‘No!’ Her scream propelled her, she almost had a hand to it but as she threw herself forwards, it was suddenly flung back. She felt herself fly, the sound of a gunshot whistling through the air with her. But she had seen his face, and a single thought formed in her mind before the world went black.

‘You.’

Chapter One

Canary Wharf, London, 9 July 2018

‘Gentlemen. Ms Fairfax. We have a problem.’

Charlotte watched as the president of the bank bestrode the room, his footsteps silent on the plush rug. He took his seat at the head of the table and looked down the long expanse of burred walnut at his senior team. She imagined it must look like a fairground hall of mirrors to him: matching navy suits and ‘short back and sides’ rippling all the way down, thighs splayed and broad hands on the table. She alone broke the rhythm – long dark hair held back in a Chanel-beribboned low ponytail, discreetly polished fingernails, narrow shoulders, putty-coloured dress.

‘Carlos Mendoza.’

Even she knew the name. She didn’t need to be on the permanent payroll here to know he was one of the firm’s biggest clients, which was saying something for a private bank dealing only with ultra high-net-worth individuals. The family was Spanish aristocracy, with a dukedom or two and owning vast tracts of the Andalusian countryside. They had made their fortune many generations back breeding fighting bulls, diversifying over the years into large-scale fruit farming, property investment and, latterly, medical technology. Off the top of her head, having read a profile on them in the financial press a few months back, she recalled their worth as being somewhere around the £750 million mark.

‘I’ve just taken a call from his son, Mateo. I’m sorry to say the old boy’s on his way out. Stage-four pancreatic cancer.’ He tutted with what was supposed to indicate pity but she heard the subtext too: his dying was in some way inconvenient to them.

Hugh Farrer sank into his seat at the head of the table and stared back at them. At only fifty-four, he was the bank’s youngest ever president and its most ruthless. Profits were up by a third in the twenty-eight months since he had taken the helm but it had come at a cost: the labour force beneath him had been trimmed by 21 per cent and he had closed down four satellite offices throughout Europe, centralizing operations at their headquarters here in London.

‘The medics are saying he’s got a month, six weeks at most, which doesn’t give us much time.’

Us? Charlotte saw how the backs along the line stiffened slightly at the words as though they were reined together. She tilted her head to the side, watching, waiting.

Farrer took an exasperated breath. ‘On Friday evening, Carlos suffered a mini-stroke. He is currently being treated in hospital and is, I understand, still unconscious. They are cautiously optimistic that he will recover – or at least make some form of recovery – from this. However, during this crisis, when Mateo assumed power of attorney for his father, as has always been customary, he learnt his father had been midway through drawing up paperwork donating the entirety of his estate to one Marina Quincy.’