Free BWWM: The Billionaire's Marriage of Convenience (BWWM Russian Alpha Male Romance) (Interracial BBW Billionaire Pregnancy Short Stories) by Serena Vale Page A

no forensic precedent for its use – the federal police had to close the investigation.”
    Regina knew the outcome without Alexi needing to speak to it.  Too many possible suspects… too many people who could have made the shot since it was amateur… and without anyone to question there was no way to pin the crime on any one particular company or person.  Too much spade work and not enough people who might care to get the job done.
    She felt her sympathy expanding for her client.  “Did they try again?”
    Alexi was silent a moment before pouring himself another glass of vodka and draining half of it down his throat before answering.  “They did not,” he said plainly.  He looked at his half-empty glass.  “At times I wonder if perhaps Lada was truly the target and not I.  The thought makes me… furious.”
    She felt her lips becoming dry and she licked them nervously.  There was still the question that begged asking.  “So… the money you swindled?”
    “It all came from the companies and contractors that I worked with… the same that did not provide their funding to Lada’s civil projects.”  His eyes turned hateful for a moment but the look soon passed, “The same companies that could have manufactured the rifle that shot my wife.”  He drank the last of the contents of his glass.  “I decided that if the police could not provide me with justice, I would find my own.  So, rather than see their completed military projects I diverted their money to complete roads, schools, community centers… everything that Lada was trying to build.  And I felt content with that… if I could not strangle the man who took my wife… or the man who gave that order.”
    Regina was uncertain if she admired this man for what he had done or if she was afraid of him for it.  Men that had been motivated by murder could often enough be compelled to commit the crime themselves.  True, it was a non-violent crime that he committed but she’d heard of men of peace become stone-fisted at the first opportunity.  Those that did would sometimes not distinguish between the ones that they hunted and the ones that got in their way. 
    What he had committed was, in most courts, a crime of passion.  Money could always be replaced but unless the opposite party was willing to take that reparation and leave it at that, it was a matter that was never settled quietly. 
    She returned back to what she knew about the case at hand.  “And they didn’t look kindly on your efforts over there?  Motivated by family love and all of that to seek justice for your wife?”
    His face became grave.  “Despite my doubts, all accounts support the theory that the bullet was meant to kill me.  Lada was not prominent in her circles, not even for being my wife.  She was – pardon me for saying – a no one.  There was no reason for her to be murdered… nobody stood to gain anything from it.  If they assassinated me on the other hand…” Alexi said, his voice again faltering before he corrected himself.  “Lada saved my life… but at the cost of her own.  I tried to fight for the case in Russia, but considering that my legal pursuits would have set back numerous government contracts that were depending on the development of those new weapons, the case was dismissed for the greater good.”
    She arched an eyebrow.  “I mean no disrespect, but that sounds like a very communist way of doing things.”
    Alexi smirked.  “We have a government much like your own, Regina… that does not mean that the old aristocracy disappeared in a day.  Those with money and influence were able to survive, like cockroaches.  And their ways of getting what they wanted survived as well, they are just as viable now as they were fifty years ago.  A few words whispered in the right ears could carry a man with no legs up mountains in my country.”
    She wanted to say that the concept was unfamiliar to her but couldn’t manage it.  She had been at her