Wild Billionaire Romance - Chapter 64: Chapter 64

JOSEF
When Meredith reached out to Volkov Industries with a request to meet to discuss terms regarding the default on the loan her father had taken out with his business as collateral, I was the one who received the message.
She was the only woman who’d ever brought me to my knees, and it wasn’t a past I liked to remember. But our positions were reversed this time, and I knew the second I walked into the boardroom I’d do anything to keep my Little Red from getting the upper hand again.
Her gorgeous mane of bright red waves was fastened at her nape. The style should have looked severe, but her hair was never one to be tamed.
Her emerald eyes sparked surprise, then anger, as I took my seat across from her.
“Josef,” she said my name and I had to close my eyes at the emotions roiling through me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I represent Volkov Industries and I am calling in your loan in full, Miss Gray.”
“What? You can’t!”
“I can. And I am,” I replied, fury feeding my desire to see her squirm.
My gaze roamed her face, absorbing the shock, taking in the changes time had made. It had been fifteen years since I’d seen her. She was little more than a child then. But goddamn it, how I’d loved her.
The curve of her lips was the same. But there were fine lines around her mouth.
Not smile lines. These were different. Sadder.
The dead organ inside my chest squeezed, and I nearly grunted at the pain of it.
“Where is your father? I should be discussing this with him.”
“He’s in the hospital. Heart attack.”
“What? I hadn’t heard.”
“Why would you?”
My phone beeped, and I looked down to see a message from Adrik. Oh shit. Marat’s daughter was just born.
A mixture of disbelief, happiness and envy filled me, but happiness won out, outweighing the others. I had no family of my own, and the Volkov brothers were the closest thing to it.
Adrik and Marat were the family I chose, who chose me. I was sorry I’d missed the part where Marat had gone rogue wolf and hunted the motherfuckers who’d sabotaged one of the Volkov mines.
But since I’d trained the man myself, I believed every single rumor of the Devil Wolf I’d heard since then.
Well done, brother.
It was a good thing Marat was younger than Adrik, or he’d have given his brother’s rep a run for his money. I smirked. It was about fucking time he realized what he was capable of. And how very interesting that a woman had shown him the way.
“Is that a smile for another life you ruined?” Meredith spat.
I looked up, schooling my face to show no emotions. She looked hostile, angry. And I was confused.
“You can’t mean you think I ruined your life, Little Red.”
What the fuck was she talking about? I was there all those years ago, rooted to the spot we’d promised to meet. I’d waited hours only to have her father come with some shitty little note from her saying she didn’t mean any of it.
Not the declarations of love. Not the giving of herself to me in the moonlit garden behind her bedroom. Not the promise to leave with me.
Franklin Gray promised not to press charges against me if I left that night, so I did. I was young. Stupid. Not the powerful man I was today.
But none of that explained why she was staring daggers at me, pissed as all hell.
Fuck. She was still so damn pretty when she was angry. Her emerald eyes spat green fire at me, and that red hair seemed to glow like flames.
My cock stirred and only through the extraordinary self-control did I manage to sit there seemingly unaffected.
“Ha! You’re the one who walked out, and I was left to pick up the pieces,” she said, stunning the fucking shit out of me.
I frowned. I had a feeling maybe neither of us had the full story. Something was not right in the way things had gone down all those years ago.
True, it had taken me some time to find a weakness in Gray Corp. Years, actually. But once I’d fooled her father into taking out a loan at a bank I happened to have a controlling interest in, the rest was easy.
It just took patience. Eight months was nothing after I’d spent the past fifteen years in torment, waiting for the chance to pay back the woman who almost broke me.
Goddamn her for still looking so beautiful.
Once upon a time, I was mad for her. But she threw me away.
I’d been a fun distraction. Just something she’d used to scratch an itch. She’d wanted a bad boy between her legs to piss Daddy off, and I stupidly ran to fill the position.
Once upon a time, Meredith Gray used me.
Now it was my turn.
EPILOGUE FOUR
DESTINY
The bed was warm and I sighed, opening my eyes slowly as I floated in that place between wake and sleep.
The sound of humming was soothing and I turned my head, focusing in the darkness on the familiar figure of my handsome husband, his tattooed back towards me as he rocked our baby girl in his capable arms.
I didn’t know what I love more. That the billionaire playboy who looked like a fallen angel had turned into such an incredibly possessive, loyal, and faithful husband or that he was so completely devoted to me and our Little Lucy.
Maybe I just loved how good he was at loving us.
“I tried not to wake you,” his soft voice reached my ears and I smiled as he placed the now sleeping baby back in her bassinet.
“You didn’t,” I assured him, scooting back so he could crawl in beside me.
“Did I ever thank you?” He asked suddenly and I frowned as I snuggled into his side.
“Thank me? For what?”
“Just for being you,” he said, kissing me so sweetly if I didn’t already love him like crazy I would have fallen right then.
“I love you,” I said, and smiled at the appreciative rumble that reverberated through my husband’s sexy as sin body.
“I love you too, my sweet Dumplin’. Always.”
I fell asleep just like that. With Marat’s strong arms wrapped around me, safe and secure in the knowledge that our love was real and true. I’d never known happiness the way I knew it now. And I never regretted a single thing about the way we came together.
How could I when he was everything I’d ever wanted? Marat was my home. My heart. My very soul.
He called me his wild temptation, but the truth was, he was mine. I’d never stop wanting him. Not as long as there was breath in my body.
The end.