Page 26 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

He studies me closely. “Is that all?”

“Have you heard from Ivana?” I counter.

His gaze shifts to his daughters who are quiet while they eat, bored with the dull adult conversation. “No. You don’t need my permission to return to the port, Tamara, but I do need to know what your intentions are.”

He knows that I’m not being completely honest, but he’s waiting for me to come to him for help.

“Ivana left last night for a reason.”

“And you think this has something to do with the Petrovs?” His expression gives nothing away.

“Perhaps.” I don’t understand how or why, but she chose to leave last night while I was at the Iroquois Landing, and I need to figure it out so that I know where to look for her. “You taught us never to believe in coincidences.”

He smiles, his gaze instinctively sliding back to his daughters as if this life lesson is one that he could teach them now while they’re still babies.

“I can’t let you go alone.”

I anticipated that this would be his response. “The team is waiting for me.”

He nods then, his attention already moving on from our conversation and back to his daughters. “Stay safe, Tamara. The order still stands: if you see the Petrovs in operation, you are to observe only and report back to me or Andrej.”

No mention of what I’m to do if I find my sister.

I turn around and reach the door before he speaks.

“We will find her. I promise we’ll find her and bring her home safely.”

I acknowledge his comment with a nod and close the door softly behind me. It isn’t his promise to make, it is mine, and even I’m unsure if Ivana wants to come home.

The lie about taking the team with me will buy me a little time to get back to the port and check out another dock. The lack of information from my first visit is still niggling away at me. I didn’t miss the Petrovs because I was too busy trying to disarm Irish… I didn’t miss them because they weren’t there. And if they weren’t at the Iroquois Landing when Leonid’s sources suggested they would be, then where the fuck were they?

It’s like deja-vu only this time in daylight.

This dock is busier with trucks rolling along the quayside shifting cargo, workers supervising containers being winched on and off the ships, men on board the vessels carrying out maintenance checks before they head back out across the lakes towards the ocean.

It’s easier for me to navigate the vehicles and storage units unnoticed.

I find a discarded hard hat and hi-vis vest on the passenger seat of an empty truck, and smile when I spot the clipboard on the dashboard. Almost like the worker knew I would need them.

Dressed like everyone else on the dock, I’m invisible. I wander along the quayside, checking out the blank document on my clipboard whenever someone gets too close, and nodding to myself as I move along. I hear plenty of accents: general American, Hispanic, Asian, British, but none of them are what I’m hoping to find.

Until I watch another ship pull up alongside a smaller vessel already moored up at the landing, the sound of its engine slowing down as it waits to be directed into position by the port authorities. Clutching the clipboard to my chest so that no one will realize it’s empty, I stare at the men on board the latest ship to arrive, and my pulse accelerates.

They might not be Bratva, but I recognize the hammer and sickle tattoo on the arm of a man standing on the deck.

Our eyes meet briefly, and I don’t look away.

He must accept my hard hat and hi-vis uniform, because his gaze moves onto the storage units behind me, and finally settles on a small group of workers at the far end of the dock.

Head down, I make my way towards them. Four men, all in the same PPE that I’m wearing over black pants and black sweaters, and as I approach, their tattoos come into focus. Serpents, coiling around their necks, the snake’s tongue licking behind their ears.

Yelling from somewhere behind me causes me to turn around and follow the commotion with my eyes. Three men are running away from a stack of pallets being winched off one of the stationary vessels, while the load swings precariously between the ship and the flat-bed truck waiting to transport it onward. But it isn’t the cargo that grabs my attention.

It’s the person the three men are chasing along the landing area.

A woman with white-blonde hair wearing gray overalls tucked inside black boots. She’s running in the opposite direction from where I’m headed and is too far away for me to see her face, but whoever she is, I get the sense that she isn’t supposed to be here.

Everyone else on the dock is watching the woman’s flight, including the men with the serpent tattoos, while all work is temporarily halted until she is detained and it’s safe to proceed.