"A scandal." She was disappointed by how hollow it sounded. A whole complex of doubts was rising. She'd banked so much on forcing Kendric to accept the buyout. Never even considered he would refuse. There was no way now she could mitigate failure.

Kendric chortled delightedly. "A scandal. In this world? In this day and age? Scandal is dependent on perspective, Julia. You smuggle three and a half million Eurofrancs' worth of gear into Scotland every night. Isn't that a scandal? Everyone knows I am a lovable rogue. Certainly your dear grandfather did. After all, Event Horizon bought all those templates from me."

"The memox-crystal spoiler."

"Ah yes, I heard your orbiting furnaces were producing a depressing amount of contaminated crystals. How unfortunate for you."

"The rest of the consortium would be very upset to hear that you planned to steal Event Horizon's assets, don't you think? It might be difficult for the di Girolamo house to find partners after that."

"Fantasy," he said. But there was no smile any more.

She let go of the armrests and placed her hands on the table, pleased by how steady they were. "The onus is on proof, of course. Even if I could prove your involvement, the family would simply disown you, claim they weren't involved, which they possibly weren't. The house could survive your fall. What the house would not tolerate is for you to drag them down with you."

"An admirable summary," he mocked. "So where is this alleged proof?"

She played the terminal keys, squirting data over to the yacht's gear cubes. "First understand I am not bluffing. See this? It's Globecast's Pan-Europe channel schedule for next Tuesday; the Investigator Chronicle documentary is going to be given over to you, Kendric. I'm going to make you a star. All the data my security people turned up on your crystal-spoiler operation was passed on to the programme's researchers. We even found them a re-entry capsule to show, it was bobbing about amongst Weslin's wreckage. You know about those capsules, Kendric, they're the sort Siebruk Orbital assembled up at Zanthus."

"No, Julia, I do not know."

"Wrong." She called up her ace from the terminal's memory core. "Take a good look, Kendric. That's a transfer order for eight million Eurofrancs to be paid into the account of the newly formed Siebruk Orbital company from your family house, eleven months ago. And, Kendric, it's your authority code on the order. You own Siebruk Orbital. And the di Girolamo house funded it." She requested the terminal to show the second transfer order. "Then five months later you went and repaid the money, without any interest. Money you recovered from selling the memox crystals. My money, Kendric. Did they know? Did you tell them you were borrowing family money to finance your own schemes?"