He gave a playful hug to a former pro running back for the Miami Dolphins and talked to a lawyer who’d made tens of millions from the Florida tobacco settlement—exchanged stories about Governor Jeb Bush. Then he moved on through the crowd. There were so many ass-kissing social climbers and opportunists who came to his house to be seen among the right, and wrong, people: self-important, spoiled, selfish, and, worst of all, boring as tepid dishwater.

He walked along the edge of an indoor swimming pool toward an outdoor pool more than twice the size. He chatted with his guests and made a generous pledge to a private-school charity. Not surprisingly, he was hit on by somebody’s wife. He had serious conversations with the owner of the most important hotel in the state, a Mercedes-dealing mogul, and the head of a conglomerate who was a hunting “buddy” of his.

He despised all of these pretenders, especially the older used-to-bes. None of them had ever taken a real risk in their lives. Still, they had made millions, even billions, and they thought they were such hot shit.

And then—he thought about Elizabeth Connolly for the first time in an hour or so. His sweet, very sexy Lizzie. She looked like Claudia Schiffer, and he fondly remembered the days when the image of the German model was on hundreds of billboards all over Moscow. He had lusted for Claudia—all Russian men had—and now he had her likeness in his possession.

Why? Because he could. It was the philosophy that drove him and everything in his life.

For that very reason, he was keeping her right here in his big house in Fort Lauderdale.

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

LIZZIE CONNOLLY COULDN’T BELIEVE any of this awfulness was happening to her. It still didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t possible. And yet, here she was. A hostage!

The house where she was being kept was full of people. Full! It sounded as if a party was going on. A party? How dare he?

Was her insane captor that sure of himself? Was he so arrogant? So brazen? Was it possible? Of course it was. He’d boasted to her that he was a gangster, the king of gangsters, perhaps the greatest that ever lived. He had repulsive tattoos—on the back of his right hand, his shoulders, his back, around his right index finger, and also on his private parts, on his testicles and penis.

Lizzie could definitely hear a party going on in the house. She could even make out conversations: small talk about an upcoming trip to Aspen; a rumored affair between a nanny and a local mother; the death of a child in a pool, a six-year-old like her Gwynne; football stories; a joke about two altar boys and a Siamese cat that she had already heard in Atlanta.

Who the hell were these people? Where was she being held? Where am I, damn it?