The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club Read Online Free PDF

frequent and, heedless of her request, he constantly brought under-age girls back to the villa, where he would abuse them, often so loudly that the sounds of the young girls’ sobbing penetrated Carlotta’s bedroom – despite being as far away from her husband’s vile den as it could possibly be.
    ‘One day – one day it will all end,’ Livvy told her comfortingly.
    ‘But how?’ sighed Carlotta, watching the now six-year-old Flora play with her favourite parrot. ‘How can it?’

    The official cause of Nicanor’s death seven years later was a heart attack, but everyone wondered how someone so young, so vital, could have had a heart condition. Carlotta had found his body hanging by a black silk stocking from a rafter in his lair; a chair overturned and an orange stuck in his mouth, while a terrified teenaged whore in a Nazi cap wearing one black stocking and a garter belt screamed her head off. His family was shocked with the suddenness of his death, even though his debauchery was common knowledge among the elite of Buenos Aires.
    With the help of the family lawyer, Carlotta had managed to brush the potential scandal of her husband’s death efficiently under the Aubusson carpet, and salvage Nicanor’s reputation, but not without first taking some graphic photos of the death scene. No longer the ignorant and naïve girl she had been before their marriage, she made sure to show his immediate family some of the photos, in the event there was any resistance to his will, which left her a very handsome woman in every aspect.
    A month after Nicanor’s funeral, and to escape the animosity of her in-laws, she thought about taking her daughter and her fortune away and start a new life abroad. Why had she never found the true love that her childhood dreams had foretold? A life in the dissolute world of the mega-rich of Buenos Aires had never dimmed her romantic hopes. She had stuck it out with Nicanor because she had no choice – and, truth be told, that life was infinitely preferable to the poverty she would have had to endure if she hadn’t married him.
    Last year, when she and Nicanor had attended the Grand Prix in Monaco, she had met a charming Italian, Maximus Gobbi, Jr. Gobbi had given her his card and said smoothly, ‘If you ever need anything at all, my dear, I would be only too happy to assist you.’

C HAPTER T HREE

    Monte-Carlo, May 2014
    Maximus Gobbi heaved his enormous bulk out of the rented vintage MG. This exercise consisted of several false starts, a copious amount of groaning, and left him with a ripped shirt and a face flushed from exertion. He adjusted his crumpled peach linen suit and lumbered up the white marble steps of the Hôtel de Paris.
    The sun was shining, the birds were singing and Monte-Carlo was buzzing at this time of the year. The Cannes Film Festival was just finishing and this was the opening day of the Monaco Grand Prix.
    Maximus had no intention of doing something as plebeian as sitting in the stands to watch the race. The noise alone would drive him up the wall. No, it was far more interesting to be a guest at the celebrity-studded luncheon thrown by the Russian oligarch Sergei Litvak, who collected stars as some people collect rare paintings.
    Maximus strolled through the opulent foyer and turned into the large dining room where the hundred or so invitees, the
crème de la crème
of the jet set, gathered to gossip and sip their morning cocktails. He quickly scanned the room with the expert eye of a hunter, missing nothing and no one. He pretended not to notice the B-list reality-star couple, awkwardly huddled in a corner with their year-old child inappropriately frocked up in a black chiffon tutu and biker boots.
    His glance settled for a second on Mina Corbain, the rock-star singer who was rising quickly to the top of the charts under the auspices of mega-manager and producer Khris Kane. Mina – a gorgeous young sprite of a girl in her late teens – was Khris’s latest