‘I prefer to think of it as compensation.’
Her eyes dropped to the folder and he felt his heart skip a beat. Was she really going to sign it? His stomach clenched. For some reason he didn’t understand he felt more disappointed than triumphant.
‘That’s a lot of zeros for one little boy and my compliance.’
She lifted her chin, her gaze turned hard, and the air between them seemed to thicken.
‘But you know what? I happen to think you can’t put a price on the privilege of raising a child. And, frankly, I’d rather keep my pride than have your “compensation” polluting my life.’
She was staring at him as if he was something she wanted to scrape off her shoe.
He felt his muscles twitch. Seriously? She was trying to take the moral high ground, here?
‘Very noble. Ver
y profound,’ he said softly. ‘And yet how easily you forgot the “privilege” of raising Archie when you called that adoption agency.’
The colour left her face and the fire faded in her eyes. ‘Th-that’s confidential,’ she stammered.
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not relevant.’
Reaching across the table, he picked up the document and held it out, and after a few seconds she took it. His muscles tightened, and he was surprised at the second stab of disappointment. He hadn’t expected her to capitulate so easily.
There was a beat of silence and then she raised her head slowly, her chin jutting forward.
‘Actually, I’ll tell you what’s relevant.’ She paused. ‘No, make that critical. And that is that no child—particularly my nephew—should be raised by someone like you. Someone who not only has an armoury of dirty tricks at his disposal but is more than willing to use them.’
Standing up, she crumpled the document and dropped it on the table.
‘Keep your money, Mr Law. You’re going to need it for when we go to court.’
Stepping neatly past him, she walked across the room and out of the door before he had time to stand.
CHAPTER TWO
LEANING FORWARD, CHARLIE picked up the small ox bone tile from the table, his fingers tightening around the curved edges.
Back in Macau, he played mah-jong most days, but whenever he was away from home it was hard to find a good enough opponent. Sometimes he grabbed a quick game with one of his off-duty security detail, and sometimes he resorted to playing it on his phone.
Mostly, though, it was enough simply to lay out the tiles. But this morning it wasn’t having the same calming effect as usual.
Gritting his teeth, he stood up and walked slowly towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran three sides of his penthouse duplex. His dark eyes tracked the progress of a barge along the Thames as inside his head he tried to make sense of his current unsettled mood.
As a rule, his life ran like clockwork. A very expensive and accurate clock.
He was an early riser. A session with his personal trainer started his day, followed by a shower and then breakfast. Occasionally he drove himself to work in his discreet black Bentley Mulsanne. But mostly a chauffeur-driven car was waiting to take him to the Golden Rod.
His father’s huge casino hotel was the equivalent of Mayfair on the Monopoly board of Macau’s Cotai Strip. As well as round-the-clock gaming, guests could shop, swim, work out or just enjoy Michelin-starred dining.
Its sister hotel, the Black Tiger, was a more recent development. Smaller, and set away from the over-the-top glamour of the strip, it was pitched at the high rollers—the serious players who didn’t bother turning up unless the pot was worth a string of zeros.
The Black Tiger had been his own brainchild, and seeing it succeed was immensely satisfying. What mattered more was that its success had earned him the rarest prize of all—praise from his father.
Charlie worked hard seven days a week, dealing with all the behind-the-scenes details that kept a hotel and casino empire operating smoothly. But whatever happened during the day, he went back home for seven hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Yesterday had been different.
He had spent the day in meetings, and for perhaps the first time ever he had found it hard to focus. His mind had kept drifting from the task in hand back to that moment when Dora had stared at him, her eyes dark like storm clouds.