Free BWWM: Chosen By The Russian Mafia (A BWWM Billionaire Mafia Romance) (BBW Alpha Male Pregnancy Short Stories) by Serena Vale Page B

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 job long enough to know that a man who was well connected, both socially and politically, could make whole countries and then burn them to warm their hands if they felt the need.  And all the while they wouldn’t so much as get singed for it.  A rich man could find avenues that would protect him from justice… even from other rich men.
    “So when you took their money you were already over here?”
    He nodded.  “I arranged it with my business managers that it would happen this way.  This way the blame would rest firmly upon me and not upon them, not that the prosecution – Abram – would see it any differently.  He blamed me for Lada’s death, claiming that I should have built an iron castle around her to protect his only daughter.”  He refilled his glass with the last of the vodka in the bottle and sipped it.
    “I take it she didn’t care to be locked up?”
    Alexi almost smiled.  “She had told me when I first met her that she didn’t care to be locked up like a dog in cage or protected like some priceless jewel.  She had told me that she had legs to carry her to other places and eyes to see things other than high walls.  Our house was no a luxury palace, but a simple home.  We had Yuri, we had a security system, and a small detail of guards and that was enough.  She insisted that we have nothing extraneous for our security… she had been surrounded by that her whole life as a child.  She was tired of such living.”
    He took another swig of vodka. 
    “Abram of course tried to build a case against me for being careless.  And once the charges against me came down back home I knew that the tenacity that he would come after me with would be as determined as a starving man for a roast boar dinner.  And I knew would be the only thing that could give me a fighting chance would be the treaties of extradition so long as they fell under reasonable doubt.”
    She nodded.  As long as he wasn’t actually being accused of murdering someone of prominence, technicalities could enter into his defense, and since his troubles were business-related then the charges against him wouldn’t be viewed as so bad that the Russians could just send him back without a word and ignore the extradition treaties.  He was in America when the money went missing, your honor.  How could it have been him?
    It was a simple move.  Simple, but effective.
    “So that’s your defense,” she said, seeing the plan that had formed in his head.  “You actually did do the things they say… but by being here – at the embassy – and by not trying to run, you make yourself look innocent and cast reasonable doubt.”
    He saluted her with his glass, “Highest marks to you, Regina.”
    “That still leaves us with the trouble of having to prove that you’re innocent.”
    Alexi looked indifferent for a moment.  “I had hoped we would have time to plan, Regina.  But it seems, fate has chosen to waylay us both.  But if I were to guess, it is not necessary to prove my innocence.  We simply need to give them the same kind of doubt as they gave me when on the hunt for Lada’s killer.” 
    She rolled that around in her mind.  “It would help if I knew everything that Abram knows about what’s going on.”
    “You may yet have the opportunity,” Alexi said, sipping his