Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“Giving birth to kids? After this one, yes.” Three pregnancies. Four kids. She was good with pushing no more babies out of her vagina.
“But you’re not done with kids.” Chelsea sighed. “I wanted to talk to you about Sasha’s daughter.”
This was the project she was working on, and Chelsea was helping her. Ever since they’d figured out the man they’d known as Sasha had a daughter, they’d been searching for her and her mother. She’d managed to find Sasha’s real name, and that had led her to Moscow and a woman named Marta who’d been killed in what the reports called a robbery, but Charlie recognized as a hit.
Sasha had angered his SVR bosses. From what Charlie had discovered, he’d likely been ready to blow the whistle on corruption in his department when the men he’d worked for had sold him to Dr. Hope McDonald. Sasha had been born Oleg Federov and he’d “died” according to the records. His wife hadn’t been willing to let it go, and she’d actually been killed. Now his daughter was an orphan. At least Charlie hoped the girl was still alive.
“I’ve hit a brick wall,” she admitted. “I called Dusan.”
Her cousin was the head of an infamous syndicate in Russia. If anyone could cut through red tape, it was Dusan. And they were family. He wouldn’t put the usual strings on her. For a mobster, her cousin had an oddly soft heart. Especially when it came to kids. He knew what it was like to grow up in a harsh environment.
“Good, because I’m at a loss, too. I can’t find enough information about Oleg Federov, and what I can find I have to question because I think Russian intelligence erased what they didn’t want anyone to know,” Chelsea said with a sigh. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. We’re going to find her. I promise you that, but what do we do when we find her?”
She knew what she was going to do. “We give her a home.”
“I knew you would say that,” Chelsea replied. “Have you thought about this?”
Of course she’d thought about it and come to one conclusion. “She needs to come home with us. Unless she’s happy with a good family somewhere, we need to bring her to the States, and you and I are the best candidates. And it’s going to be me.”
Chelsea sighed. “That’s what I thought you might say. I’ve been talking to Si. You’re about to have four kids. We only have Sophy.”
She opened the fridge. Rat-fink bastard had eaten her ham. Ice cream it was then. Ian knew better than to touch her ice cream. “In this case, I think more is better. I know I’ve got a ton of kids, but Kala and Kenzie speak her language. Seth is already babbling in a mix of English and Russian. Ian and I speak…”
“You speak Russian. Ian speaks some weird version I can halfway understand,” Chelsea countered.
He wasn’t that bad. He just missed some of the nuances because he didn’t speak it every day. “I could say the same thing about Simon’s English. Sophy is going to grow up calling the trunk of her car a boot.”
It wasn’t exactly the same, but she felt the need to defend her husband. She was sure his Russian had been excellent once. They really needed to start speaking it more often. She spoke to the kids in Russian much of the day, but tended to switch back to English at night.
“Sure, that’s going to be her main problem,” Chelsea said with a snort. “I just think we should all sit down and talk about this as a family.”
Charlotte set the ice cream down, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes because her heart felt so full. How far her sister had come. “Yes, we’ll sit down as a family. How about you bring Si and Sophy over tomorrow?”
“And we’ll also bring food because you don’t need to cook. I’ll have something catered in,” Chelsea said.
Her sister had become a kind, thoughtful woman. For years Charlie had been the one to take care of her little sister. Now Chelsea always tried to take care of her. “All right. That sounds like a plan. Now I am going to take a break and eat a bunch of ice cream and read a hot romance. Or maybe I’ll watch TV that isn’t a cartoon.”
It had been a while. Her afternoon was wide open, and she should take advantage of that. She went for a spoon and…
Fuck. Why were her thighs suddenly wet?
Damn it. She was dripping. Not some wild gush the way it was in the movies, but enough to let her know what had happened.
“Hey, you okay?” Chelsea asked.
Nope. She wasn’t okay.
Bud looked down at the floor and then back up at her as though to say “when I do that you get mad.”