“Oh my God. You mean that, don’t you?”
“Try me, honey and find out. Now, what are you not telling me?”
“I am ill, Alexander.”
He stared at her worried.
“It’s the real reason I haven’t left Ross. I can’t support myself. I am not allowed to work and Ross has threatened to cut me off without a penny. He has me trapped. I believe he still has hopes of reaching my father whom I am estranged from. He is a very wealthy man.”
“What is wrong with you?” he asked with heavy concern pushing the rest of what she was telling him to the back of his mind for now.
“Some kind of brain disorder apparently, functional neurological disorder. It’s benign but I have seizures, non-epileptic ones. They are pretty violent at times, I can’t walk for being dizzy, I have falls and my body contorts and paralyzes me. You might think I was having a stroke,” she told him angrily. “I can’t believe my life has turned out like this. Believe me, Alexander, you don’t want to be burdened or embarrassed with someone like me on your arm,” she said pulling away from him despite his best efforts to hold on to her.
His heart leapt for her.
“Why have you not told me before? I could have gotten you help. The right, doctors. I could have… Why won’t you trust me?”
“Haven’t you got it yet, Alexander? I don’t trust men. Even you. No matter how much I want to trust you, I can’t take the chance. Too much has happened in the past. Just leave me alone. You are better off without me.”
She pushed away his hands and opened the door slipping inside closing it quickly in his face. He immediately reached for the door handle to follow her inside but heard the lock turn preventing him from gaining access.
“Damn it, Scarlett. Let me in. If you think that is going to prevent me from loving you and taking you out of here, think again. I don’t frighten so easily.”
He shook the door handle once more but stopped when he heard footsteps along the marble floor coming towards him. He looked up to see Ross walking towards him taking a call on his mobile.
Alexander leaned in towards the door and gave her an order, “Pack your suitcase, Scarlett. You are leaving with me tonight. I will come to collect you soon.”
Ross finished his call.
“Alexander, I didn’t know you were here. I thought you weren’t coming over until Friday.”
The billionaire walked towards him. “We need to talk, Ross,” was all he said.
Chapter 4
“I am firing you. I am taking Scarlett away from you so she can have a better life with me. You don’t deserve her.”
Ross just laughed and potted one of the red balls on the snooker table.
“I knew you wanted her. I shouldn’t have let you near my wife. She belongs to me.”
“And you think that is going to stop me from taking her,” Alexander told him calmly walking around the table to determine the angle he should pot the next ball.
He drove it easily into the pocket in one shot. Ross whistled.
“You are one hell of a snooker player, Alexander but you are way off on this one. Scarlett stays with me. I am too close to mending the rift between her and her father. She stands to inherit a fortune and I want to be the one controlling it. Do you even know who he is?”
“The Billionaire Media Mogul, Lance Bartlett. My biggest rival. I don’t give a damn about him or his underworld connections to London gangs and the Russian Mafia. I don’t want Scarlett back in the arms of a father like that. He’s dangerous. Don’t you realize, she blames him for killing her mother?”
Ross gave a heavy irritated sigh, pausing to take another gulp of his whiskey and took another shot.
“It wasn’t just her mother but her baby as well.”
Alexander stiffened, gripping his cue a little tighter.
“Her child? I didn’t know.”
“When I found her working as a lawyer under a different name she was a wreck. Her father wanted her married to the son of his Russian Mafia friend and pregnant with his child to cement a business relationship between them. Scarlett didn’t want to go through with it. She tried to run from her father many times but he always found her and brought her back. The son Ivan Litvenko got impatient with her resisting his advances and raped her. She fell pregnant and was made to go through with the marriage.”
Alexander felt his throat go dry. All he could think of doing was holding her. He wanted to carry her out of the house right now and lock her in his own home with him to keep her safe.
“It’s your shot, Alexander,” Ross said a satisfied smile lightly playing on his fair features.
Alexander mentally checked himself and lined up another shot. Ross continued.
“Her mother helped her escape. Her father put out a hit on the mother and ordered Scarlett and the child brought back but the baby was caught in the car bomb with the mother. Scarlett was thrown clear and taken to hospital and the police helped her with a new identity. Lucky for her, shortly after, Ivan was killed when a rival Mafia family took him out for encroaching on their protection business. Scarlett gave the police details of some of her father’s operations and what she knew of the Litvenkos but they were never able to implicate him in the murder or fully trap her husband’s family. I met her and we were married three years ago.”
Alexander took the shot lining the ball up.
“And he never found her? Until now?” Alexander asked trying to keep his temper reined in.
“When she finally told me who she really was, I decided to look him up. He loves his daughter despite what has gone down and he wants her back but more than anything he wants an heir. I make her pregnant and I become a very rich man and Lance Bartlett gets everything he wants.”
The bastard sounded pleased with himself. Alexander gripped the cue again wanting to impale Ross on it. But he simply smiled.
“I always thought it was strange you both never had any children. Scarlett dotes on your niece’s children. Now I know why. And I suppose you have been trying your damn hardest to make her conceive?”
“The woman is barely interested in having sex with me.”
“Can you blame her after the way you treat her? Not to mention your constant adultery. You know how to pick some charming women, Ross.”
Ross laughed.
“Yes, I heard you had a run in with Amelia, this morning.”
Ross lined up another shot and stretched across the table to aim the end of the cue at the ball.
“You don’t even fucking love Scarlett.” Alexander retorted.
“True but I love the money she and the child will come in to. Lance has offered to put me in charge of it and I can do what I want as long as the child is male and brought back into the family fold whether Scarlett wants it or not.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Five months ago. Scarlett doesn’t know a thing and neither do the police or the witness protection program. I want her pregnant first.”
He laughed making Alexander’s stomach knot.
“She doesn’t even know I am trying to make her pregnant. She thinks her contraception pills are keeping her safe but I changed them for something else in secret. She just has sex with me because I constantly pester her and she feels guilty.”
“You’ve broken her down and made her feel like your failure of a