The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Bethany-Kris (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

The ridiculousness of his question even had Roman laughing, but he eventually calmed them both down with another gentle pull on Karine’s trembling hand still safe inside his own. Her laughs silenced with a little gasp when he had her stare locked on his once more.

“I was serious—what’s your middle name?”

Karine weaved her fingers with his. There was a hitch in her breath, a soft hiccup, when she said, “Lizabeta.”

“Your mother?”

She shrugged. “I think so.”

“I don’t have a ring, but I promise I’ll get you any single one that you want. If you want to have it designed, we can do that, too. Whatever you wa—”

“What I want is you. I don’t care about a ring.”

So honest.

And true.

Her smile deepened again at his wink, and Roman decided to just go for it. The I love you part of this whole thing had been easy when he simply said it, no hesitating. He wanted this to be exactly the same.

Because it was easy.

Love should be.

“Well, you better think about what you wanna say because I’m asking you to marry me, Karine Lizabeta Yazov.”

He thought she might take a second. Even if only to absorb him actually saying it, but her whispered yes fell from her trembling, pink lips the moment he finished asking.

Nothing had ever sounded so good.

Roman was up from the ground and kissing Karine before she could blink, when she did, he felt the splash of her tears from her dark eyelashes to his cheeks. He kissed every single one of those away, but that didn’t hide the questions he still found staring back in her eyes.

He wondered if she would ask them.

She was getting better at that.

It was her hand sliding down his chest that had Roman pulling away with a painful hiss. A reminder for both of them that his pain meant they were still in a dire situation.

“Sorry,” she was quick to say.

But Roman had her hand back in his, crushed against his aching ribs and her body tight against his own in the next breath. “It’s fine.”

His lips found her forehead.

He lingered there.

Karine asked, “What about Dima, and—”

“We’re gonna do one thing right now, babe. And won’t be worrying about him.”

He said it with confidence—even if it wasn’t something that he truly felt. That was Roman’s problem. He’d been taught to believe he could do anything simply because he said he could. It gave him an arrogance like no other that had served him better than well over the years.

It also made his failures all the more catastrophic, even if he had spent years drowning them in money and drugs.

This wouldn’t be one of those.

It couldn’t.

• • •

Money talked, bullshit walked.

And Roman had a lot of it.

Money, that was.

He hadn’t used his wealth to its full capacity before, but now he knew exactly where to use it. How to make that money talk.

The money he threw at people made them willing to turn their cheek to a lot of little details. Like when he was able to acquire a chartered private jet to Las Vegas in the middle of the night. They didn’t even ask him for fucking identification—the jet was already heading that way anyway to pick up the wealthy owner who had been staying in his weekend penthouse suite on the strip.

In Vegas, their first stop was at the office of a forger who was the top in the business. He’d ordered a new set of IDs for Karine that would help them move easier, and get everything else out of the way without much trouble.

Roman had already gotten rid of his phone, opting instead to pick up two burners that were only for him and Karine to call one another when he might need to leave her alone in the high-rise, luxury hotel suite for more than fifteen minutes. He didn’t use the burner to call anyone in New York, and wouldn’t unless he had absolutely no other option.

It was just him and Karine, flying solo. Along with the pile of cash he used to help their wings take flight.

He bought a new car in Vegas—a neon green with black accents Lambo—from a friend who had helped teach Roman the ropes when it came to boosting back in the day. Competition made that friendship hard after some time, but shit still worked out for the two in the end, he supposed.

As he and Karine drove through the city three days after their arrival, it made him laugh to see how much joy the lights and the life of Vegas brought to her. She marveled at all of it, mesmerized and taken with the sights and sounds of a new city. He suspected she was as much overwhelmed as he was overjoyed, but that didn’t stop her from reveling in the chaos. She couldn’t stop staring up through the sunroof at the way the lights danced overhead.

The best part, though?

She’d finally shown him that red dress. Well, it wasn’t so much a dress as a red jumpsuit that looked like one what with the way with hugged her body and billowed in the legs—and she had never been more sexy to him because she wore it well. And she knew it. It showed off her slender body and accentuated her perfect breasts with the low dip in the front and back. Her dark, wavy hair flew around her face in the breeze, but it was the happiness that sparkled in her eyes that killed him in the best kind of way.

“I want to come back here someday,” she said, airless in the wind.

Roman smirked. “Whatever you want—maybe we’ll make a tradition of it.”

“We better.”

She flashed a teasing smile and he wished he could frame that moment when she looked so carefree beside him—flying high, because for only a second, it felt like nothing and no one was chasing them. When nothing was holding her back.

Because that was when he knew.

This was the woman he would always love.

• • •

They drove up to