and I won’t back down, despite the sense of unease that’s rapidly returning to my throat and chest.
But it’s too much. This whole goddamned night is too much. I cast my napkin on my dessert plate and leave, not bothering to excuse myself.
I head back towards the hotel entrance and turn down the short corridor leading to the cloakroom. It’s early; dinner hasn’t actually finished, we still have coffee and petit fours to come. Unfortunately, that means the cloakroom is unmanned. “For God’s sake,” I mutter into the empty space.
“Oh dear.”
I still at the sound of Caspar’s voice. My bones suddenly feel brittle and frozen like ice. Outwardly ignoring Caspar, I bang on the wooden hatch doors of the cloakroom.
“There’s no one here, Little Princess.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep my cool, and shift to face him. “Do not call me that,” I say through gritted teeth, my trembling hands behind my back.
He saunters towards me. I cast a quick look in both directions down the corridor. We’re alone.
“Dayna Cross, the Subsea failure, or is it saviour? I forget your English sayings.”
“So kind of you to walk me out, Kahn, but next time don’t bother.”
I will my diaphragm to calm as he steps towards me and braces one hand on the wall by my head. I flinch when his fingertips brush my bicep. “Oh, pretty lady, I didn’t escort you. I came to tell you something you need to hear, that’s all.”
His fingers continue to roam. I slap his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”
To my surprise, he steps back, holding up his palms. I take a subtle breath that doesn’t show how relieved I feel. “I won’t touch you, Miss Cross, but hear this… I do not take kindly to competitors in my space. The Persian Gulf is mine.” He leans in too close to my face. His hot breath reeks of garlic and hard liquor. “I’ve proven once that I will do what is necessary to beat my competition. I’ll do it again.”
I know the role he played in the sabotage of Little Princess, but his admission still strikes like a crowbar swinging at full pelt into my abdomen. He killed those people. He ultimately killed my father. Hatred burns through my arteries, my veins, my capillaries. It spreads to each cell in my body and sets them all alight. I straighten my back and search his soulless black pits. “If I ever find the proof I need to put you where you belong, you best believe I’ll use it.”
He throws his head back on an exaggerated laugh, his skin pulled taut across his sinews. In this moment, if I had a knife, I think I’d take pleasure in piercing his flesh. Drawing the blade slowly through his muscles and his carotid vessels. Cutting the supply of blood to his brain. Watching him die slowly, the way my father must have died. In those final seconds, I’d smile and tell him I avenged the death of the men and women who died on Little Princess, their families who’ll never see them again, and my father.
Caspar nods slowly and rubs his clean-shaven chin, dragging my thoughts from dark shadows. “I suggest you stay away from that well, Miss Cross. Or you’ll be sorry you ever stepped onto my radar.”
My heart is pounding so fiercely it could break my ribs, but I take a strong breath in and feel my nostrils flare. “Your threats are empty, Kahn. The only thing you’re succeeding in doing is making damn sure I put in a winning bid. And if you come after me, or my company, it won’t be corporate sabotage you have to worry about.”
“We’ll see about that, Cross.”
“I guess we will.”
The latch door rattles like someone is unbolting it from the inside. I step back from the wall as the hatches open.
Caspar slips away as if I’d imagined the whole scene. But my hands are shaking as I take my token from my bag and hand it to the attendant, accepting his apologies for being on a short break. I pull on my coat, barely able to process directions from my brain to my nerve endings. With weak legs, I make my way out of the hotel via a terrace, because I know it’s the shortest route to the carpark, and I just don’t think my fingers can navigate my iPhone to call my driver to meet me at the front entrance.
I make it outside and try to fill my lungs with fresh air, but all I smell is smoke. Cigars. Cigarettes. My eyes begin to sting as fear takes over my thoughts. Pausing, I concentrate on breathing. It’s over, I tell myself.
I eventually open my eyes. And there’s Clark, with Finnoula O’Hara’s fingers pressed to his chest. His hands are wrapped around hers.
I have no idea why the sight of Clark and one of his many conquests makes the pain in my chest worse. Clark catches me in his line of vision. I just need to get out of here. I make a swift move to the stone steps leading off the terrace and down to the carpark.
“Dayna!”
