One
Beck
“Kevin Bacon is full of shit,” I said as I thwacked the small, black rubber ball with my racket.
Dexter lurched away as the ball ricocheted toward his bollocks. “What did he ever do to you?”
“The six degrees of separation thing—it’s bullshit.”
“What?” Dexter asked, panting. I was kicking his arse, and I knew that had to hurt his delicate ego. No doubt he’d chalk up his losing to that skiing injury he still complained about. As far as I was concerned anyone who skied deserved every injury they got—hurtling downhill with metal flippers on your feet could end only one way.
“You know, the idea that everyone on the planet is just six people removed. So, a friend of a friend of—”
“You can’t blame that on Kevin Bacon. It’s not like he invented it,” Dexter said before serving.
“Okay then, if you’re going to be pedantic, Frigyes Karinthy is full of shit.”
“I can’t tell if you’re swearing at me or speaking Ukrainian.”
“Hungarian,” I replied, wiping my forehead with my sleeve. I measured exercise not on calories burned or time spent in the gym but on the amount I sweated. Someone needed to develop a machine to measure perspiration—I’d pay good money for it. As far as I was concerned it was effort that always earned the best results. “He developed the bullshit theory. I looked it up on Wikipedia.”
“Fuck,” he spat as the ball hit the plaster below the red line, giving me the victory I’d expected since we got onto the court. Dexter only lost at squash when he had business trouble, so I wasn’t going to crow about my win.
“Yeah, I get it. What’s the problem?”
I bent and scooped up the out-of-play ball as it trickled toward me. “The theory is flawed. I have dredged every single one of my contacts and I can’t get an introduction to Henry Dawnay.”
“You’re still trying to get a meeting with that old billionaire?” Dexter grinned, as if my failure in business was going to make up for his shitty performance on the squash court. “You might have to give it up.”
“Henry Dawnay is not just some old billionaire. He’s the old billionaire standing between me and nine-point-four million quid. And I’m not about to give up on that kind of money. I’ve plowed every contact I have and come up empty. I thought one of you lot would have some kind of connection to him. What’s the point in having rich, successful friends if they’re no use to me?”
“Us lot? You mean your five closest friends who’d walk through fire for you?”
He knew I was joking as sure as I knew United were going to win the league. The fact that the guys I’d forged bonds with as a teenager were rich and successful was simply circumstance. Their jobs weren’t important. They were the best men I knew outside my own dad. And I’d walk through fire for them just as I knew they would for me. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t complain about the fact that none of them had been able to score me a meeting with Henry Dawnay, even if it did make me sound like the moody git Dexter always accused me of being.
I rolled my eyes and nodded toward the changing rooms. I needed a shower and then I needed a plan. “I don’t need anyone to walk through fire for me. I need someone to introduce me to the man who owns the property standing between me and ten million quid.”
“You said nine point four.”
“Have I told you how annoying you are?”
“A couple of times,” Dexter said, pushing through the door to the changing room. “Look, if you can’t get an intro from someone you know, why don’t you track him down, bump into him, and introduce yourself.”
I fixed him with a thanks-for-the-advice-mum look. “I did. Last month in the lobby of the Dorchester. He shook my hand and swooped right out without stopping to get my name.”
Dexter winced, and he was right to. It’d been embarrassing. I’d felt like a nine-year-old boy meeting Cristiano Ronaldo.
I opened my locker door and pulled out my phone to check my messages. Two more missed calls from Danielle. Shit. Another thing I had to deal with. “I’ve managed to get access to his calendar so—”
“How the hell have you managed that?”
“Don’t ask. You need plausible deniability so you don’t end up in prison.” From what I understood, I’d broken several British laws and a couple of international ones by getting that information. I hoped it was worth it.
“Well, I hope you and Joshua end up in jail.”
I ignored his assumption that another member of our brothers-in-arms, Joshua, was involved. It was an obvious assumption—Joshua liked to hack into government agencies to unwind. The rest of us played squash. “I’m well connected—some would say powerful in real estate circles. I’ve got money and resources. For Christ’s sake, I know the brand of loo paper this guy uses. But apparently, it’s not enough to get a meeting.” Things would be very different if my birth certificate had carried my biological father’s name.
“You need to calm down and figure it the fuck out.”
“Great advice,” I mumbled as I scrolled through my emails. One was from Joshua with Henry’s itinerary and schedule for the next couple of months. I slumped onto the bench and opened the attachment, hoping to find he’d finally arranged a lunch or a meeting with someone I knew.
But no. Nothing. Although there was an entire week blocked out. Perhaps he was going on holiday?
“This is the guy who you want to buy the building in Mayfair from, right?”
“Yeah, I own every other piece of property in the row except that one—the most run-down of the lot of them, and he’s done nothing with it. It’s standing empty a
nd prime for redevelopment. It’s prime for me redeveloping it.” It was a building I’d been obsessed with since I could remember.
“Look, worst case, you just work around it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t work around things. I take a wrecking ball to them.” I’d crunched the numbers. I wouldn’t make a profit if I didn’t have Henry’s building. And I didn’t take losses. And anyway, it wasn’t just the money.
It was the building my mother lived in when she found out she was pregnant with me.
It was the building my mother was evicted from as soon as her boyfriend, the owner of the building and my biological father, found out she was pregnant.
When he died, it had been inherited by a distant cousin, and since my mother told me the story when I was a teenager, I’d been laser-focused on buying that building. Maybe I thought if I owned it—owned what I should have inherited—wrongs would be righted.
Then I could tear it down and start again.
I’d rewrite history.
I studied the document Joshua had sent. Why had Henry blocked out an entire week? The man didn’t take holidays. I looked closer. The only reference in the entire week was M&K. I typed it into the search engine on my phone. What could M&K stand for? As I scrolled through the results, I couldn’t see how a furniture shop in Wigan or an American DJ could be relevant. Henry wasn’t just old money, he was titled—an earl or something, although he didn’t seem to use it. I was pretty sure he wasn’t shopping in Wigan or entertaining DJs.
I switched screens, and just as I was about to call Joshua to try to get more information, another email flashed up with an attachment. When I opened it, the dates of the M&K week were the first thing I saw. It was a glossy, electronic wedding invitation. Apparently Joshua had been just as curious as I had. A wedding that lasted an entire week? Did these people and their guests not have jobs? M stood for Matthew and K for Karen. The bride and groom. I plugged their names into Google. They were no one I knew. But there was no surprise there. They looked like the type to have met on a croquet field—Matthew was all sports jackets and straw boaters. I didn’t know how old-Etonians and people with inherited wealth looked different from most normal human beings, but they did. It must be the floppy hair or the air of entitlement they wore.
A society wedding would be a perfect place to approach Henry. He’d be relaxed and in a good mood as he spent time with his people.
But his people weren’t my people.
My money was as new as the dawn and that left me on the outside of the wedding party, peering inside, at the end of unreturned phone calls and unable to meet with Henry Dawnay.
“Speaking of wrecking balls, how’s Danielle? Managed to destroy that relationship yet?” Dexter asked, pulling me out of my Henry obsession.
I glanced up from my phone. “What? She’s fine.” I wasn’t sure she was exactly fine. I’d pissed her off. Again. The last conversation we had over dinner, she’d started to talk about taking things to a deeper level. But I liked the shallows—dinner a couple of times a week followed by a sleepover. I didn’t have time for anything else. The rest of the time I was working—figuring out the next deal, scoping out new opportunities, firefighting issues on current sites. It didn’t leave time for much else in my life other than for my five closest friends. As much as it might make me a dick, women were important in the generic sense. But a particular woman wasn’t. So the last few months it had been Danielle. Before that it had been Juliet and by the end of the summer, it was likely to be someone else. But I should return Danielle’s calls. I’d been busy and this Henry thing was getting to me.
“When’s the last time you took her to dinner? Or even had a conversation with her outside the bedroom?”
“Jesus, are you my therapist now?” Guilt prickled beneath my skin, and I kept my eyes on my phone. I’d cancelled dinner this Saturday. Again. She’d been pissed off, so I’d given her some space. But it was Thursday. Shit. I should have called her back by now. If I confessed to Dexter, he’d tell me I was a dick. But it wasn’t like I planned it that way. I was just wrapped up in everything else I had going on, and somehow Danielle had fallen off the bottom of my call sheet. I switched screens and dialed my messages to check her tone of voice and see if I was still in the dog box.