Double Vision Read Free Page A

Idly, she wondered if he was gay, then dismissed the notion. She had no doubt women had a place in his life, but, like everything else, sex would be coldly controlled and only on his terms.
    As she greeted the second man, Dennison, the annoying sense of recognition lingered. She had seen Lopez before. She couldn’t put her finger on where or when, but it would come to her.
    The third guest was a different matter. As she extended her hand in greeting, a newspaper article popped into her mind. The photographs had been grainy black and whites, the incident, just over twelve years ago, horrific. The article had been part of her research into a client attempting to move an extraordinarily large sum of money.
    Esther’s breath stopped in her throat, every cell in her body on high alert. She couldn’t place Alex Lopez, but she had no problem placing his accountant.
    The handclasp was brief, but even so her stomach turned, and for a moment she wondered if she was going to throw up. She remembered the village in Colombia—Los Mendez. Families casually machine-gunned; a baby left crying in the mud.
    The accountant might call himself Mike Vitali, but his real name was Miguel Perez, one of a coterie of men surrounding Colombian drug lord and all-round cold-blooded murderer, Marco Chavez. It had been Chavez who had been attempting to move the funds. They had turned him down. An investigation by Interpol wasn’t the best credential in the international banking community.
    Cesar threw her an annoyed glance. “Are you all right?”
    â€œFine.” Esther forced a smile. Touching Perez had been like dipping her hand into a sewer. She needed to wash, and she needed to get him—all of them—out of her house. But she couldn’t afford the simple luxury of ejecting them; she would have to tread carefully. Perez was a butcher. If he suspected that she knew who he was, she would place them all in jeopardy. “I just felt dizzy for a second.”
    She sent Cesar a hard stare, indicating she needed to talk with him now, in private.
    His brows shot up as he misinterpreted her expression, and for a moment the distance that had grown between them over the past few months dissolved and she caught a glimpse of the “old” Cesar, the arrogant financial wizard who had swept her off her feet. The only time in her life she had been dizzy had been when she was pregnant, but they were both well aware it couldn’t be that. Lately, they had been either too preoccupied or too busy for even casual conversation, let alone sex.
    They had problems. Big problems. Over the past year almost everything they had touched had fallen through. Their net worth had more than halved. In the past two months their position had worsened, unbelievably, to the point that they now faced losing everything. Esther had abandoned her own projects and had been working overtime, researching the labyrinthine twists and turns of the contracts Cesar had signed in an effort to stave off a massive loss on a development that had collapsed when a major investor had withdrawn. Cesar had gambled heavily on the failed Ellis Street project—they both had, throwing all of their resources behind the mall complex in a bid to recoup their losses. He should have succeeded; she had checked the deal herself. Incredibly, he had lost. Now they were facing the imminent failure of a second project. Even liquidating her own considerable assets, they were so close to bankruptcy she could feel the chill at her back.
    Drinks were stilted. Cesar was unruffled, always the elegant host. Esther forced a smile and circulated with canapés, trying to isolate Cesar, but he continued to ignore her signals.
    Frustrated by Cesar’s stubborn refusal to wangle a few seconds alone with her, Esther deliberately spilled wine on his sleeve. Seconds later, in the privacy of a downstairs powder room, she grabbed a bunch of tissues and sponged the wine. “Do you have