CHAPTER ONE
 

When persistent knocking failed to arouse a response, Victoria Morgan cornered a room service waiter wheeling his cart across the Fairmont Hotel hallway, and said, "I'm looking for Mr. Cooper."
    "Mr. Robin Cooper?"  The waiter folded his white linen napkins into triangles and laid out a silver knife, fork, and spoon along-side an ivory dish of black caviar and thinly sliced rye bread.  He surveyed Victoria, taking in the indigo blazer and matching slacks, as well as the vibrantly auburn hair pulled back from her face with coral combs, the eyes so light blue they seemed nearly translucent, and, unimpressed, sniffed, "Take a number, Miss."
    Victoria watched him unlock Robin Cooper's door and wheel in his cart, parking it beside an unmade, four-poster bed.  A rumpled black tuxedo jacket and bow-tie dangled tossed over a carved post.  She heard the shower running and, making an executive decision on the spot, informed the waiter, "I'll wait for Mr. Cooper in here."
    He opened his mouth to protest.  She countered by opening her purse and pressing a folded bill into his starched, left pocket.
    Victoria Morgan had spent the first five years of her life in a trailer barely longer than Robin Cooper's hotel room.  She spent the subsequent decade shuffling between foster homes, and the span between ages fifteen and twenty-two waiting tables to cover college tuition.  As a result, she possessed an uncanny knack for figuring out just how much money to slip every member of the working class.
    The same waiter who, a minute earlier, had judged her unworthy of soliciting Mr. Robin Cooper's company, now only peeled away his jacket pocket to confirm the amount deposited there, bowed his head respectfully and, sliding the breakfast tray off his cart and onto a table in front of the picture-window, silently exited the room.
    Left alone, Victoria's confidence wavered.  Officially, she'd worked under Robin Cooper for six months now.  But, she'd never met the man, or even spoken to him on the phone.  The closest they came to communicating was when the reports Victoria Federal Expressed to whichever French villa, Italian yacht, Monte Carlo casino, or Swiss Alp her alleged boss happened to be inhabiting that week, came back with Robert James Cooper's signature dashed across the bottom.  In other words, she knew nothing about him.  She certainly had no idea how he might react to finding a total stranger in his hotel room.
    Well, ready or not, Victoria was about to find out.
    She heard the water turn off, the mirror-door open and close, the swish of a towel sliding off the rack.  Her poise of a moment earlier slipped away.  Victoria glanced around the room, wondering where she should stand.  She didn't want to startle Robin when he first came out, but, then again, she didn't want it to look like she was hiding and spying on him, either.  Frankly, if her early-morning mission weren't such a matter of life and death, she might have seriously considered obeying her instincts, and getting the hell out of there.  But, either way, it was too late now.
    When Robin Cooper sauntered into his hotel suite's main room, he was still rubbing his dripping hair with an extra-thick, ivory towel, the ends obscuring his face and his line of vision.  He wore a maroon bathrobe tied casually around the waist, so that the upper folds fell apart, revealing a slender, yet muscular frame heralding untold hours spent on such gentlemanly pursuits as squash and polo, then supplemented by the industrious efforts of a personal trainer.  Even in bare feet, Victoria guessed Robin stood over six feet tall.
    He slipped the towel from his head, and, in spite of herself, Victoria couldn't help swallowing hard.  She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting.  Presumably somebody like Douglas Cooper, Robin's father, the man who hired her.  Someone dignified, stately, proper.  Someone who looked like the heir to an international empire like Cooper Shipping.  What she hadn't been expecting, was someone who looked like Robin Cooper.
    Aesthetically, classically, logically, his facial features had no right fitting together as well as they did.  For one thing, his eyes refused to commit to staying either emerald-green or bronzed-brown, teasingly shimmering between the alternatives.  For another, the two sides of his face weren't even precisely symmetrical.  They resembled two distinct pictures of the same person, sliced down the middle, then forced into a fresh whole.  His smile diverged further up the right side of his cheek than it did his left, leaving the cleft in his chin jutting somehow off-center.  And yet, in spite of what should have been visible flaws, the asymmetry granted Robin's face character, adding charisma and a sort of devilish roguery.  A parallel that was only enhanced by his freshly-scrubbed, sable hair horning up in a series of still-damp curls.  As a result, there was something vaguely unnerving about his entire countenance.  But, for the life of her, Victoria couldn't look away.
    Robin spotted her as soon as he turned to toss his towel onto the bed, next to the discarded tuxedo.  Rather than being startled, he only raised an inquisitive eyebrow.  "I say, do you come with the Continental breakfast?"
    His accent intrigued Victoria.  From Douglas, she knew that his only son had been born in Maine, educated in Switzerland, then, reluctantly, subsidized to explore every decadent pleasure-site in Europe.  What Victoria didn't know was how he'd managed to absorb and retain only the most charming aspects of each region's dialect.
    She swallowed again in order to revive her voice.  "I -- no."
    "Pity."  Robin padded over to the breakfast tray, critically lifting several of the silver lids and wrinkling his nose at their contents.  He reached for the bottle of vodka tactfully positioned behind the water pitcher, peered at its label, unscrewed the cap, and splashed two fingers worth into a crystal tumbler.  He offered the glass to Victoria.  "Drink?"
    "No.  Thank-you.  It's a bit early in the day for me."
    He nodded understandingly, and briefly perused the remaining staples along his tray.  Spotting a container of orange juice, he expertly mixed it with the vodka.  "Breakfast?"
    She had to smile, in spite of herself.  "Mr. Cooper -- "
    "Robin."
    "Robin.  I -- I'm Victoria Morgan."
    "Is that a fact?"  She watched him flip through what she could only presume was the little black book in his head, trying to match name to face and recall just how well acquainted they were supposed to be.  It wasn't difficult to spot the exact instant when he made the connection.  Robin's eyes darkened, abandoning both green and brown in favor of a murky, angry hazel.  His flirtatious, lopsided smile of a second earlier coiled into an accusatory sneer.  "You're with the Elizabeth Fund.  What the hell do you want?"
    She couldn't understand his hostility.  The Elizabeth Fund, named after Douglas Cooper's late wife, Robin's mother, was a philanthropic foundation established and run by Cooper Shipping.  They built schools, hospitals, old-age homes, orphanages.  She wondered what about the project Robin found worthy of such chilling anger.
    "I wanted to talk to you about Gabriel Scott's clinic."
    Robin gulped down the screwdriver and scowled, indicating he'd been expecting as much.  "I'm not changing my mind."
    Although Douglas Cooper had set up the Elizabeth Fund thirteen years earlier, following his wife's death, a substantial portion of the principle came from trust-fund money she'd left her son, Robin.  As a result, even though Victoria reported to Douglas when it came to the daily operational details, Robin liked to put his two cents -- rather, his approximately two hundred million cents -- in, on issues like allocating grants.  Or terminating them.
    Victoria persisted, "Dr. Scott's clinic does wonderful work.  I don't see why you would want to close such a worthwhile -- "
    "Oh, you don't, do you?"  Robin slammed down his tumbler, and approached Victoria, managing to tower menacingly over her, despite standing a good two feet away.  "Well, how about the obvious?  Our funding Gabriel Scott's clinic is a conflict of interest."
    "How?"
    "Are you serious?"  He took another step closer.  Close enough for Victoria to feel the moist heat radiating from his body.  Close enough for her to trace the rivulets of water dripping down Robin's throat, past both collarbones, and inside the bathrobe open-V of his chest.  "You don't think it's a conflict of interest that Dr. Scott also happens to be your brother?"  Robin managed to make the last word sound like a synonym for the lowest form of vermin.
    "No," Victoria said.  "I don't.  Your father called Gabriel in Houston, and asked him to relocate to San Francisco and set up the clinic.  I didn't come into the picture until later.  Gabriel told Douglas he couldn't relocate.  I was the only family he had, and he didn't want to leave me.  Douglas looked at my resume, saw that I had a background in non-profits, and offered me another position he needed to fill, manager of the Elizabeth Fund.  Gabriel getting the grant had nothing to do with me.  It was just a lucky coincidence."
    "Real lucky," Robin mumbled under his breath.  Then, clearly, he informed Victoria, "Be that as it may, the Elizabeth Fund is my money.  I can give it to anyone I want.  And I don't want to give it to Dr. Gabriel Scott.  There.  End of discussion."
    "You're not being reasonable."
    "I'm rich.  I don't have to be."  Noting Victoria expression, he asked, "You don't believe me?  I'll prove it to you."
    His eyes locked on Victoria's and, much to her discomfort, she found she couldn't look away.  Her throat dried, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth and trapping a gasp that, much to Victoria's embarrassment, nevertheless managed to escape her lips the instant Robin glanced down and casually tugged loose the sash of his robe.  Noting her discomfort, Robin smirked, his countenance twinned with a vaguely sadistic quality, like a tiger toying with its prey.
    She stood rooted to the spot, her pupils the solitary features currently capable of movement.  And, despite her very uncomfortable sense of being controlled and manipulated, Victoria felt her eyes tracking the descent of Robin's robe.  It slipped off his shoulders first, revealing arms much more muscular than she first suspected, considering Robin's slender frame.  She noted the sculpted contours of his upper body even as her gaze fell lower, absorbing Robin's washboard stomach, every abdominal rippling below his skin like the tier of an abacus.  The robe continued falling, but, at the moment of truth, he effortlessly caught it around the waist, and, turning slightly, offered Victoria a prime view of his left shoulder-blade.   Approximately the size of a fist, or a drink coaster, the skin just below and to the left of Robin's neck boasted one of the most exquisitely rendered tatoos Victoria had ever seen.  It might have been a painting at an art museum, considering how much detail and color had gone into the design.  In shades of cardinal, black, and yellow, the tatoo depicted a pessimist's view of Hell, with inferno bursts raging through molten rock, crumbling brimstone, and, at the forefront, a menacing male figure dragging away a helpless damsel.
    "Hades," Robin made the introduction, as if that explained it.  "The Greek God of the underworld kidnapping Persephone."
    "It's beautiful."  Her voice sunk to an awed whisper.  "You know what it reminds me of?  A Burton Chalmers painting."
    "That's because it is one."
    "Right."  Now, it was Victoria's turn to smirk.  "The man's work is on permanent exhibition at the Louvre, and you're telling me he does a little tattooing on the side?"
    Unimpressed with Victoria's tone, Robin shrugged his robe back on, and coolly related, "I was in France, I called Chalmers, and I asked him to ink the tatoo.  He said no.  I named a price.  He said yes.  Have I made my point, Miss Morgan?  The rich don't have to be reasonable.  I always get what I want, and I wanted that particular design.  It's my most favorite.  I relate to it quite strongly.  In Greek mythology, you see, Hades is the bringer of chaos."

    Victoria figured that sitting stuck in unmoving traffic along the Embarcadero was the perfect place to bang her head against the steering wheel in frustration.  The level of her own stupidity that morning, mortified her.  All she'd wanted was to talk Robin out of pulling the plug on Gabriel's clinic.  What she'd managed, was to make a complete fool of herself for no good reason.  She couldn't understand Robin's vendetta against Gabriel's clinic.  It wouldn't be because the project had been initiated by Douglas.  Relations between father and son may have been chilly, but Robin tended to go along with Douglas' recommendations.  In Victoria's experience, the younger Mr. Cooper's interest in the Elizabeth Fund stayed limited to making an appearance at the annual Fund Raising Gala, such as the one scheduled for that night.  He never got involved with the day to day operations.  Until Gabriel.
    Maybe, Victoria considered the possibility, it wasn't Gabriel that Robin had a problem with, but Victoria.  Until she'd arrived, the fund had stayed under the auspices of Douglas and Robin Cooper.  It was all in the family, no outsiders.  Victoria wondered if Robin resented her coming in and taking over -- and if he was taking that resentment out on what he perceived to be Victoria' pet project.
 By seven o'clock that evening, one hour before their Gala was officially scheduled to start, Victoria had managed to work herself into a panic.  Not that she allowed that panic to affect her work.  She went about her business -- double-checking the hall's caterers, waiters, decorators, security -- appearing the picture of calm and professionalism, while, inside, her heart beat so fast, she feared a repeat onset of her childhood bout with rheumatic fever.
    This fund-raiser was the most involved project she'd tackled for Cooper Shipping to date, and she was anxious to succeed.  Not only because her job was at stake, but, because, for as long as she could remember, Victoria had believed that responsibility for other people's happiness rested exclusively on her shoulders.  She could not stand to see anyone unhappy.  Because, for some reason, she was convinced it was all her fault.  Gabriel teased Victoria, claiming she went into not-for-profit work to fix the world.  She might have argued with him.  If she hadn't secretly believed it.
    To that end, Victoria poured her heart into every project she undertook, be it subsidizing a unique art program at an inner-city school, or planning an extravagantly budgeted banquet.  She'd even gone the extra mile for the Elizabeth Fund, and secured permission for them to provide roulette wheels, along with blackjack, craps, and pool tables for gambling purposes, as long as, at the end of the night, all winnings were turned over to charity.
  Before the Gala began, Victoria walked Douglas Cooper through the facility.  Naturally, he, along with the ever-traveling Robin, had seen and signed off on all the blue-prints and pre-production.  But looking at a designer's plans on paper wasn't the same as being confronted with three-dimensional reality.
    "Is everything alright?" Victoria asked nervously.  She held her breath, waiting to be berated over some small detail that had skipped her scrutiny.  She couldn't help it.  Despite knowing that she was quite competent at her job, Victoria still could not shake the conviction that she deserved to be blamed... for something.
    Hands behind his back, Douglas Cooper surveyed her efforts.  A man in his sixties, with green eyes, silver hair combed neatly back off his forehead, and a powerful, broad chest testifying to six mornings a week spent lifting weights at the gym, Douglas had a reputation for thinking through every word before he allowed it access to the public.  In the six months Victoria had worked for Cooper Shipping, she never heard him raise his voice.
     "Everything is fine, Miss Morgan.  Excellent, as a matter of fact."  He dispensed the compliment perfunctorily, his mind clearly brimming with another matter.  Douglas hesitated, turning to face Victoria.  Despite being widowed for fourteen years, he still wore a wedding band on his left hand, and it was that wedding band that Douglas now twisted round and round against his finger, exhibiting possibly his only nervous habit.  "Miss Morgan, I've been meaning to talk to you about my son's actions regarding Dr. Scott's clinic.  I would intervene if I could, but, when it comes to the Elizabeth Fund, my hands are tied.  The final word is, ultimately, Robin's."
    "Yes, I know."  Victoria had only spent the past twenty-four hours religiously rereading the conditions of the Elizabeth Fund, looking for any loophole to use to her advantage.  "I had hoped to convince Mr. Cooper to change his mind when I went to see -- "
    "You went to see Robin?"  The alarm in Douglas Cooper's voice surprised Victoria, and added to her growing sense of unease.
    "I -- yes.  This morning."
    "How did he, uhm,... behave?"
    "Well," Victoria couldn't help herself.  "I did receive a very interesting lesson in Greek mythology."
    Douglas' lips squashed into a rigid line of displeasure.  He took a deep breath.  "I apologize, Miss Morgan.  For whatever Robin did or said to you, I apologize."
    For reasons she couldn't pinpoint, Victoria felt strangely put off by his apology.  Maybe it was because she expected a father to, at least publicly, always stand up for his son no matter what the circumstances.  And here Douglas was, not only declining to defend his child, but leaping on the assumption that Robin had done something wrong.  His act made Victoria feel for Robin, and wonder if the man in front of her wasn't partly responsible for the younger Mr. Cooper's relating so strongly to Hades, the bringer of chaos.
    Granted the question was none of her business, and, for the remainder of the evening, Victoria did her best to put it out of her mind, while, at the same time, keeping a watchful eye out for the self-proclaimed chaos-bringer to appear.  She suspected he'd be making his grand entrance fashionably late, and so busied herself with other, administrative tasks.  Which was how she preferred it.  Shy by nature, the only way Victoria could ever feel even vaguely comfortable at so grand an event was if she knew she was mingling for someone else.  And this evening, fortunately, she had a whopper of a cause to inspire her.  If Robin Cooper was determined to cut Elizabeth Fund's grants to Gabriel's clinic, then Victoria would damn well go out there and find him another foundation.
    To that end though, she needed her brother's cooperation.  It had been hard enough convincing him to abandon the clinic for a few hours and come to the Gala.  Actually getting him to talk to people would probably take another tussle.  Victoria found Gabriel leaning against a marble pillar, scandalously sipping a beer straight from the bottle, and observing the show with equal parts amusement and condescension.  Standing nearly six feet tall, with thick, curly blond hair, eyes so deep blue they were practically purple, and a twice broken nose -- once from a high school fight that got him six months in Juvenile Hall, the second thanks to his hobby, boxing -- Gabriel was made even more attractive by the fact that he genuinely had no idea of the effect his looks had on women.
    "You're not mingling," Victoria chastised.
    "What you mean is, I'm not grovelling."
    "We need to get your funding back."
    "Actually, Vicky," Gabriel said, "I have a plan.  In a couple of minutes, I intend to abandon this overstuffed turkey of a room, yank this medieval strangulation device off my neck -- "
    "It's called a bow tie, Gabriel."
    "Drive back to my clinic, and carry on dispensing antibiotics, casts, birth control pills, and stitches.  When the bills come, let Robin Cooper's creditors go door to door and rip them out of folks' heads."  His anger simmered on a slow boil, ready to erupt with the slightest provocation.  It pretty much convinced Victoria that now was not the time to parade him in front of potential benefactors.
    "Look at that son-of-a-bitch."  Gabriel jerked his chin toward a distant corner, and shook his head, almost biting the neck of his beer bottle.  "I'm willing to put money down, here and now, that he never experienced an instant of hardship in his life.  What does he know about people in trouble, people with nowhere else to turn?"
    Victoria followed Gabriel's gaze, although it hardly required a clairvoyant to surmise the object of his venom.  She scanned the Gala's revelers, nervously searching for Robin.  Unfortunately, all the men gathered about the green billiard table furthest from them, looked more or less the same.  Each tailored his suits on 95 Mount Street in Mayfair, ordered his shirts from Charvet in Paris, and purchased their cashmere socks from a genuine Mongolian.
    And yet, despite the widespread similarity, Robin Cooper still proved impossible to overlook.  He stood at the head of the table, dressed in a white dinner jacker over black tuxedo-tie, surrounded on one side by a woman in a scarlet dress with strands of maroon pearls for sleeves, and on the other by her twin, wearing a violet suede mini-skirt so short, it might have been a belt in a previous life.  He balanced an ivory pool que between both hands, caressing it playfully as he surveyed the table.  Victoria moved towards him, as, all rationality aside, watching him handle his que, stroking it up one side and down the other then clearing off the surplus chalk dust by blowing silkily along the tip, made her wish that she could take its place for the next shot.
    "How about it then, Robin?"  Yet another millionaire prompted,  "What are you waiting for?"
 "Don't rush him."  Ms. Suede Mini-Skirt rested her protective hand along the shoulder of Robin's white dinner jacket, and rubbed against his arm, comforting a man who didn't appear particularly in need of comfort.  "He's thinking."
    Robin winked at his unsolicited protector while unobtrusively sliding her hand off his arm.  Indicating the unbroken triangle of six balls at the far end of the table, he offered, "One shot.  Ball in each pocket."
    Glancing across the green felt in his search for takers, Robin spied Victoria watching.  He raised an eyebrow.  Unsure of how to respond, she simply looked away.  But not before she'd acknowledged another of his patented, sardonic smiles.
    "Gentlemen," Robin reached into his pocket and withdrew ten of Elizabeth Fund's specially made, $1,000 dollar chips, neatly laying each one out on the paneling in front of him.  "Place your bets."
    Victoria did not want to think about the many uses Gabriel's clinic could conceive of for the amount Robin was now proposing to gamble with.  So she just watched silently as the men congregated around the pool table casually reached into their pockets and came up with the chips to match his offering.
    Robin swept the entire pile aside as if its total worth was, in fact, that of a handful of plastic, and lined up his shot.  In spite of herself, Victoria felt her heart hammering along her rib cage as she waited for the moment of impact.  Robin drew back his elbow, then let it go with a crack, the tip of his que smacking the white ball and sending it reeling towards six others.
    He immediately filled the side and the upper pockets, but the red #2 and the blue-striped #11 took their sweet time, bouncing off four walls, then off each other, before drunkenly moseying inside their specified pouches.
    Robin swept up his winnings with one hand, then, carelessly, tossed them in Victoria's direction.
    "Here you go, Miss Morgan.  Don't spend it all in one place.  After all, it's the last Cooper money your brother will ever see."
    She'd tried to be good, tried to give Robin the benefit of the doubt, tried to convince herself that her suspicions about him were unfounded.  But, this was no murky suspicion.  Robin was out to get Gabriel.  Or Victoria.  Or both of them.  Either way, she refused to stand for it.  It didn't matter that they were surrounded by men and women who'd paid a substantial sum of money to attend the fund raiser.  It didn't matter that she was this close to making a scene, or that her employer, Douglas Cooper, was standing barely five feet away, a witness to her unprofessional outburst.
    Robin had gone too far.
    Now he would find out what happened when you attacked somebody Victoria Morgan loved.