HARLES HAYWARD WAS IN HIS STUDY, SITTING IN A LEATHER wing chair with the VCR's remote control in his hand— rewinding and playing the CNN news story about Cole when Jessica took Diana in to see him. "Diana would like to talk to you, Charles."

Charles looked round from his chair and nodded; then he pressed the rewind button on the remote again. "Hello," he said, beckoning to the sofa across from him. "Sit down." He pressed the play button as Diana sat on the sofa, and to her disbelief, he watched the news clip again right in front of her, smiling a little as he did.

There was something almost ghoulish about what he was doing, and it was made worse by Jessica hovering in the doorway. Diana drew a careful breath, knowing this would be her only chance to find out what she needed to know and to try to neutralize it. "I wonder if I could talk to you privately, Charles."

"Of course," Jessica said and backed out of the doorway.

"Certainly, my dear," Charles said, stopping the tape then laying the remote control on the coffee table. He looked at her in expectant silence, his face devoid of any of the cruel satisfaction she'd seen when he watched the television screen.

Diana felt her way forward very carefully. "Charles," she began quietly, "after my father died, it was you I always turned to for advice."

He nodded as if pleased by that.

"And when I decided to start the company, you were one of the people who loaned me money to do it."

"I invested in a promising venture," he said tactfully. It was what he'd always said whenever she tried to thank him.

"Now I need help again. Only this time it's much more important. It's about Cole."

His face turned as cold as his eyes. "In that case, I will give you the best advice I have ever given you. Get rid of him!"

"I won't do that."

He surged to his feet, towering over her until Diana stood up, too. "Right now, I'm trying to think of you as an innocent victim, Diana. But if you don't get rid of him and get out of the way, you're going to be covered with the same dirt he is. Congress has control over the SEC, and we have enough on Cole Harrison to hang him."

" 'We'?" Diana burst out. " 'We'? You've not involved with Congress, Doug is."

"We are going to hang him, and then we're going to bury him," Charles lashed back.

"Why are you doing this?" Diana cried. "What has Cole done to you to make you hate him so?" With an effort she forced herself to sound willing instead of combative. "Help me understand—then I can decide whether to do as you say."

The control Charles had been exerting over his temper suddenly snapped. "You want to know what he did to me?" he jeered in an awful voice. "I'll tell you what he did—He destroyed my family! That filthy son of a bitch was the real stud in my stable. God knows how many other of Barbara's little friends he molested—"

" 'Molested,' " Diana said weakly.

He grabbed her shoulders. "You wanted to know and now you're going to know all of it. Do you remember my beautiful little daughter? Do you?" he demanded with a shake.

Diana jerked free and stepped back, but she couldn't make herself leave without hearing it all. "Of—of course I remember," she said shakily.

"That animal got my little girl pregnant. I almost walked in on them at the stable one night, and I ran him off, but I never dreamed he'd actually had sex with that child."

Diana shook her head. "Oh, no, Charles, you're wrong—"

"I'm not wrong!" he shouted. "I'm the one who has been wronged. When Barbara realized she was pregnant—almost five months pregnant—she told her mother and Jessica took her to have an abortion. I'd have never known anything about it except for three things. Do you know what they are?" he bit out.

Diana swallowed and shook her head.

"I found out because Barbara almost died, and because she had to have a hysterectomy to prevent it, and because my little girl has spent the rest of her life in the care of one shrink after another because of it! And do you know what reminds me of it every day?"

"No."

"Grandchildren! I don't have any. That fucking son of a bitch you married deprived me of a daughter and my daughter of children and me of grandchildren."

He pointed to the door and his voice shook with wrath. "Now, you get the hell out of my house and don't ever come back!"