Read The Billionaire's Redemption (The Billionaire's Kiss, Book Five): (A Billionaire Alpha Romance) for Free Online Page A

on the phone, so… no. Let’s just do the public phone and get it over with.”
    “Okay. Hand me the backpack.”
    I hand it over, and he pulls out a credit card.
    “You can’t use that,” I order.
    He sighs, then plucks several damp twenties from one of the blocks of cash.
    “Nobody’s going to trade in your cash for euros here,” I say.
    “Oh yeah? Watch the Master Negotiator at work, baby.”
    Oh my God. Such a cocky bastard.
    If my life wasn’t riding on his success, I would love to see him fall on his face, just once.
    He takes the backpack with us as we get out of the car and walk across the street to a café. There are a few early bird patrons sitting at the tables outside, but the morning rush doesn’t seem to have started in earnest.
    Inside, the smell of fresh pastries sets my stomach gurgling. Up until now, I was too stressed out to realize how hungry I am.
    Grant talks to the manager/owner/whatever for a minute in French. I have to say, I’m impressed with how fluent Grant is. He almost sounds like he was born here.
    The bald, older guy has a dark cloud of distrust in his eyes, but at the end of the interaction, he forks over a few coins for the two twenties.
    Grant seems enormously pleased with himself.
    I can’t help myself. “That’s all you got? That was a hell of an exchange rate there, Mr. Master Negotiator.”
    “Well, I negotiated a couple of coffees and a handful of croissants, too, but if you don’t want them – ”
    “I take it back,” I say immediately, though I think my voice is drowned out by the grumbling of my stomach.
    Along with to-go cups of piping hot coffee, we get three pastries in total. Grant lets me have two of them.
    I have to admit, they are the best damn croissants I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.
    We walk over to the red phone booth eating our food and sipping our coffee. Grant goes inside, plunks in a few coins, dials a number… waits way too long… then starts talking in French. There are no pauses, so I’m assuming he’s leaving a message.
    I wonder how voice recognition software works when you’re speaking a different language. Grant doesn’t even sound like himself when he’s speaking French. Maybe, just maybe, we have a shot at escaping Epicurus’s notice.
    Although I’m not betting on it, so I scan the streets worriedly as I lick the last few buttery croissant crumbs from my fingers.
    It’s not the sudden appearance of a carful of gun-toting mercenaries I’m worried about. To have enough men to cover every possible place we might pop up in Paris would be impossible, even for Epicurus. ( Damn that’s a lot of alliteration in that last sentence; say it out loud.)
    No, it’s the surveillance cameras I’m concerned with: banks, private businesses, traffic intersections. If Epicurus can identify where we’re calling from, then he can hack the cameras closest to us and confirm our location.
    Once that happens, the carful of gun-toting mercenaries follows shortly thereafter.
    This is France, not the U.S., so there probably aren’t as many cameras… but it’s a Western country. The fact that I can’t see them makes no difference. They’re there. They’re always there.
    When Grant steps out of the phone booth, I say, “He didn’t answer?”
    “It’s not that kind of a system.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means it was a number without a recording. I left a message, and he’ll call me back.”
    “There wasn’t a message?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then how do you know it’s the right guy?”
    “I know.”
    When you’re dealing with somebody who’s constantly and overwhelmingly confident, it can grate on your nerves a bit. Especially when your life hangs in the balance.
    Not to mention that it’s seven in the morning. I can’t believe that ‘contacts’ of international art thieves keep early morning hours.
    “How long do we have to wait?” I ask in annoyance, imagining us having to stand there for hours on end.
    Suddenly the