Page 13 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

Jesus fecking Christ, I need to park that image for later or I’ll be rushing home to change my pants.

First, I need to find her, and when I do, I won’t let her get away so easily.

The Ivanovs clearly have the port authorities in their employ; it’s how they were able to scatter the breadcrumbs to the wrong landing without anyone getting suspicious. So, Aiden suggested that we start looking at their other businesses which could potentially be acting as a façade for the trafficking operation.

Starting with the women’s refuge run by the wives of the Ivanov brothers.

Credit where it’s due, what better distraction from trafficking young women into the country than a perfectly legal refuge for women fleeing from abusive relationships. It’s pure fecking genius. I’d admire their balls if they weren’t crotch-deep in the murkiest money-spinning operation known to humanity.

I hole up in a gym across the street in my work-out shorts and tank top where I can see the entrance to the refuge from the equipment at the front of the studio and the waiting area. The owner looked like he was about to ejaculate when I offered him three month’s rent in exchange for private use of the premises for a day, although the smile faded when I promised to cut off his dick if he so much as breathed a word about it to a living soul.

Dead souls, I don’t have a problem with.

It’s the living I’m suspicious of.

There isn’t much foot traffic in and out of the refuge. A middle-aged woman arrives around 9 a.m. and is greeted at the door by Cartier Ivanov, whose face I recognize from the images Aiden shared with the team. She’s pregnant, I’d guess from my restricted knowledge that she’s around the end of the second trimester, perhaps early into the third. No matter. The women and children will be protected at all costs. All we want to do is hold the Ivanov men accountable for their actions and stop their illegal trafficking from destroying lives.

Not too much to ask.

The Kavanaghs will benefit from taking them out of the equation too, of course. The Russians are slowly infiltrating our regular clients, squeezing their dicks and their wallets with threats of slow painful deaths, and my boss doesn’t like having his toes stepped on by steel-toe-capped boots. He and his father and his grandfather before him worked hard to get to where they are, too hard to sit back and watch some assholes steal it out from under their noses.

Shortly after the woman’s arrival, Gianna Ivanov, the Pakhan’s wife, climbs out of a blacked-out vehicle. I watch her approach the front porch, which is painted white and decorated with vibrant flowers spilling from huge pots, from my position on the rowing machine. I slow my pace so that I can focus, and my breath stutters when someone else joins her on the steps.

The Russian beauty from the port.

I recognize her before she turns around and I spot the green stripe in her black hair. I don’t know how it’s possible to recognize someone you hardly know simply by the way they carry themselves, especially when I’ve only seen her in the dark, and when much of that time was spent lying on top of her in the grass. But my heart called it before my brain caught up.

She scans the street left and right, eyes elongated by the same black flicks she wore last night, skimming past the gym without seeing me.

For a few precious moments, I have her all to myself, and I take full advantage of the situation. She’s petite, barely standing five feet tall in her Doc Martens, and slender, her leather jacket hugging her shoulders, her skirt brushing her mid-thighs. But there’s a strength beneath that exterior that most people would miss, a butterfly that could carry twice its own weight on its fragile wings.

And fuck, my cock is already responding to the brief glimpse of her standing on those steps across the street.

I don’t realize how much adrenaline is pumping through my veins until the front door of the refuge closes behind her, and I yank the rowing machine so hard, something snaps.

I stand up, rearrange my shorts, guzzle a bottle of chilled water, and pace the gym, keeping my eyes on the refuge. I didn’t expect it to be this easy. All this time we’ve lived in the same city, and I’ve never seen her before, and bam! There she is. The law of attraction, manifestation, gravity. Whatever the fuck they call it these days.

I tilt my face to the ceiling and smile. “Thank you, Lord.”

So, she’s a bodyguard for the Pakhan’s wife? No, the thought crumbles before it fully materializes. With her skills, she’s far more than a bodyguard. An enforcer would be more fitting, which means that she’s here today for a different reason.

Shit! I’ve been so carried away by the erection in my pants that I’ve almost forgotten this isn’t my personal mission to discover the name of my Russian beauty.

My eyes slide to the gym bag on the floor by the front window, where my weapons are covered by a clean towel and fresh clothes, and back again as the refuge door opens, and she re-emerges with Cartier Ivanov. She follows the same process as before, but in reverse, scanning the street before accompanying the pregnant woman into the back of the waiting vehicle.

I watch the car drive away with both women inside, and my pulse slowly regulates itself while I sit behind the reception desk and study the building across the street. Something about this scenario doesn’t sit right with me. She’s too fucking special to be wasted on driving around with the Ivanov women; the way she handled herself at the port was proof of that.

She will have reported back to the Pakhan about our encounter, which means that the Russians know we’re onto them, and they’re expecting a retaliation. If they’ve done their research though, they’ll know that we would never target a women’s refuge, regardless of its connection to the Ivanov family.

Various scenarios flit through my mind.

Perhaps their wives have received death threats, hence the reason she’s on bodyguard duties. I dismiss this one instantly simply from their casual body language. They showed no fear entering and leaving the building.

Or maybe the enforcer is still providing a distraction. This is more likely given what happened between us the night before. Which makes me a liability.

It makes the black-haired enforcer a liability too because I didn’t imagine the way she kissed me back.

I’m still trying to control the tent in my pants when the car returns, and the enforcer gets out. Alone. She enters the building without scanning the street, and alarm bells ring inside my head.