The Billionaire Banker (21 page)

‘Jack, do you know where Lana is?’

‘No, why?’

‘Just trying to find her. She’s gone out without her cellphone.’

‘It’s raining here. Is it raining there?’

Slight pause. ‘Yeah… It’s raining here.’

‘I wouldn’t worry, mate, she’s probably just gone out walking in the rain.’

‘Right.’

Jack laughs. ‘She’ll come home looking like a drowned kitten. It’s something to behold.’

‘Right. Thanks, Jack.’

Blake goes out onto the balcony. It is pouring with rain. A jagged flash of lightning splits the sky. He waits for the thunder. It comes deafeningly loud almost immediately. He frowns. He doesn’t like the thought of her in the rain. He goes to the edge of the balcony and reaches a hand out to catch some rain. Strange. He leans over the edge and turns his face up to the shower.

He tries to imagine what she must be feeling, thinking.

The rain is cold and he is quickly drenched. He peels off his shirt that has become transparent with the rain. He balls his shirt in his hand and hears the key in the door. It opens and they stare at each other.

Indeed, she is a sight to behold. Instantly he knows she is not the same anymore. There is such hurt in her eyes.

He strides to her.

‘Come,’ he says and takes her to the bathroom.

He guides her under the shower spray. The water that pelts her cold shivering skin is perfectly warm. She hears him moving away and she closes her eyes and savors the pleasant sensation. She feels life coming back to her fingers and limbs. She has walked too long. She leans her forearms against the tiles and lifting her face to the water, abandons herself to it. She hears the shower door slide and her eyes snap open. He is nude and standing outside.

Her eyes rove over him and settle in fascination on his manhood that is already half erect before she suddenly realizes what she is doing, and flushing with embarrassment, turns away.

He catches her by the chin and brings her eyes to him.

‘I want you to look at me. Look at me.’

She returns her eyes to his manhood. It is no longer at half-mast but standing proud. She lifts her eyes back to his face. He steps into the shower. She moves back to make space for him. She watches him through the drops of water and steam. He chuckles and, finding the soap, slips it across the skin of her chest.

‘Lift your arms.’

She obeys.

He soaps her under her arms. His touch is light and unticklish. His swipes the soap along her shoulders and then down to her breasts. Here he is rhythmic and meticulous. The mounds get much attention. So much she longs to have him take her nipples in his mouth. The soap travels downward. To her stomach and further to her bare-skinned sex. He doesn’t have to tell her. She spreads her legs and the soap slides between them. The water sluices through his hands.

‘Turn around.’

She turns. The soap is travelling her back and down her spine along her hips and finally entering the crack of her bottom. She feels him kneel to wash her legs down to the soles of her feet, which he does one by one. Then he stands. In her line of sight she sees him return the soap.

And pick up the shampoo bottle. She hears him squirt it into the palm of his hand. Then he is washing her hair.

The bubbles run down her body. Heat collects between her legs.

Now he is so close she can feel his hard body slipping and sliding against hers. Her legs begin to tremble. He turns her around and sucks her nipples. His hands slide down her stomach and boldly without warning grab her hips. She gazes into the storm clouds in his eyes. His jaw is clenched tight. He lifts her body and penetrates her. She curls her legs around his hips and cries with an animalistic pleasure. The deeper he buries himself inside her, the deeper she wants him to go.

Afterwards he carries her to the bed and dries her body carefully.

She looks up to him. ‘What are you thinking of?’

‘Your body.’

She says nothing.

‘Why did you walk so far in the rain?’

She stares into his eyes. They are unreadable. ‘I like the rain. I’ve always walked in the rain.’

‘But the rain in England is cold.’

‘I don’t know any other type of rain.’

He brings the hairdryer and a brush and sits on the bed with them beside him. Then he calls her to sit on the floor against the bed between his knees and begins to towel dry her hair. He is careful not to rub hard. Afterwards he runs his fingers through her hair and gently untangles any knots he finds. Only then does he switch on the hairdryer and begin to dry her hair. When he switches off the hairdryer she says, ‘You can’t cook but you can blow dry hair.’

‘I used to dry my sister’s hair for her.’

She swivels her neck around. ‘You don’t have a sister.’

Firmly he turns her head to face away from him. ‘I’ve told you before, don’t trust everything Wikipedia says.’

The brush glides through her hair in long, slow strokes.

‘Why is she not known to the public?’

‘She was born with a genetic anomaly. She’s not like you and me. She lives in her own world. All great families have such relatives—they just don’t acknowledge or advertise them. It’s an unfortunate effect of interbreeding.’

‘So she is locked away?’

There is a pause. ‘Something like that.’

‘Do you still see her?’

‘No, she is in our Buckinghamshire property. She has a whole wing and sectioned off grounds. Nurses and servants to care for her twenty-four hours a day.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘A four-year-old child. She communicates by pointing and smiling.’ His voice is sad.

‘Why did you stop going to see her?’

The brush stops for a second, then starts again. ‘The last time I saw her was when I was twelve. I was brushing her hair and my mother walked into the room. She was horrified. “Are you going to become a great man like your father or a sissy like your great uncle George?” He is another family member that we all pretend doesn’t exist. I never went back after that.’

She turns around and catches his wrist. The brush stills mid-air. ‘I don’t care what anybody else says, you are a good man,’ she says.

‘Don’t fool yourself, Lana. We’re all no good. Don’t trust any of us. Not even me.’

‘Is there no one you trust?’

‘No one.’

‘Not even your dad?’

‘Dad?’ he repeats sarcastically. ‘Dad’s a sociopath.’

Lana’s eyes widen. ‘Isn’t he a great philanthropist?’

‘Naïve little Lana. My father’s a trillionaire. And there is no such thing as a philanthropist trillionaire. Do you know what one has to do to become a trillionaire? Spend your whole life crushing people for profit and then donate a library? I don’t trust him and neither should you. It would cause him the same grief to crush you if you stood in his way as it would if he trod on an ant in his path.’

‘Do trillionaires exist?’

‘Think, Lana. What is the debt of the United States alone? Who are all those lovely trillions owed to?’

‘The Federal Reserve?’

He laughs. ‘And who do you think owns that? The Federal Reserve is a private company just like the Bank of England, and every central bank throughout the world.

Through a network of holding companies, the old families own vast controlling portions of not only their stocks, but all the too-big-to-fail banks that you hate so much.’

Lana frowns. She needs time to think about the true meaning of what he has revealed to her. ‘What about your mother?’

‘My mother threw us to the wolves a long time ago. My brothers and I grew up in stifling conditions.’

Lana shakes her head. ‘And there I was, wishing I was rich, while I was growing up in stifling conditions.’

‘You don’t understand, Lana, and perhaps you never will. We are different. We are not merely rich. We don’t own tracts of land, we own countries and politicians. We have different responsibilities. We have an agenda.’ Then his face closes over.

Twenty nine

Your hands are inside my heart.

lake stands on the embankment and watches the Bwater rushing by. He thinks of Lana and feels confused. There is a room inside her that he can’t enter. It is like the room inside him that she cannot enter. It is where she keeps all the hurts he has caused. There are other things in that room, too. She has secrets now. He tries to imagine what else could be hidden there.

A man talking loudly on his cell phone in some European language intrudes on his musings. He glances away from the water at the tramps sleeping rough. For the first time in his life he sees them as people. People who have fallen on hard times because of the things that his family is doing. They are not the real parasites. She was right that night when she accused him and his family of being the parasites. He has always known. He has just never cared before. His phone rings. He looks at it.

Marcus.

‘Hello.’

His brother gets to the point immediately. ‘Morgan just called me. Why is his loan still pending?’

‘Morgan is a crook.’

There is a shocked silence and then his brother sighs heavily. ‘What’s going on with you, Blake?’

‘Nothing. It bugs me to approve the loan. This green energy thing is a scam.’

‘Of course it is. And so what?’

‘Why do we have to be part of everything crooked?’

‘My God, you’re beginning to sound like Quinn,’ his brother says referring to their youngest sibling. Quinn turned his back on the family fortune and ran off to Paris to be an artist.’

‘I’m beginning to think Quinn had the right idea.’

‘It’s a big account—government approved. We’re just facilitating the funds.’

‘We’re always only facilitating the funds.’

‘Father worked hard to get us on board. The other banks will kill for an opportunity like this.’

Blake sighed. ‘I’ll sign off on the papers in the morning.’

‘I don’t care about the loan—what I care about is what’s happening to you? You’re still in training. You can’t get soft, Blake. These are shark-infested waters you’re swimming in. They’ll eat you alive. The entire system is corrupt. You can’t fight it. If you try to, it will only break you.’

‘Yeah. Just having a bad day, I guess.’

‘Have you spoken to Victoria?’

Blake frowns. ‘No, why?’

‘Nothing. Her father was telling me you haven’t called in some weeks. It’s not a good thing to leave these things for too long.’

Blake does something he has never done before. He confides in his brother.

‘I think I might have found someone.’

‘Someone? What do you mean someone?’

‘I think I’m in love.’

‘What?’ The burst of sound is so explosive and sudden that Blake has to pull the phone away from his ear and hold it away.

‘Hell! Blake! Have you lost your mind?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Not one of us.’

‘Set her up in an apartment and visit her every day until you are bored of her.’

Blake smiles in the dark. ‘Done that.’

‘You’ve fallen for a gold-digger!’

‘She’s not a gold-digger.’

‘They all are.’

‘Well, she’s not.’

‘Look, Blake, don’t fuck this up. This is your future.

You have to marry Victoria.’

‘I don’t have to do anything. I don’t want to end up like you. A wife you detest, three kids you never see, and cold fucks with models and movie stars in luxurious apartments and hotel rooms.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

Blake sighs.

‘You’re going to fuck this up, aren’t you? This is not a club, Blake. You can’t terminate your membership and walk away. There are consequences.’

‘Quinn did.’

‘You’re not Quinn,’ he says, his voice heavy with meaning.

‘Look, I got to go. I’ll call you soon. Bye, Marcus.’

Blake cuts the call and stands looking at the cold, black water.

‘Spare some change,’ someone says from behind him.

He turns back. A tramp. He puts his hand into his pocket, but there is no ‘change’ in his pocket. He never carries change. He opens his wallet. There is nothing there but fifty-pound notes. He pulls one out and holds it out by the corner. The tramp’s eyes widen.

‘God bless you, sir,’ he cries delightedly, and staggers away to spend the money on more booze. Blake looks up and watches a star tumble from the sky. And takes it as a sign. He wants to go back to the apartment and get into bed beside her, but he won’t. That will be a bad idea. She will be asleep and he would only wake her and want to get into that beautiful body. No, he will go back to his own apartment and tomorrow he will tell her. He is madly in love with her.

He sends her a text:

Meet me for breakfast outside the café? 9am. X

Lana is not asleep. She looks at his message. Even the thought of breakfast makes her feel sick, but she will go anyway. Perhaps she will have some black coffee and pretend she is on a diet or something. She wonders where he is. Why has he not come to her? Has he begun to lose interest? So quickly? Alone, she goes to sleep and sleeps badly, tossing and turning. Eventually, when she falls into a deep sleep, dawn is in the sky.

Her alarm goes off at eight a.m. and she dresses hurriedly. She pulls an Alice hairband on, dresses in a long shirt and navy and white trousers. There is no bump yet, but it seems like a good idea to start dressing in loose attire.

She leans against the mirror and fights the nausea. She shouldn’t have agreed to go, but she doesn’t want to make him suspicious. She waves to Mr. Nair and walks out of the building.

The café is only down the street.

As she walks her thoughts wander. What will become of her and the little life growing inside her? She puts her head down and makes a decision.

She steps onto the road and hears a shout. ‘Watch out!’

In that split second, she sees Blake running towards her.