There are many people around, but the second Joseph goes through the double door I feel vulnerable. I feel like I’m alone and exposed to whatever the hell is happening with my father.
Footsteps approach behind me and I meet the cold magnetic eyes of Dmitri. He smiles at me and I wish he wouldn’t.
Sacha hangs back, not daring to interfere. He knows his place and I should know mine, especially with a man like Dmitri. A man just as evil as my father.
“You’re here again,” I state, tensing my jaw. I can’t help it when it comes to
him. He knows I hate him, but what I hate more right now is being unable to figure out what’s going on.
“I am here again,” he replies.
Like most of my bodyguards he speaks with a hint of a Russian accent. Mine is completely gone. I’ve lived in the States for the last twelve years and no one would ever think I spent the majority of my childhood in Moscow speaking little to no English.
“How come?”
“Your father moved up your meeting with him,” he answers in a flat monotone.
I have a Skype call scheduled with my father in a few hours. We have these meetings once a month when he isn’t visiting, and they don’t normally require the attention of his first in command. He also doesn’t usually move the time forward either.
“Is something happening?” I ask.
“It’s a special meeting.” A chuckle rumbles deep and low in his chest.
Special? I don’t like the sound of that. I pray special doesn’t mean my father has found out I’ve been leaving the house at night. I don’t do it often, just when I need a little break. Sacha has been watching my back, and his own. He wouldn’t take a risk that could cost him his life. I think too if my father knew about that, Sacha would be dead. We wouldn’t be having a special meeting for that.
Pushing the worry out of my mind I resume my annoyance. “Is that why you decided to accompany me? How touching.”
“Feisty. Very feisty. I’m going to enjoy putting that mouth of yours to good work.”
My eyes widen and I blink several times as my cheeks flush. I’m as shocked as I am mortified by his words. Lately he’s been like this. Speaking the vileness of his mind more freely. That was the worst he’s been, though.
“Excuse me?” I counter. “How dare you talk to me like that?”
I sound like I have the balls it would take to take him on. However, a shiver runs down my spine when the humor fades from his expression and is replaced by something cold and dark that reminds me to check myself.
“You watch your tone with me, Isabella,” he warns with a hardened gaze. “I will speak to you however I want, and I’ll imagine that mouth of yours pleasuring me in whatever way I want.”
A smile lifts the corners of his mouth and a lock of his blond hair falls over his eye. His gaze runs down the length of my body, his eyes touching me everywhere.
I’m no fool. I see the way he looks at me and I don’t like it. He’s fifteen years my senior, and he’s been looking at me like that since I was twelve. It’s with lust and desire. Two things that are supposed to be enough to get him killed, yet he does it easily.
No one is allowed to get close to me. It means death. They all know this. They all know what consequences wait for getting close to the daughter of Mortimer Viggo.
Since he was ordered to kill the one and only man who ever got close to me, I know the only way this man could be looking at me in such an obviously sexual way is if he was given permission to do so.
“Let’s go,” Dmitri says and glances over to Sacha, motioning for him to follow as he starts walking ahead of me.
I follow suit and look back at Sacha as he catches up to us. He shakes his head at me. A silent caution to keep my head above water.
I always listen to him. He’s been taking care of me since birth. Sacha is the only one of my father’s guards to show me kindness and treat me like a person. In fact, I think of him as a father. So, I’ll definitely be heeding his warning.
I return my gaze ahead and smile at my work colleagues as I walk through the automatic sliding doors. To them I’m Isabella Baker, daughter of a wealthy, overprotective businessman who insists on his daughter having bodyguards accompanying her everywhere she goes. It’s always been like that.
I must look like some pampered princess, though. Little do people realize, that’s the story we tell to keep us safe. It’s the story I tell to have the small freedoms I’m allowed.
I’ve lived a life more sheltered than most in the Bratva because my father is the leader of the Circle of Shadows. A man people would love to eliminate. No one outside the circle has ever truly met him. They might know his name, but they will never know his face. He’s made it so the name Mortimer Viggo could be anybody.
No one would know just how badly I’d love to escape him. Just thinking of what happened last time I tried makes my soul tremble in fear. The punishment I received was a lesson I’ll never forget as long as I live.