‘Fuck,’ muttered Jim under his breath.
‘What do you want us to do, Jim? Carry on paying?’
‘No,’ he replied passionately. ‘The hotel will never be owned by us, not really, if we don’t face them down.’
‘And who’s going to do that?’
Jim could tell that Gregor was rattled.
‘I will,’ he said without even thinking about it.
‘So you’re going to come over?’ asked Gregor with a note of relief.
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘Though first I need to go and speak to someone. Find out what he knows.’
‘Who?’ replied his Caribbean colleague.
‘The man who stitched us up over this bloody acquisition,’ said Jim, not even caring that he was talking out of turn. ‘The man who sold us RedReef. Connor Gilbert.’
I’m going to strangle him, then I’m going to sue him – in that order, thought Jim, pushing the car faster now he was turning away from the Montauk Highway and on to the tangle of exclusive roads.
He couldn’t remember being so angry in a long time. He was angry with Connor Gilbert – furious – but most of all he was angry with himself. Of course he’d listened to Simon’s warnings not to be sentimental about the RedReef deal, but he hadn’t really paid attention
and had pushed the deal through without the right due diligence. Yes, they’d examined the profit-and-loss account and researched the potential of the resort comparative to other hotels in the area, but they hadn’t done their homework where it counted. Hadn’t spoken to enough people on the ground, hadn’t listened to the warning bells: the mutterings among the staff about problems with supply chains; hell, even the boy on the beach who’d talked about taxes.
Jim hadn’t got to where he was in the company without being hard-headed, but he’d let his feelings for Jennifer and his desire to help her cloud his judgement, and now he was paying the price. RedReef would never be profitable while it was still in the clutches of a mob gang. And if RedReef failed, it might take his career prospects with it. He’d worked too hard, sacrificed too much – any life outside the office, relationship, friends, hobbies – to have it all fall down now.
But even though he knew he was culpable for the whole mess, Jim couldn’t help but feel that he had been royally stitched up by Connor Gilbert. Connor was no fool. He’d have known what was going on, why the hotel was running at a loss, and had used the oldest psychological business game in the book, pretending that RedReef was the one asset he wanted to keep hold of, that he was getting rid of it because he absolutely had to.
Once Jim had been tipped off by Gregor about what was going on, he’d done some investigations of his own, and discovered that local ‘businessman’ Marshall Roberts controlled everything in Baruda, and demanded a vast protection fee to allow anything in or out of the complex. Not so much as a bag of ice cubes would reach RedReef until they coughed up the cash.
Baruda was governed by a local council, but the mayor was unable or unwilling to lift a finger against Roberts, and without the help of the authorities, the situation would not change for RedReef or the handful of other similar businesses on the island until Roberts was brought down.
Hurtling down the beach road, Jim rolled down the window of the car he had rented to get to the Hamptons, in an attempt to let the warm breeze calm him down. The mood he was in, he was half minded to commit a crime of his own – the premeditated murder of Connor Gilbert. He’d spent all morning after his conversation with Gregor Bentley trying to track the bastard down. His assistant claimed he was in meetings all day, but any requests for him to call Jim back had gone unanswered. In the end, Jim had called Jennifer. It had been an awkward conversation – the last time they had spoken was the evening at her house – but he had kept it polite, the tension between them had disappeared and she had eventually confirmed that Connor had gone to the Hamptons to meet a potential client, and would be back the following day.
Jim didn’t really know why he’d decided to drive out there to confront Connor. He guessed that he just wanted to do something to start resolving the mess. Remembering something Connor had said to him at the Memorial Day weekend – ‘sometimes I just like to play hookey and come paddleboarding’ – Jim had visions of him on top of his board, the carefree entrepreneur enjoying the fruits of his unscrupulous business, and wanted to knock him into the sea.
A business lunch he could not put off, and collecting the hire car, meant that it was late afternoon by the time he reached Beach Lane. The sun was beginning to dip in the sky, but it was still hot. Jim had no idea where Connor was meeting his business associate, but he figured that if he was returning to the city the next day, he would be staying the night at the beach house.
He pulled up outside the enormous gates that fronted the house and pressed the intercom. There was no response, but he recognised Connor’s Ferrari sitting in the drive. He tried Connor’s mobile again, but still there was nothing.
Cursing under his breath, he looked around for a place to park. His hire car didn’t have the requisite permits to stop near the beach, but he was going to have to take his chances with the police. He hadn’t driven all this way to turn back now.
He parked the car in the shadow of a sand dune and walked the fifty yards to the entrance to the beach. He kicked off his shoes and socks and stalked across the hot sand, his vision fixed towards the sea, looking for a paddleboarder, but there was no one in the water except a couple of teenagers playing by the shore.
He turned round and looked at the proud line of beach houses that lined the edge of the sand.
‘Sod it,’ he muttered, walking towards the picket fence that separated the grounds of the Wyatt-Gilbert house from the beach. Even from this distance he could see that the glass doors were open, which meant that someone was at home. If Connor wasn’t going to let him in through the front door, he was going to have to go to Plan B.
As he stalked towards the house, the thought did occur to him that he was more likely to be arrested for trespassing than being able to resolve the RedReef mess. Part of him wondered if he should just call Simon and come clean about what was going on. Simon was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Money meant power, power meant influence; perhaps he could exert some pressure on the mayor to shut Marshall Roberts’ operation down. A promise to fund an international airport on Baruda would certainly do it.
But deep down Jim knew that he had to sort this mess out on his own. Besides which, if Simon got to hear about the situation, Jim was more likely to get fired than bag a promotion, which was what had brought him to New York in the first place.
Who are you kidding? he told himself. He’d come to New York to be closer to Jennifer. The one woman he had loved unceasingly for twenty years.
What had he thought would happen once he got here? That Jennifer would fall madly back in love with him – though he doubted she’d had any genuine feelings for him in the first place – that she would divorce Connor and fall into Jim’s arms? No. Jim had been living in New York for six months now – had this woman shown the slightest interest in him? Had she given him any sign that she was ready to be swept off her feet by some ex-lover? No, she hadn’t. In fact she had set Jim up with one of her friends, and had dispatched him from their one intimate night out with the words, ‘My husband will be home soon’.
It was time to grow up, he thought, putting his shoes and socks back on, not wanting to meet Connor looking like a surfer.