Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Kristaps, will you call the helipad and charter a chopper to Geneva?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘And have Timo waiting with a yumbo in ten minutes,’ Walter Steinherr instructed as he ate a bowl of natural yogurt and berries.
Kiki had got him on a health kick soon after they married, and he just about tolerated the stuff.
Fat lot of good it was to him now, he thought.
He should go out on a high, eating all the foods he loved. Be with the woman he loved.
The butler nodded and walked out reverently.
‘Want to accompany me to Geneva, Dad?’ Lysander asked. ‘Do a nice circuit in the chopper?’
Walter shook his head.
‘Erm, no thank you, I have a meeting this morning,’ he replied somewhat sheepishly.
Lysander drank orange juice and looked very smart for a man who was about to take a helicopter over the valley and a flight across the Atlantic. Dimitri was already in his office in the Alpenrose hotel across town and Anastasia was out getting an early-morning massage.
‘Ooh, I miss New York,’ Kiki oozed, longingly, wrapping her tongue around a melon ball as she lingered on her stepson. Lysander looked away sharply as he drained his glass, and Kiki turned to her husband. ‘Darling, it’s been too long. We haven’t been to New York for what, three years?’
Lysander remembered the visit. Kiki had flirted with him then, too.
‘We should take a trip to visit Zand, Meg and Blake!’ Kiki thought she might be able to tag one of her trips to the West Coast onto it, after Walter had returned home.
She liked LA. She imagined being there with Lysander, not Walter, and introducing him to her Bel Air friends, as she sized him up again across the table.
Lysander felt his stepmother’s gaze.
No thank you, he thought.
‘Yeah, Meg and Blakey would love to see you Stateside, Dad?’
Walter frowned, as if his mind was elsewhere, but he was very much thinking there would be no trip to New York with Kiki. Which reminded him. Business.
‘That bit of American law you were going to look into …’ Walter said, not all that cryptically. ‘I would like you to check the ramifications please.’
Lysander nodded cautiously. His father and Kiki had married in Las Vegas five years ago, when Walter was on a high from high rolling.
They’d only been dating for three months and he was completely smitten.
They’d met when Walter, single for years after his disastrous divorce from Susan, was playing blackjack in Monte Carlo with a group of associates, and Kiki was the croupier.
He’d never seen a croupier look so polished and powerful.
Her white-blonde hair was slicked back in a short bob, her blue eyes and pretty nose gave her a prudent wisdom.
She was statuesque and muscular. Walter was surprised to learn Kiki was from the United States.
Even more fascinated to know she had worked in Las Vegas.
Walter Steinherr had never been to Las Vegas – there had never seemed much point when he had Monte Carlo, Malta, Baden-Baden and Venice on his doorstep, but it was an itch that had always tickled him.
Over three months Walter wooed Kiki with dinners on the French Riviera; or he’d fly her to one of his hotels in Kristalldorf where they’d have dinner and take a room. When they had sex it was unlike anything Walter had known before. Kiki’s blowjobs were dynamite.
People raised eyebrows in Kristalldorf to see a pneumatic croupier on the arm of Walter Steinherr, but she wasn’t with him for his money, not that they knew that.
Kiki had business plans of her own, and leaving the casino would free up her time to develop them.
Plus she wasn’t immune to Walter’s chivalrous reverence.
When Walter whisked Kiki to Las Vegas for his sixty-fifth birthday three months later, he asked Kiki to marry him. No plan, no prenup. They had a driver take them to a little chapel and an Elvis impersonator did the honours. It gave Walter a small thrill to know his children would be horrified.
Now Walter wanted out, he was starting to panic. He had wanted a wife to look after him in his old age, not to go off shopping with girlfriends in Milan, Mykonos and Mexico.
Lysander had started to panic. His father lost more than he should have in his divorce to Susan; he did not want to see another chunk of his inheritance portioned off to an angry woman, who right now was undressing Lysander with her eyes.
It would be even worse if his father died while they were still married.
As it stood, with Walter wavering over his children’s inheritance, Kiki would be getting a lot more than she deserved.
‘Of course, Dad, I’ll look into it as soon as I’m in the office. Is there anything else you need?’ Lysander was thinking more like care packages and Hershey bars than Nevada divorce law.
‘Yes, um, Seven Summits.’
Kiki looked up.
‘What about it?’
‘I’m thinking of selling.’
Lysander put his glass down and cleared his throat.
‘Do you think that’s wise? I – I know Anastasia had some ideas for it.’
‘Anastasia has a hotel!’ Walter scoffed. ‘And she doesn’t seem all that interested in that!’
‘You want to sell them though? I thought you were adamant –’
‘I’m thinking of putting them on the open market. See what I get for them. Kivvi will come running of course … begging like the bleating goat he is.’
‘Dad, I can’t easily action that kind of thing from New York. You’ll need Dimitri on it.’ Lysander winced, thinking of how devastated his sister would be.
‘Dimitri does whatever job I entrust him with!’
Lysander felt uneasy. He couldn’t help thinking that there was something his dad wasn’t telling him.
He’d been melancholy and reflective at the wedding and was planning to blindside Kiki with a divorce.
Now he was finally considering selling the properties that had caused the most discord between the two biggest family empires in town for the past ten years.
Plus he looked a little lost in his grand chair at the head of the breakfast table.
Lysander’s gaze met Kiki’s again. If only he could talk to her about his father’s wellbeing. As she looked back at him and continued to lust after him over her lemongrass shot, Lysander mentally shut that conversation down.