Chapter Thirty-Eight
Walter sat at the large executive desk in his office, whisky in hand, ruminating on succession.
The grandfather clock belonging to his own grandfather Ernst ticked melodically in the corner of his capacious study, an acute reminder that he was on borrowed time.
The mansion was quiet. He didn’t know where Anastasia or Dimitri were, but imagined they probably weren’t together.
Vivian was at the Anna Maria. Kiki had gone to Lapland, taking a group of children with cancer to meet Father Christmas.
‘Wouldn’t that be better in December?’ Walter had asked.
‘Some of them might not make it to Christmas, Walter,’ Kiki had said with a levelling look. Walter conceded, although he was still a little sore. He wanted out, but he had pride. He hadn’t married Kiki so she could swan off
here, there and everywhere. He had wanted a wife to take care of him in his old age, and she had at first. But her shopping trips and treatments and altruistic trips with sick children soon took priority over her husband, although she wasn’t to know he had cancer too.
Which reminded him. The issue of an heir.
Lysander had ruled himself out and suggested Vivian.
Caspian seemed so hellbent on shunning the business his ancestors had built, affording him a life of travel and surfing, that he was out too.
But what about Anastasia? He had to consider her, and she had experienced more facets of the business than any of his children.
But she had never stuck at any of them. He had thought that gifting the Anna Maria to both daughters would show Anastasia the work ethic and staying power that this business took, if she were to work with Vivian up close.
Perhaps she was more like Caspian than any of them had realised. A drifter.
But Anastasia’s biggest currency was her beauty.
Both his daughters were beautiful of course, but Anastasia was classically so: glossy, symmetrical and sumptuous in her style.
Perhaps she could be the figurehead of the Steinherr portfolio, representing the business on the world stage, if the girls did decide to spread their wings, while Vivian kept everything running.
Who was Walter kidding? With that solution, both daughters would feel hard done by.
He swirled the ice cubes in his cut-glass tumbler of Scotch, but the dilemma only made him feel sad.
He didn’t want to feel sad. Time was short and pleasures were few.
Exhaling a gruff sigh, Walter opened a side drawer of his desk and took out a Cartier box.
He placed it on the dark-green leather surface of the desk and opened it.
In it sat a white-gold, emerald and diamond panther bracelet.
It was a little ostentatious for Lumi’s classic style but he was feeling impulsive, and he suspected she would love it if she knew it were from him.
Walter rang the bell for his butler, who was at the study door within seconds.
‘Yes sir?’
‘Arrange delivery of this please. To Lumi Kivvi at Chalet Edelweiss.’
‘Certainly sir. Any card to go with it?’
‘No, that’s all.’
It was an audacious move, but Walter was feeling more and more reckless by the day.