Page 11 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

“Um, no.” The sunshine glow isn’t quite as bright now. “Ivana wasn’t here yesterday.”

“She said Gianna needed her help…” Even as I speak the words out loud, I can hear the lie in Ivana’s voice when she said them to me.

Gianna didn’t need her help. Or if she did, Ivana had no intention of going to the refuge last night.

“I’ll speak to Gi⁠—”

I cut Cartier off and sprint directly to Leonid’s office on the ground floor of his rambling mansion. I don’t knock. I barge through the door, flinching when it bounces on its hinges, and confront Leonid who is sitting behind his desk, his thick black hair immaculately groomed, his face freshly shaven, his collared shirt snowy white and perfectly pressed. His younger brother Andrej sits across the desk from him wearing his customary black pants and a black sweater and looking like he has just arrived from a Hollywood movie set.

The Ivanov genes create beautiful babies, but these two men have never made my heart race the way Irish did last night.

“Ivana is gone,” I say, breathless.

They both look up at me as if I’m speaking a different language.

Then Leonid’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Her room hasn’t been slept in, and she didn’t show up at the refuge yesterday like she was supposed to.”

“Tamara, come in.” Leonid is gentle but firm. “Close the door and sit down.”

Andrej pulls out the seat next to him and gestures for me to take it.

“Did you hear me?” I remain standing. “She didn’t spend the night here.”

“I heard you.” Leonid’s expression softens to the one I see him adopt whenever his twin daughters are around, and it cracks something open in my chest.

“She wanted to come to the port with me last night.” My voice trembles. “But you didn’t want her there. Why didn’t you send her instead of me?”

My breath hitches when I realize that if Leonid had sent Ivana, she would’ve met Irish, not me, and I don’t like the way my mind is warping my emotions in favor of a stranger I barely know over my sister who would literally die to protect me. What kind of fucked up does that make me?

“Tamara.” Leonid sits back in his seat as though he needs the extra lumbar support for this conversation. “You’re wrong. I asked Ivana to lead the team last night because she may not be back to full fitness, but the task was still within her current capabilities. She turned it down.”

“She… No…” I shake my head. “She said that you didn’t want here there.”

Is that what she said? I’m doubting my own memory now because everything that happened before yesterday is hazy, fogged up by the vibrant images in my head from last night, and I wonder if that’s what I heard when she told me that she wasn’t accompanying me to the port.

“She would never lie to me.”

She didn’t need to; I reached my own conclusions without waiting for the facts. And she lied to me about going to the refuge or is this something else I’ve manipulated to assuage my own guilt.

The question is: where did she go?

“Maybe she needed some space,” Andrej suggests. “Some time out to clear her head and think about what she really wants.”

“You don’t think she’s coming back.” I’m numb. Even my voice sounds flat as if every ounce of emotion has been sucked out of me with the suggestion.

“What my brother is trying to say,” Leonid picks up the thread, “is that Ivana has been struggling with her convalescence. She wants to feel useful, but I can’t risk sending her into the field until I’m confident that she can defend herself. You know me better than that, Tamara. You know I would never risk your lives.”

He’s right. I know that he has taken care of us, treated us like his own sisters since he rescued us from being sold like cattle to the highest bidder. He gave us a life here in Chicago that we could never have imagined when we were crossing the ocean inside a shipping container filled with women and children dying of starvation and thirst. He cared for us, nurtured us, trained us to be his enforcers. He turned us into weapons.

But he risks our lives every time he sends us out to work for him.

“Being an enforcer is all she knows.” I tilt my chin and square my shoulders. “She has always been loyal to you.”

And to me.

“Her loyalty isn’t in question,” Leonid says. “It’s her strength that concerns me.”