Marie Ferrarella - The Heiress's 2-Week Affair

She’d startled him. He sucked in his breath, his body tense and rigid. “Natalie, what are you doing here?”

There was no point in beating around the bush. It only prolonged the inevitable, and that wasn’t her style. “I have some terrible news, Dad.” Natalie sat down at the table and placed her hand over his. Her father wasn’t the touchy-feely type, but this time, she thought some contact might actually help. “Candace is dead.”

He visibly paled but didn’t look nearly as surprised as she thought he would. She supposed that, given Candace’s lifestyle, all of them had been expecting this day now for a long time. “When?”

“Last night.”

He slowly nodded his head, as if that helped him take in the information. “Where?”

“They found her body at her condo. The nanny came home with the kids after a sleepover and discovered her. She called the police.” She enunciated the words slowly, refusing to allow her voice to break, her emotions to leak through. Her feelings were private, even from her father. “Candace was murdered.”

It took Harold a moment to process the information she’d given him, and then he looked up at her, his expression devoid of emotion. “Did she have the ring on her?”

“Ring?” Natalie repeated, stunned. She remembered what Clive had said about her father’s distress because the ring was missing. Candace was dead. Didn’t that trump a missing ring? Didn’t he care? “Is that what you’re concerned about?” she cried, struggling to keep her temper under control. “The damn ring?”

He grew more upset in the face of her reaction. “Natalie, please understand, of course I’m devastated about Candace, but that ring…that ring can mean the difference between our family’s financial collapse and success.”

How could he even think about money at a time like this? “What are you talking about?”

Harold nervously ran his tongue along his dry lips. “I made some shaky investments,” he confessed. “I’m spread rather thin right now, and I had to borrow some money from—” He paused for a moment before finally blurting out a name. “The Schaffer family.”

He’d been desperate at the time; there was no other explanation for his doing what he’d done. He didn’t have his father’s flair for making money, so he’d turned to a family known to have underworld connections. Men who broke legs as easily as matchsticks and with less thought. He wouldn’t put it past Matt Schaffer to try to ruin him.

His eyes grew bright. “Matt Schaffer’s the one who has the ring. I’d bet my life on it,” he concluded heatedly.

She hadn’t thought she’d ever hear that name again. “Matt Schaffer’s in California,” she heard herself saying hoarsely.

And then her father blew her world apart by saying, “No, he’s not. He’s right here in Vegas. Working for Luke Montgomery. Or at least that’s the story he gives out.”

Matt Schaffer.

Here. In Vegas.

Natalie suddenly felt as if the ground beneath her feet had turned to quicksand.

Harold continued to talk, but Natalie could no longer make out the words.

Her father’s voice became a buzzing sound in the background as she grappled with the information he’d just carelessly flung out at her. Coming on the heels of Candace’s murder, learning that Matt Schaffer was now living back in Vegas was almost too much for her to process. Or bear.

But she had to, Natalie told herself fiercely. What choice did she have? There was no one around to run interference for her, no one to try to smooth out the choppy waters so she could navigate them without going under and drowning.

All that was on her shoulders. But then, she’d more or less been on her own for the last eight years.

Natalie raised her chin proudly. Okay, she’d deal with Matt being here in Vegas. Deal with having to see him.

But despite the way things had ended between them, she knew Matt Schaffer would never kill anyone. If he had the ring in his possession, then he’d gotten a hold of it while Candace was still alive. She’d make book on it.

You also thought he’d never leave you, remember? Called that one wrong, didn’t you? her annoying little voice taunted.

Still, just because the man didn’t have the guts to commit and lacked the backbone to tell her so face-to-face didn’t mean he would kill someone over a ring no matter how valuable it was. He wasn’t a killer or a thief, if she discounted his stealing her heart.

“Matt wouldn’t kill Candace,” she told her father firmly.

Her father looked like a cornered man desperately fighting to survive. He vacillated, not sure of anything anymore.

“Maybe not, but someone in his family would.” Everyone knew that the Schaffers had underworld ties, connections to people who did things that could not bear scrutiny. He grasped her hand as if that would make her understand better. “I owe them, Natalie. I owe them.” Harold struggled to keep his voice from cracking. “The Schaffers know people. And those people,” he insisted, “have killed for pocket change.”

She glared at him. “Then why would you have knowingly gotten mixed up with them?” she demanded.

It made no sense to her. There were lending institutions. Yes, money was hard to come by, but Harold Rothchild was a reputable businessman with a great deal of collateral. Going to a loan shark, if that was indeed what he’d done, was like agreeing to play Russian roulette with not one but half the chambers loaded with bullets.

“Because…” He began to explain, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter why. I did, and now Candace is dead and the ring’s gone.”

Her father seemed to have forgotten one very important element in this horrible tale. So typical of him, she thought.

“Your nephews are fine, thanks for asking,” she told him sarcastically. She’d checked on the boys on her way over here. She’d stopped by the nanny’s sister’s home and asked Amelia to tell her in her own words what she’d seen. She had to wait until the young woman stopped throwing up. The details were sketchy, the nanny’s reaction honest. She’d asked the young woman to watch the boys until she got back to her.

“The boys.” Harold stared at her for a moment, a lost look in his eyes. And then he seemed to come to. “Where are they?”

“I left them with their nanny.” She rattled off the address. It was far off the beaten path of both the casinos and the better residential areas, but it was still a decentenough neighborhood, thanks to a renovation effort on the part of the city.

“I’ll send a car for them,” Harold said, thinking out loud.

“Good idea.”

She didn’t mean that to sound as caustic as it did. But she was on edge. The toughest part of her day was still ahead of her. She was going to have to go and interface with the one man she didn’t want to ever see again.

Some days it just didn’t pay to get up out of bed, Natalie thought wearily.

About to say goodbye, something in her father’s expression stopped her. She knew it would drive her crazy for the rest of the day if she didn’t ask. “Is there something else?” she wanted to know. “You look like you want to tell me something.”

“No.” Denial was always his first choice, but then Harold thought better of it just as his daughter began to leave. “There was a note.”

Natalie turned around. What was he talking about? And why hadn’t he said anything when she’d first come in? “A note?”

He nodded his head. “I didn’t understand what it meant until you told me that Candace was dead.” He sounded breathless as he said, “We’re all in danger. The curse is real.”