Taken by the Billionaire (13 page)

I didn’t care if he was a billionaire—or nearly one, at least. I didn’t even care if he was an incredible lover or that when he whispered his desires to me, he was connecting to my own deepest, darkest desires.

It didn’t even matter if I loved him. I didn’t know if I did anymore. I was through with him. I was sick of the intrigue—sick of being lied to and being put in harm’s way—and I wanted to go home.

That’s why I was on the plane back to New York in the first place.

“Hey Sarah, I need to talk to you…”

Peter broke the long silence as he spoke, and I immediately started a silent conversation with Anneke.

“I didn’t know I was going to have your company on the flight back,” I signed to her.

“I have a meeting at the U.N,” answered Anneke, and I raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“The U.N?”

“Yes. I want to sell my shares in Gazprom—can’t take them with me, you know—but of course Russia doesn’t want the buyer to get so big a share in the company, so… well, next thing you know, we’re having arbitration at the U.N.”

I stared at her in amazement.

“It is a pain,” she continued after a moment. “I do not like to fly.”

“Nice to see that some things never change,” I signed. “We ordinary people get stuck in arbitration with the cable company, and you billionaires get stuck at the U.N.”

Anneke laughed, and I was struck by the light, musical sound of her voice. Her voice was beautiful and it flitted from one perfectly resonating tone to the next as she laughed. It was a travesty, I thought, that a woman with such a gorgeous voice would never actually get to hear it.

“What about you, Sarah?” signed the old lady. “You left in quite a hurry this morning.”

Peter tried to insert himself into our conversation again, and I immediately shut his voice out.

“I had to go,” I answered. “I couldn’t stay around Peter any longer.”

Anneke nodded sadly. Her eyes practically glowed with age and experience, and she gave me a quick glance that told me exactly what she was thinking: she’d seen the break-up coming from miles away.

“I could tell, when I saw you look at him, that you were angry,” she signed. “What did he do?”

“He betrayed me in a very, very bad way,” I answered, “and until he makes up for it, I don’t want to talk to him.”

Perhaps my answer was a little too childish and simplistic to give a woman of Anneke’s intelligence, but I didn’t want to get into all the gory details.

“Good girl. I approve,” signed Anneke back to me with a nod and a thin-lipped smile. I couldn’t help but grin at her.

Out of the corner of my eye, Peter was visibly fuming. He
hated
that I’d shut him out, but he hated even more that I had a connection with his mother that he could never have. He could never possibly learn her sign language; she’d be dead of old age long before he was fluent enough to carry on even the simplest of conversations.

“Let me guess,” signed Anneke, drawing my attention back from feeling smug about finally having the upper hand on Peter. “He made up some pigeon-brained scheme to protect me, and it almost got you killed again.”

The look on her face instantly told me that her question was purely rhetorical; she already knew
exactly
what had happened.

“Pretty much,” I answered. “The poisoned Cosmo back at the bar… that was for me. You knew about that?”

She sighed and nodded.

“This is what my sons don’t understand,” she signed. “I didn’t get where I am today by being a senile old lady; I got here by being smarter than everyone else.”

She shot Peter a dismissive glance, and his face turned red with embarrassment and anger. He didn’t need to hear the words to know what that look meant.

“He thinks I’m a stupid old hag, and so does his brother. They think I’m a washed up old widow content to sit with my crochet basket,” she signed. “They’re right about the crochet, but the rest, not so much. I see lots of things.”

“So… maybe too broad a question, but how
did
you get to where you are today?” I signed. “How’d you get this kind of fortune in the first place, if you don’t mind me asking?”

I hoped it wasn’t too personal a question. I didn’t want a life story or anything, though judging by old women I knew back home, I was probably about to get one. I was just curious, especially given how steady and stable she seemed to be compared to the rest of her family. She was an island sitting calmly in the middle of the raging storm of her children, more or less unaffected by them even though she was the target of their intrigue.

“I slept with the right people at all the right times,” she signed back with a grin.

I stared at her and raised an eyebrow. Seriously? Was that really all there was to her success? I couldn’t believe it. I
desperately
didn’t want to believe it. She was too intelligent for it to really have happened like that, wasn’t she?

Sensing what I was thinking, Anneke shot me a scornful glare.

“Of course I’m kidding,” she signed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?” I asked. Why did there always have to be a catch to everything with the Ibramovic family?

“When I met my husband Marco, he was a state contract negotiator for the Russian government. He was in a position to… well… profit from information others didn’t have.”

“Like what?”

“He handled many gas and oil leasing deals for the state, so he knew which regions would be profitable and which companies were going to reap the benefits. The companies would send him drilling plans as part of their leasing proposal, and he would read through them and grant approval.”

Just figures... insider trading.

I should have known that the dirty work went back a long way in her family. It always did with the super-wealthy. You didn’t get rich these days without at least a little bit of bad behavior.

“Remember though,” she signed. “Everything is unethical at the high levels of society, and it was even worse back then, just after the war, because the reconstruction left plenty of room for the selfish to profit.”

“So, you married a guy just as he started to get rich, and then when he died, you got it all?” I asked, hoping to change the subject away from the rocky waters of ethical business.

She glared at me furiously, and I realized that in dodging opening one can of worms, I’d instead opted in favor of a much bigger one.

“Of course that’s not how it went!”

You’d have thought I’d called her a whore from how offended she looked.

“What happened, then? I don’t understand,” I signed to her with an exasperated look on my face, hoping that playing ignorant might defuse my offense.

“Marco had the power to execute deals—to make the profits—but he didn’t have the brains to see them coming,” signed Anneke. “I did, but I was a woman. I counted for nothing in Russia but baby-making back then. If not for my fortune, I’d
still
probably be a second-rate citizen, honestly. It’s why I moved to Croatia.”

She took a sip of her champagne and held out her glass to Peter for a refill before continuing. Peter’s anger and frustration radiated through his stoic mask; he was furious that he couldn’t tell what we were talking about, but he knew I wouldn’t tell him. He didn’t even bother asking.

Let him stew
, I thought angrily.
He can complain when he stops nearly getting me killed.

“Anyway,” continued Anneke, “I told Marco what to do. He would come home with his contract proposals, and I would read them with him. I told him what companies to invest in, what land to buy, so on and so forth. Then, when those companies’ stock prices skyrocketed, we made a fortune.”

She smiled at me and pointed to the bottle of champagne in Peter’s hand. I silently held out my glass for Peter to refill without so much as looking up at him. I hoped whatever he was feeling right now hurt an awful lot. He deserved it.

“So, that’s how you made your fortune?” I signed to Anneke, and she nodded.

“Yes. I exploited Marco’s power to make us—and our children—extremely wealthy.”

I looked up at Peter. His face was still red with anger and frustration. Sergei, wherever he was, probably was plotting his downfall right now. Anneke’s vast fortune, her lifetime of profiteering and, later, successful business ventures, had all come down to two feuding children.

“Looking at where you are now… was it worth it?” I asked, and I braced myself for her reaction.

It was probably the worst question I could possibly have asked, but I had to know. I didn’t care if it offended her. Well, I did a little, but I wanted to know how deep the misery I sensed on the surface actually ran,

She stared back at me—her eyes glistening as if she was about to cry—for a long time before answering.

“Yes and no. I have no good answer to give you,” she finally signed back to me. “My family was not wealthy before, and they would have married me off to someone else soon enough if I hadn’t met Marco. Who knows where I would be now, if that had happened?”

“God, I miss him. He was the perfect husband,” she signed, shaking her head sadly. “So kind, always willing to listen to me and treat me like someone special to him and not like property, as so many men did with their wives back then. He was a very good man.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He died thirty years ago,” she answered. “No matter how big you are, there is always a bigger fish. He fell out of favor with a general after opening his mouth at the wrong time, and he had an ‘accident’ the next day.”

I felt the blood drain out of my face as I read her words.

“I’m so sorry, Anneke.”

“Don’t worry; you did nothing. It is just another reason I moved to Croatia. Our time of influence was over, and it was time for me to leave and let the new powers have their turn.”

She carefully climbed out of her chair, but as she headed toward the first class restroom, she turned back to me once more.

“To answer your question honestly… I look at my children and see two men completely disconnected from reality, with no sense of hardship or at times even empathy. I was excited when Peter brought you home; I thought he had learned something, finally.”

“No amount of money can fix my legacy,” she finished, shaking her head sadly, and she hobbled into the restroom.

I stared after her until the bathroom door closed, and then I sighed and looked silently up at Peter.

“Are you done ignoring me yet?” he asked after a long, awkward silence.

“Depends. Are you done lying to me, putting me in harm’s way, and treating me like I’m your little puppet?”

He just didn’t get it. How could a man as successful as him be so goddamned stupid? He’d built his electronics company from scratch, and yet somehow he couldn’t figure out how badly he’d hurt me?

“Sarah, I…”

I didn’t wait for his excuse. He clearly hadn’t gotten the point, and frankly I didn’t care. I unclipped my seatbelt, stiffly got up, and ducked under the curtain back into business class. I needed to stretch my legs, and it was as good an excuse as any to get away from him.

I walked slowly down the aisle, taking deep breaths as I tried to keep myself calm. It was so horribly unfair; how could I be so angry—even more, outright
furious
—at someone and still be so attracted to him? I could barely stand the sight of him and at the same time wanted nothing more than to be with him.

Just as I was about to duck under the next curtain and pass from Business Class into Coach, I saw someone waving out of the corner of my eye. I glanced to my left, and panic rose up inside me as I realized it was Sergei.

Peter’s pale, thin brother waved to me and grinned as he leaned back in his chair—the opposite aisle seat in the center column—with a copy of
Business Weekly
on his lap. As I stared at him in surprise, I suddenly noticed the two, near-identical men in suits sitting next to each other by the window. I could have sworn I’d seen them somewhere before, somewhere back in Vela Luka.

They were all here, I realized. Every last one of the Ibramovic family and their goons was on the plane, and they were all following me to New York.

I quickly turned away and ducked under the curtain, and I continued down toward the bathroom at the far end of the plane. I could feel a cold sweat breaking out on my skin as I started to panic. They couldn’t really be following me… but it was too much of a coincidence to be anything else! I could believe that Anneke was going to the U.N, but Sergei and Peter would never willingly be in each other’s company.

Beyond that, why all the others? How many body-guards did Anneke need? I noticed more and more men in dark suits as I passed through Coach Class toward the glowing yellow sign at the far end. Her henchmen all had the same vaguely eastern European look to them, and I didn’t doubt for a second that they were here with Anneke. She—or maybe her sons—had packed at least ten of them onto the plane.

I locked the bathroom door behind me and leaned against the wall as I tried to calm myself down. I only had five hours to go before we got into JFK; maybe I’d just stay in here for the rest of the flight.

No… you can’t do that
, I told myself. I’d be hogging the only bathroom in Coach class on everyone else, and it wouldn’t do me any good to hide. They’d be waiting for me at the airport, I was sure.

I rinsed my face, took a deep breath as I mentally readied myself, and then I opened the door again.

As I walked back up the aisle, I realized that the back row of the plane was completely empty, and I spun back around and plopped down in the empty center row. The in-flight pillows were all still clean and in their plastic wrappers.

I tore all three bags open and combined the normally worthless, nearly flat pillows into a perfectly acceptable pile, and I closed my eyes as I stretched out across all three seats. Peter and Sergei could follow me to New York, but they couldn’t follow me into my dreams.

Are you kidding? You dream about Peter all the time,
I thought to myself as my eyelids fluttered shut, and I drifted off to sleep.

I was back in bed again, this time not in Anneke’s house but in my own little apartment back in Astoria. The tiny room, its bare, white walls, the whirring of the slightly off-kilter ceiling fan… all so comforting and familiar to me after being away for so long.