CHAPTER ONE

      ‘THE big boss wants to see you.’

      Jessica looked at the petite, blonde secretary she shared with her boss, Robert Grange, and grinned.

      ‘Has anyone told you that you’re wasted as a secretary, Millie? You have a special talent for making the most innocuous statements sound dramatic. Really, you need to be in a TV soap.’ She rested her briefcase on the ground next to her and began riffling through the post, sifting out bits, leaving some for her secretary to open. ‘That tax information I need still hasn’t come through,’ she said distractedly, ripping open an envelope and glancing through the contents. ‘Why can’t people get their act together? I asked for that information two days ago.’

      ‘Jess,’ her secretary said, ‘you’re not hearing me. You’ve been summoned! You need to get your skates on and not stand there flicking through the mail!’

      Jessica looked up from what she was doing and frowned. ‘I’m due to see Robert in fifteen minutes’ time,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’

      ‘The problem is,’ Millie told her in a long-suffering voice, ‘you’re thinking of the wrong big boss. Bruno Carr is in your office waiting for you.’

      ‘Bruno Carr?’ She glanced along the corridor. ‘What does Bruno Carr want with me?’ She had been working at BC Holdings for nine months, and during that time she had not once laid eyes on the legendary Bruno Carr. BC Holdings was just one of a multitude of companies he owned. His headquarters were in the City somewhere, and he rarely deigned to visit some of his smaller companies. Once a month, Robert would journey to the City with a case bulging with documents, proof that profits were where they should be, finances were running smoothly and employees were doing what they should be doing.

      ‘I have no idea,’ Millie said now, throwing a cursory glance at her perfectly shaped nails, today painted jade-green to match the colours of her suit, ‘but he doesn’t look like the kind of man who appreciates being kept waiting.’

      Well, what kind of man does he look like? Jessica wanted to ask. She felt a thread of nervous tension snake through her body and she did a quick mental calculation of what she might possibly have done to warrant Bruno Carr descending on her.

      ‘You should have asked him what he wanted,’ she hissed, her brown eyes flicking between the corridor and her secretary. ‘That’s what secretaries are for.’ She was very rarely thrown off balance by anything, but the sudden unexpectedness of this was enough to disconcert her.

      ‘People don’t ask Bruno Carr questions like that!’ Millie exclaimed in a horrified voice. ‘He comes in, says what he wants, and you just nod a lot and do it.’

      ‘Well, he sounds a particularly pleasant kind of individual.’

      A great, big, overweight, pompous man who went around stamping on the little people and issuing orders by royal decree. This was all she needed on a freezing January Monday morning.

      ‘Where’s Robert?’ she asked, postponing the inevitable for as long as she could. Her lawyer’s instinct told her to get as much information about what was going on as she possibly could, even if Millie was being particularly unforthcoming.

      ‘Meeting. He was told to go ahead without you.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘Guess that means that the great Bruno Carr wants to see you all on your lonesome,’ she whispered confidentially. ‘Sounds ominous, if you ask me.’

      ‘I don’t recall asking you,’ Jessica said automatically. ‘Well, I’d better go along in.’ Whatever it was she had done, it had clearly been a grave crime against Bruno Carr’s enterprises, for which she was to be punished by immediate dismissal. Perhaps she had inadvertently taken home one of the company’s red marker pens with her, and he had somehow discovered it. From the sound of it, he was just the sort of man who would see that as reason for instant sacking. And why else would he have sought her out, making sure that he gave no warning in advance, if not to confront her with some misdemeanour?

      She retrieved her briefcase from the ground and mentally braced herself for the worst

      ‘Could you bring us in some coffee in about ten minutes’ time, Mills?’ she asked, running her hands along her neatly pinned back blonde hair, just to make sure that there were no loose strands waiting to ambush her composure.

      ‘You mean if Mr Carr allows it...’

      ‘You’re being ridiculous now.’

      She pulled herself erect and headed down the corridor, pausing briefly outside her door and wondering whether she should knock or not There was