The Russian Billionaire: A Romantic Suspense Novel by Georgia Carre (readict .TXT) 📕

A young man clears his throat next to us.

Both of us turn towards him.

“This is for you, Mr. Tsarnov,” he says, handing him an envelope.

Konstantin takes the envelope and I separate from him. He tears it open and there is a small card inside. The writing is in gold leaf. He looks at it, then he smiles.

“What is it?” I ask.

He shows me the card. I read it.

When the rat is bitten by a snake it keeps running because it thinks it escaped from the jaws of death. It doesn’t know the poison is already in its veins. That it is already dead.

“Is this from Helena?” I ask.

“Maybe. It is from them anyway.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because love will defeat them all. Every single time. They don’t know it yet. All they know is the power of venom. They don’t know that pure love is anti-venom.”

“Come on, let’s go home.”

“So you never meant to leave me?”

“Of course not. It is why I told you to bring your phone to our meeting. I wanted them to hear me reject you. I wanted them to think you had no value to me. That way you do not become leverage.”

“Konstantin, I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“You keep fucking stealing my lines.”

I gaze at him in wonder. “Did you just…”

He catches my face. “Yes, I just.”

“Say it.”

“I love you, Miss Raine Fillander. I fucking love you. I love you so much I wanted to punch that idiot who was flirting with you.”

“What idiot?”

“Yuri.”

“Ah, the guy who lives in Monaco.”

“That bastard is just a scammer. You don’t want to know him.”

“I do believe you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Of course, I’m fucking jealous. I’m going out of my mind with jealousy.”

I laugh, then I remember my little secret. “Konstantin, I’ve got something to tell you.”

“What?”

I spend hours playing and replaying all the different ways I could tell him, but in the end what comes out of my mouth are the words that have been uttered by women from time immemorial.

“I’m pregnant.”

Konstantin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zeudxXjuU

Right Here Waiting

“Yes, I know,” I tell her.

“How?” she asks, her eyes popping.

“Because you told Lois while she had a phone on her.”

“What? Were you listening to everything I said.”

“Someone on our side was. We had to know what the enemy knew.”

“Right. So are you… er… happy about it?”

“Happy? I was so fucking happy I broke down and cried when I read the transcript.”

Her big beautiful mouth stretches into the biggest grin known to mankind.

“I knew I couldn’t phone Lana Barrington so I wrote to her to plead with her to loan me some money to pay for Maddy’s procedure and start to secretly arrange it so it can be carried out right after I testify. I know it was really presumptuous of me to ask after only meeting her once, but I could tell she was kind hearted and your friend, and I was really, really desperate.”

“Yes, I know. She told me. Small change of plan with that one though,” I tell her.

She frowns. “Change of plan?”

“You can’t be the donor, Raine. You’re pregnant. I don’t want you to put your body through the stress that being a donor will bring. It is enough that you are trying to grow a child in your body.”

Her shoulders slump, but she doesn’t disagree.

“I know you really wanted to do it, but I think you’ve done enough for your sister, and everything is arranged. She will be admitted into hospital tomorrow”

“Tomorrow,” she says with a big sigh of relief.

“Yes, tomorrow,” I confirm. “Come on, let’s get out of this corridor and go home.”

“Home?” she whispers the word, as if she dare not say it out aloud. As if it is too precious an idea to even say aloud in case she hexes it.

I put my hand on the small of her back and led her towards the steps of the courthouse. “Yes, home. I’m moving you into my place.”

She shakes her head slowly, her eyes full of love. “Not yet, my darling. I can’t move in with you yet. I won’t leave Mom and Maddy to fend for themselves right now. I can’t donate bone marrow for Maddy, but I want to be there with her.”

“Well, it’ll be easier for you to do that from our place, since they’ll be moving to an apartment two floors down from us.”

Her eyes narrow with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I bought an apartment two floors down from us for them.”

She whirls out of the circle of my arms and stares at me with her enormous eyes. “You bought an apartment for my mom and sister?”

“Yup.”

She swallows hard. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“That’s… that’s… I don’t even know what to say. Than—” Her voice breaks and tears fill her eyes.

“And it’s in your mother’s name so even if I die tomorrow she has no worries about being homeless.”

“Are you even real?” she mumbles through her tears.

“I’m real, Raine. I’m as real as the little life growing inside you. We’re a family now. The three of us. And families live together.”

“How can you be so sure? What if you are not acquitted?”

I grin. “You want the honest truth? We didn’t even know you were going to come up with your surprise superstar performance today. We weren’t counting on anything from you, as we have figured out how the murder was committed.”

“You know who did it?”

“No, but we figured out how the killer did it.”

“How?”

“Remember how our bed creaked.”

She giggles. “How could I forget?”

“That’s because they had legs. Which means there was space under it. Whoever killed Vassily didn’t come in through the window. It was tightly shut from the inside. The killer arrived at least a day earlier and must have found out which room Vassily was booked into. He easily picked the old-fashioned lock of the room, once inside, all he had to do was wait. Our investigators found biscuit crumbs and other bits of food under the bed. Clearly, his mission was to