Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
He shook his head. “I gave it to Dante.”
“You did?”
“It was sort of the clincher. He was hesitant to get involved, and only agreed when I threw in the club, on top of most of my other assets and all my uncle’s business ventures.”
“I thought all your uncle’s business dealings were kept secret from you. How did you hand them over?”
“By handing over Sokolov’s men. They’ll fill in the blanks. They’ll kind of have to if they want to become a part of the Dombruso organization. Plus, my uncle was doing a lot of business with the Dombrusos, and all those operations will belong to Dante free and clear now.”
“What other assets did you give him?”
“I gave him almost everything I own – the house, the Maserati, my bank accounts.”
“All of that, just for helping you tonight?”
“Not just tonight. You and me and our families, we’re all under the protection of the Dombruso organization now, so my uncle can’t possibly retaliate. No one can hurt us.”
I stared at him in amazement. “You gave up so much for me.”
“I love you, Jamie. I’d have laid down my life if that’s what it took to save you.”
I pulled him to me and kissed him deeply, then held his gaze and said, “Will you marry me, Dmitri?”
His eyes went wide, his gorgeous, sexy lips parting in surprise. And he whispered, “Yes. God, yes. Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Good,” I said with a smile, kissing him again before resting my head against his chest. It hadn’t been the big, romantic proposal that I’d planned on, but it had just felt so right in that moment.
He smiled happily and murmured, “You want to marry me.”
“Of course. That’s what you do when you love someone with all your heart.”
“Let’s do it soon, ok? I can’t wait to be your husband.”
“Sure baby, we can absolutely do it soon. We’ll probably have to have to keep it pretty simple, like a backyard wedding at my parents’ house, since we’re both going to be totally broke. I decided I’m resigning from the police force.”
“Why are you resigning?”
“It’s not what I want. As I build a new future with my new husband, I want it to include a career that makes me happy.”
“I think that’s great.” After a moment he added, “Hey, do you have any interest in owning a bar?”
I looked up at him. “I always thought that sounded like fun. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” he said, “I won one from Dante a couple weeks ago in our bimonthly poker game. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. And he actually didn’t want it back when I was handing over my assets – he ran it for a while and decided it was too time consuming.”
“I just knew you were an excellent poker player,” I said with a grin. Then I asked, “What kind of bar is it?”
He grinned too and told me, “It’s an Irish-themed sports pub called Flannigan’s, in the Richmond. Like I have a clue what to do with something like that.”
“You own Flannigan’s?” I said with surprise. “That’s awesome. I love that place.”
“Well, good. Then you can have it as a wedding present,” he told me. “Do whatever you want with it. But if you decide to keep it and run it, I’m actually really good at managing a business. We can probably get it to turn a pretty sizeable profit. And once it’s running smoothly…well, maybe I’ll go back to school.”
“And study what?”
He glanced at me. “I’ve always had an interest in computer science. That’s what I was planning to study when I quit school.”
“Right. You dropped out at the start of your sophomore year,” I recalled.
He smiled at that. “I’d love to see the file you had on me when you came to investigate me, Officer Nolan.”
“It was fairly dry reading. I found out later that all the juicy bits had been unintentionally omitted. It didn’t include anything about your sex life.” I gave him a playful wink.
“Oh God. I mean, anything you want to know, I’ll tell you. But I’m really glad you didn’t read about it first in some file. I could only imagine what you’d have thought of me.”
“Um, that you were a smoking hot guy that got laid a lot? I probably could have handled that,” I teased lightly. Then I added, “Actually, I do have one question about your sex life.”
“Only one?”
“For now,” I grinned. “So here’s my question: were you and Dante Dombruso involved at some point?”
“Yes and no. We went out a couple times, maybe two years ago, but I never let him fuck me. And of course he wasn’t about to let me fuck him, he doesn’t do that. So we were kind of at an impasse. Now he’s just a friend, albeit a highly lethal one.”