The phone rings, it is my youngest daughter, Virginia. “Hello Dad. How are you?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Are you all right?”
“I was thinking of coming and staying with you tonight,” she says.
“What about the kids?”
“They’ll be fine with their dad for one night.”
“Don’t do that sweetheart. I’m fine.”
“I think you shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
“I want to be alone. I want to think of your mother.”
“Oh Dad,” she whispers brokenly.
“Hey, we knew, remember. We knew she was on loan from the angels. We always knew we had to give her back and exactly how much time we had left.”
She sniffs. “I know, but…”
“I’ll be fine. You go and snuggle up with your husband. Every moment is precious.”
“Okay, Daddy. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, Daddy.”
I put the phone down and almost immediately it rings again. It is my second son. He is the most caring of my sons.
“I’m coming over, Dad,” he announces.
“Why?”
“Because we can get drunk together and talk about Mom.”
“Maybe we do that another time. I’m tired today.”
“I’m coming over anyway.”
“Don’t do that, Christof. It would be pointless, I’m just about to go upstairs now.”
“Dad,”
“Yeah.”
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll work through this together as a family.”
“Of course, it’s going to be okay. Give the babies a kiss from me.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too.”
I leave the phone off the hook and go upstairs. I run a hot bath, then I put the envelope addressed to all my children with the letter I wrote many years ago on the pillow. I went to the cupboard to get the silver dagger I’d used to kill my family all those years ago.
It will stop my body’s ability to instantly heal wounds for long enough for me to achieve my ends. I put it on the edge of the bathtub and get into the steaming water. I close my eyes and lean back in the hot water.
Suddenly, my eyes snap open and I see her sitting on the edge of the bath next to the dagger. She looks exactly like the girl I met sixty-three years ago. So utterly beautiful. Oh, how I love you, my Autumn.
She sighs softly. “You saved the dagger?”
“Yes. I always knew I would need it again.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks, her voice is loving and soft.
“Yes.”
“What about the children?”
I shrug. “They have their own lives now.”
“Don’t you want to travel? I used to hold you back with my frail body. Now you can go back to climbing mountains.”
“I have lived for thousands and thousands of years, my darling. There is nothing I have not seen or done. Nowhere I have not been. I told you the time they came and snatched you away, I do not want to carry on without you. You didn’t believe me then. Well, I was telling the truth. I lived only for you and our children when they were small and needed me. There is nothing for me here anymore. I don’t want to outlive them. I can think of nothing worse. I want to join you.”
She tilts her head. “But it would be such a waste. You are so beautiful and you are the last vampire on earth.”
“And the loneliest.”
“Oh, Rocco. You might regret it.”
“No, my darling. I won’t. Never. Forever without you by my side? No, I don’t want to live a single day without you.”
“You have so much to give the world,” she says.
“Just wait for me, please. I won’t be long.” I cut into the veins of both wrists and submerge them into water. As the lifeblood seeps out of me, I smile at her. It doesn’t take very long and then I see a flash of tall reeds waving in the wind. I hear water rushing by. Then I am standing next to her. How amazing. The bloodlust is gone. I am completely free of it. Finally, finally, the torture has ended. I turn to look at the pale body resting in the bloody water, his eyes are closed, and his expression is wonderfully peaceful. No, no regret. No regrets at all.
She smiles at me. “Ready?”
I smile back. My heart feels happy again. We will never be parted ever again. We’ll be together for eternity.
Our fingers link and my beauty takes me to another new adventure.
The End
Thank you so much for reading my book
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The Other Side Of Midnight
Coming Soon… Sample chapters.
The Russian Billionaire
Chapter 1
Constantin
My cellphone vibrates gently on my office desk. Stephan Priory. What does he want? I reach for the phone, and the girl under the desk stops sucking my cock and stares at me with her thickly lashed baby blue eyes.
“Carry on,” I instruct, as I hit the accept option.
Obediently, she continues bobbing her head up and down, her voluptuous red lips making little wet sounds. I have a thing for girls with naturally fat lips, and as it happens she was good choice as she’s actually very good at this. Years of experience no doubt.
“Stephan,” I say crisply into the phone.
“Good evening, Mr. Tsarnov. Sorry to disturb you, but I just wanted to give you heads up on a developing situation. Um… we’re going to have a slight PR problem when the Anton scandal breaks next month.”
I frown. “Why? What does that fool have to do with me?”
“Well, you know what the… er…political climate is these days if you’re a Russian billionaire. Pure paranoia and guilt by association.”
“I met him once at a party,” I say, irritated.
“I know, I know, but unfortunately, there’s photo circulating online of you and him at that party.”
I rake my fingers through the girl’s long silky hair and she moans softly. “So?”
“The problem is I’ve been informed by my contact at Washington Post that they’re planning to run with a center page spread story of the situation, and they’re going to use that photo, but cropped to seem as if you were entertaining him alone on your yacht.”
The girl starts to bob faster, as I watch my glistening cock slide in and out of her mouth, I weigh my options. Take the trouble to kill the story. Nah, those self-righteous pricks at the Washington Post can go and fuck themselves. “Let them run their lies. I have survived worse. Anything else?”
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I’m afraid, there’ll be pics of you and Putin looking very chummy too.”
“For fucks sake,” I explode.
The girl stops and looks at me questioningly.
“Carry on,” I rasp at her.
“Sorry,” Stephan says.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I mutter.
“Oh!” He pauses, then continues. “We need to do something about this. The Hansom Cross contract is up for grabs in two months, and they won’t want to be tarnished by this scandal. At least not if it is going to be the way the Daily Mail are planning to present it.”
I close my eyes and luxuriate in the hot, wet mouth of the girl. “You obviously have a suggestion. Spit it out.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do. We should do our own PR offensive before that. You should do something big and flashy. Something that gets you in the media and makes you get noticed for all the right reasons.”
“Mmmm…”
“I was thinking about the Hunt
ingdon Children’s Hospital Charity dinner. You’re going to it on the 25th of this month. One of the things they’ll be auctioning off is dinner dates. I suggest you blow a million on one of the girls at the auction. It’ll be a great tax free, but glamorous way to cement your philanthropist status, and it’s sexy enough to make it into lots of the newspapers, maybe even the evening news. I can almost see the headlines. Billionaire Russian spends a million on one dinner date for charity.”
The girl feels my dick grow larger and starts sucking harder.
“Who are these girls?” I ask, watching her cheek hallow.
“I’m not hundred percent sure, but I think they’re agency girls.”
“Prostitutes?”
“Of course not,” Stephan cries, alarmed as only an Englishman can be. “The girls at these events are usually either society ladies, or girls supplied by an agency, usually by out of work actresses or girls wanting to earn a bit of extra money. In this case, I believe the hospital is using an agency. They’ll all be really good looking though. Just pick the girl you think will bore you the least. It’ll only be a couple hours of your time, but the resulting free publicity will be worth it.”
“Okay,” I reply, cut the line, and toss my phone back on the desk.
I inhale deeply. Fuck, this girl is good. Then I grab her glossy head, thrust my cock deep into her throat, and fill her stomach with my seed.
She did look like she could do with a good meal.
Chapter 2
Raine
“Oh Raine, I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. What are you going to do?” Lois, my best friend asks, her forehead creased in a deep frown.
I drop my head in my hands. “I don’t know. I feel so damn helpless. Ever since dad died, things have just been going from bad to worse. Mom’s working three jobs, I’m working two, and still there’s nothing ever left to put aside for Madison. If we don’t get her the treatment soon… something bad is going to happen.”
“Look, I have some money put aside. Take it for her.”
“You have a $120,000 put aside?” I joke, but it comes out sounding miserable. My heart is filled with a great bitterness, which keeps me angry and confused inside. More and more I see the world as an unfair place where undeserving fat cats in suits are given government handouts of trillions that they then immediately use to gamble on the stock markets, while ordinary, hardworking people like Mom and me are taxed so heavily we can hardly even survive.
“God,” Lois breathes. “A $120,000.”
“And that’s just for the operation,” I mutter.
“There’s got to be something we can do.”
I lift my head and look at her. “There is. I’m thinking of working in a strip club.”
Her eyes bulge with shock. “What?”
“I know I’m not beautiful in the classic sense of the word, my mouth is too big, but a lot of guys tell me I have a sexy body and that’s the important thing in those dark places, isn’t it?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lois erupts incredulously.
“Drastic situations call for drastic measures. Anyway, it’ll be just for a while. Just until we have saved up enough for Madison’s operation and paid off our old debts.”
“No, that is a crazy idea. Do you know how dangerous those strip clubs are? That’s where serial killers pick off their prey. And there’s drugs there, and the men who—”
“Lois,” someone calls from inside the kitchen.
“Coming,” Lois shouts over her shoulder, then turns back to me. “I’ve got to go, but don’t do anything stupid. We have to talk about this. Let me see if I can get a loan from the bank or something. We’ll find a way out of this problem, okay?”
I sigh. There is no bank in the world who is going to give Lois the kind of money I need. I force a smile. “Okay, let’s talk about this another time. I should go home now, anyway. I’ve got a ton of washing and ironing to do.”
Lois’s boss pops her head around the back door where Lois and I are standing. “Lois,” she says, then stops, when she sees me. “Hey, it’s Raine, right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
She jerks her head towards the interior of the Lake club. “Go on in, Lois. I want to have a word with Raine.”
Lois widens her eyes at me, then scampers through the kitchen door and disappears.
“What are you doing tonight?” her boss asks me.
“This is my night off, so I’m going home to do some housework.”
“You’ve done bar work before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I think one of my bartenders has let me down. Want to work the bar for me? I’ll give you twenty dollars an hour since its such short notice. It’ll be about five hours work. Cash in hand.”
Cash in hand. What’s there to even think about it? I nod quickly. “Yeah, twenty an hour would be fine.”
“Come in then. Let’s see if we can find you a white shirt and vest. You can keep the black slacks you have on.”
Ten minutes later, I’m standing behind the bar, in a crisp white shirt and a maroon vest, watching the great and good come pouring into the party.
“Two dirty martinis, one without an olive, please,” a man drawls from one end of the bar.
“Coming up,” I say and get to work.
An hour passes quickly. Then the guests sit down to dinner and a lull settles around the bar. A woman in a black dress comes to sit at one of the barstools. She must be in her mid-forties. Her hair is colored bright red and she is wearing very fashionable white rimmed glasses. She smiles at me.
“Why’s a girl like you looking so sad.”
“I’m not sad,” I deny immediately.
“Honey, I know sadness when I see it.”
“I’m not sad,” I repeat, with a tense smile. A man comes to the bar and orders a beer. I put his beer on a paper coaster in front of him and turn back to the red-head.
“Fine you’re not sad, but let me guess. You have money problems?”
“Who doesn’t I say lightly?”
“I can help you earn some serious money, up to $50,000 and more if it goes well,” she says, as she licks the thin slice of lemon that come with her drink like a cat.
Chapter 3
Raine
I keep my face expressionless. “Doing what?”
“There is a gala dinner with a charity auction for the Huntington Hospital on the 25th of this month. One fun part of the auction is for the single male guests. There will be five bachelors that night so there will be five girls up for auction. The men will be bidding for the privilege of buying dinner for the girl of their choice. It’s all in good fun, and both the girls and the boys are at the end of day helping to raise a lot of money for charity.” She pauses to take a delicate sip of her drink. “You can be one of those five girls.”
I stare at her suspiciously, incredulously. “$50,000 for going on a dinner date?”
“The fifty grand is actually for showing up and taking part. However, if your highest bidder turns to be the Russian billionaire, Konstantin Tsarnov, who is one of the five bachelor guests, then your ability to earn money grows exponentially.”
My jaw drops. Is this woman serious? She sounds like a total fantasist, but she doesn’t look like one. She looks very polished and her eyes glitter with intelligence and cunning. Tempted and curious, I decide to play along for a bit.
“Why? What happens if he picks me?”
“Konstantin Tsarnov has something that doesn’t belong to him. He stole it from his competitor, who is my client, and my client wants his property back. So, your job will be to seduce him into taking you to his house. Once there you will simply follow the map you will be given, find the thing and exchange it for a… replacement. You don’t even have to sleep with him. Invent a believable excuse and leave.”
I blink. “I think you want James Bond for your job, not me.”
She smiles. “James Bond wouldn’t work. He likes girls.” Her gaze uncons
ciously drops to my mouth before coming to back to my eyes. “Girls like you. The job is actually much easier than you think. By the time they realize, if they ever realize, the original is gone, you will be long gone.”
I touch my mouth self-consciously. “What makes you think he will pick me?”
“To be honest I don’t know if he will pick you.”
“So what happens if he picks one of the other girls?”
She smiles confidently. “All the other girls have the same deal as you, so it doesn’t matter which girl he picks. As far as you’re concerned, you’ll have dinner at a fancy restaurant with the man who picks you and as soon as you text to tell us it’s done, your money will be released from escrow and sent directly into your bank account, making you $50,000 richer.”
“What is this thing I am supposed to steal?”
“You wouldn’t be stealing. You would be returning something to its rightful owner. It’s a tiny painting of a little boy on a beach. Five inches by six inches, it’s small enough to put into your purse, and if you’re wondering, its value is purely sentimental. As soon as he chooses you for his dinner companion another one $150,000 will be put into escrow. Once you hand the painting over to us, the money will be released to you and you will never hear from us again.”
I take a deep breath. I know she is telling the truth and to be honest I am tempted. She makes it sound like such easy money and we are so desperate for some, but another part of me, tells me there is more, much more, that she is not telling me about this job. Five girls at $50,000 each plus another $150,000 makes it $400,000 for a painting that has no value beyond sentimental. I’m not buying it. Hell, I could even end up in prison if I get caught. Even the thought sends a shiver through my body.
“So what do you say?”
“Thank you, but no. If your boss wants his property back he should really find a less underhand way of getting back.”
The Other Side Of Midnight Page 26
