Wild Billionaire Romance - Chapter 68: Chapter 68

JOSEF
I vaulted over the table the second I saw Meredith falter.
“Meredith!” I roared, my pulse racing as I cradled her close to my chest.
My ass landed hard on the unforgiving floor with a dull thud. But I caught her before she came into contact with the hardwood.
Thank fuck.
“Boss?” Mario, one of my personal guards, called me.
But I wasn’t focused on him. My attention was on her.
Meredith always had the uncanny ability to capture every bit of my focus.
For a guy, whose primary job was protecting people and being aware of my surroundings, that sure as fuck was not good.
Sure, I’d stepped back from personal security. Adrik was married now, and so was Marat. I had excellent men and women working for me, and they did their jobs well.
Besides, I was starting to feel like a goddamn third wheel. I was the president of my own company and had enough stock in theirs that I did not need to play bodyguard any longer.
I only did it for so long because I had nothing else to do. The cold, dark shadows I lived in were just so empty. Guarding Adrik and Marat myself was simply a way to remind myself I was still human.
After all the years of committing God knew how many sins, I was at my core a man.
Not just the Big Bad Wolf. But a real flesh and blood man.
Being near Meredith was a sore reminder of how much I’d cut myself off over the years.
Starving my humanity. Hardening my heart. Bleeding my soul.
It seemed the only way to survive at the time. But now, fuck, now I was beginning to suspect there was another way.
Maybe the Big Bad Wolf didn’t have to end up starving, cold, and alone, after all.
Goddamn.
She smelled good. Really good. Mouthwatering.
Her skin bore the same rich cocoa butter fragrance I remembered from our time together before.
I’d never seen a woman faint, so this was a first. But watching her beloved face go pale as her eyes rolled in the back of her head was more than I could stand.
“Get me a fucking doctor!” I shouted at Mario, who was hovering close by.
I shuffled her in my arms and rose to my feet carefully.
She was so damn beautiful up close, and I was a goddamn lecher for thinking so when she was clearly suffering from stress and fuck knew what else.
Fifteen years of self-loathing and anger.
Fifteen years of wanting vengeance.
It was right in front of me, within my grasp. I finally had Meredith Gray right where I wanted her.
But it seemed I still hadn’t learned my lesson when it came to this woman.
Needing to make sure Meredith was safe was as deeply ingrained in me now as it had been then. As if protecting her was simply a fact of life.
Fuck me.
I’d searched for her over the years. Frustrated myself to no end when I couldn’t find her.
Tried to forget her with other women. With booze. With violence.
Nothing worked.
I thought I’d die without the satisfaction of bringing her to her knees.
But all that changed a little over eight months ago when her old man started trolling banks for loans. Gray Corps was in trouble, and I finally had an in.
I wasn’t a good man.
Hell. That was an understatement.
No one who was good would have earned the nickname Big Bad Wolf.
But when you worked for the Volkov Brothers, it sort of came with the territory. Adrik once explained that his surname, Volkov, meant wolf. So, that was what we were.
Adrik, Marat, and me.
The Dark Wolf. The Devil Wolf. And the Big Bad Wolf.
Though technically, I had earned my nickname and my reputation in the military, and that was before I knew them both. At forty years old, I was older than Adrik by one year and Marat by over ten years.
Fucker.
But they were my brothers by choice, and I owed them everything. They were the closest thing to family that I had.
That I would ever have.
Meredith had destroyed whatever good there might have been after the military threw me away. I was twenty-five when I met her. And she’d barely been legal.
It was stupid, putting all my faith in someone so young. But she seemed older than her years. She was one of those rare old souls.
Her brilliance, her wit, her confidence were things of beauty. She had an appreciation for life I’d never seen in anyone else.
Meredith was like the sun coming out after what had been a long time in the shadows for this jaded ex-soldier.
She flirted. She teased. She chased. I evaded every attempt she made to waylay me and dismissed her feelings as hero worship or a childish crush.
But eventually, we became friends. We talked. Confided in each other. And yeah, I fucking fell for her. Head over goddamn heels.
But I didn’t fucking touch her until the clock chimed midnight on her eighteenth birthday.
I was going to marry her. We were supposed to leave the following night after she had a birthday dinner with her father where she was going to tell him everything.
Only Meredith didn’t meet me at our planned rendezvous. Her father, or stepfather as I’d just learned Franklin Gray to be, had shown up instead.
Fucking smarmy prick had apologetic crocodile tears in his eyes when he handed me her note. He’d added a check, of course, to shut me up and soften the blow.
“She’s too young for a commitment. Too young to know she shouldn’t play with men’s hearts.”
That was his half-assed explanation. A pitiful excuse for his failure to educate her in matters of the heart.
But I still accepted it and his check.
I took that bastard’s money and gave it to Adrik and Marat for their fledgling company, buying myself a nice piece of stock.
It took a few years, but I made enough money from that initial investment to start my own company. Later, I diversified my assets and now I qualified as a bonafide billionaire myself.
Not bad for a ward of the state who never knew his own parents.
But that didn’t assuage my thirst for revenge.
It took years for the opportunity to arise. But it had. It finally fucking had.
I’d kept tabs on Gray Corps and waited for the Franklin motherfucking Gray to fuck up.
Like a viper hiding in the grass.
So, when the opportunity arose, I struck. I went for his fucking jugular.
I knew taking his company would hurt the old prick. I’d hoped the cutoff of her funds would sting the woman who broke my heart.
But I never wanted to see Meredith physically injured. I wasn’t that much of a monster.
I did not physically hurt women. I hired female staff, mercenaries, and experts in the security field to do that. Sure, I was all for equal opportunity.
But I knew my physical strength and I would never unleash that kind of fury on a female. Nor would I allow any of the men who worked for me to do so.
One fucking foot out of line, and they were gone.
My feelings for Meredith were fucking complicated. I wanted to hate her. I wished I never loved her.
Despite all that, I couldn’t stand the idea of one strand of her fiery mane being hurt.
No way I could watch her crash onto the hardwood floor.
Not waiting for an ambulance, I carried Meredith to one of the several armored SUVs I had waiting in a fleet in the garage below Volkov Towers.
“Let’s go,” I told my driver, Edgar.
Traffic wouldn’t be bad yet.
My heart hammered inside my chest, and my gut clenched with worry. I didn’t realize how much I needed her to be okay until I saw her faint.
“Uh, where to, Boss?” he asked.
“Get us to the hospital,” I growled, realizing I hadn’t given him any direction.
I sat in the back with Meredith still unconscious in my arms. My attention was on her pale face as my driver did what he was told.
Fuck. Shit.
More of her essence filtered through to my nose, and I could hardly wrap my head around it. After all this fucking time, her scent still drove me wild.
She smells the same. So damn good.
I closed my eyes, just breathing her in, allowing the cocoa butter essence to wash over me. It was crazy how smells could affect the brain.
A thousand images of Meredith popped into my head.
Her smiling up at me.
Her pale skin glowing in the moonlight as I unwrapped her beneath the stars.
The way she looked when I took her innocence.
A plan started to form in my brain. A dark, twisted plan, far more ruthless than the one I’d put into motion all those months before.
Ruining Gray Corps had been my end goal. But I suddenly realized I didn’t have to stop there. I didn’t have to settle for some empty corporate victory.
My pride demanded restitution for what she’d done to me. And now that I had her in my arms again, I realized there was a way for me to have it.
The possibility left me tingling.