AllFreeNovel
Share Us
How can she be so calm when it’s dissecting me from the inside out?
“Fuck, Ada. Don’t ask me to make this decision. I can’t leave you with that animal.”
“It’s seven more days, not fourteen years. I can do this, and so can you. We have to. For Alex…”
For us.
I know she’s right, but it’s like she’s stabbing me with the truth.
“I’ll bend the rules,” I snarl, fighting it to the last. “I’ll find a way to keep you safe.”
“Stolen moments, Frankie.” Her voice is shaking now, giving her sadness away.
“No, Ada.” I tug her to a stop on the threshold of the room and crowd her up against the doorframe, craving her body one last time before I go. “These are the moments we’re stealing back.”
* * *
I’m scalingthe outside wall, trying not to castrate myself on the barbed wire, when the first black Range Rover appears in the distance.
Dropping down onto the grass verge, I keep low to the ground as it passes, and then I’m crossing the road to the empty property opposite.
Soon after, the second Range Rover appears, then a third and a fourth. No Ferrari, though. No Semenov.
At least that’s something, right?
Wrong.
It’s just a stay of execution, and I’m chuckling bitterly to myself about it as I approach the SUV. Most men I know tell themselves anything to avoid the ugliness in front of them, but I know the truth.
I shouldn’t have left her.We didn’t have a choice.
We’re not making this sacrifice for ourselves now. We’re doing it for our son.
“What’s so funny?” drawls a voice from the darkness. “Your dick can’t be that small, surely?”
I pull my gun so fast the man leaning against my car doesn’t have time to curse. When I blink and see the familiar face grinning back at me, I blow out a relieved breath.
“Christ, Aiden, what the hellare you doing here?”
“There are a lot of religious connotations in that sentence,” he muses, lifting a half-eaten apple to his mouth for another bite. “Are you part of the God Squad now? Maybe they can pray you up a bigger dick if you ask the congregation nicely?”
Rolling my eyes, I holster my gun. This isn’t the same edgy man who was waiting for me outsideLa Bastillein France. The is Aiden Knight back to his ruthless, swaggering, bitchy best.
He finishes up the apple and chucks the core over his shoulder. “Thought it was an appropriate snack to have. Remind me again, is library girl called Ada or Eve?”
“Don’t push it, Raven,” I warn. “It’s been a hell of a night. Tell me why you’re in the middle of suburbia at ten p.m. on a Friday evening, in a country you haven’t visited in over a decade.”
He stretches his legs out in front of him and yawns. “Grayson asked me to check that you were upholding your side of the bargain. No last-minute deviations or…procurements.” His gaze starts to wander over my black jeans. “Is that Ada Semenov in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”
“Don’t call her that. Where’s Issa?”
“In Monaco.”
“She okay?”
“She’s eight months pregnant and feeling it, so perhaps you should be directing that question at me? Last week I nearly lost my left nut sack because her pomegranate salad was too cold. A day later, it was too warm. I don’t even make the fucking food. I have a Michelin star chef at my disposal, but I’m the man who knocked her up so I’m the first in the firing line.”
I smirk and silently high five Issa for giving her husband hell. She’s as sweet as she is strong—a stunning force of nature that he never saw coming. She played Aiden at his own game, then hit him with a Full House for her final hand. She didn’t just win the jackpot. She reformed the unreformable playboy.
