Page 4 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

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TAMARA

PRESENT DAY

“Let’s go.” I slide my weapons into place: pistols in the holster around my waist, blades in the inside pockets of my leather jacket, smaller blades inside my Doc Martens.

Leonid has asked us to scope out the warehouses around the Iroquois Landing at the Illinois International Port District. A rival Bratva family, the Petrovs, is forgetting its place and trying to encroach on our district, the area controlled by Leonid Ivanov. Our Pakhan. The man who saved our lives when he found my sister and me in a shipping container seventeen years ago. The man who took two eight-year-old girls home, cleaned them up, gave them a soft bed to sleep in, and treated them like his sisters. Leonid understood the terror we’d experienced crossing the ocean and chose to make our lives better.

“I’m not going with you.” Ivana doesn’t move from her position, her shoulders leaning back against the wall of my room, arms folded across her chest.

I stop packing and look at her. Really look at her.

She’s wearing her customary beaten-up black Doc Martens, black jeans and a black sweater. The uniform that she adopted years ago when we were both being trained as enforcers for the Ivanov family. Only now, I can see her collarbones protruding through the neckline of the sweater, and although her chin is still tilted towards the ceiling, it’s almost an effort to hold it there, as though the stance belongs to someone else, someone she has no right to steal it from.

Four months ago, my sister was guarding Andrej Ivanov, Leonid’s younger brother, and his wife Cartier in the family mansion in Russia, when she was shot by Cartier’s uncle who was working for another Russian Bratva family. Ivana’s injuries could’ve been fatal.

They would’ve been fatal had she been anyone else but my sister.

We’ve never spoken about what the doctors told us when she was in the hospital, that she would never make a full recovery, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever resume her role as enforcer. Saying the words out loud would mean acknowledging them, giving them legs to run with until they become reality. Letting them win.

And being an enforcer is all we know.

Ivana’s face is pale. Her thick black hair has lost its luster as if all the goodness was sucked out of it when she got shot, and her body is still figuring out how to put it back. The dark bruises underneath her eyes have never faded even though she was sleeping eighteen hours a day when she discharged herself from the hospital.

“Why not?” I ask her now, even though I know the answer.

“Leonid doesn’t want me there.”

Every part of my skin bristles like I just scrubbed it raw with a wire brush. Leonid has been our big brother since we were eight years old, and I would give my own life to protect him, but he doesn’t know my sister the way I do. He doesn’t see her slowly dying inside her broken body, desiccating on the inside because this right here, this way of life, jobs like these, are what keep her alive.

“I’ll speak to him.” I’m already moving towards the doorway.

He only wants us to observe. That’s the message he conveyed via Ivana the enforcer who he then denied the opportunity to do her job. Observe and report back. My sister could lead this mission blindfolded and with her wrists tied behind her back, and she would still return with the information Leonid wanted.

“No, Tamara.” Ivana touches my arm, and I realize with a jolt of nausea that even her touch belongs to someone else. “I don’t want you to speak to him. He’s the Pakhan. We don’t question him, and besides, Gianna has asked for my help in the women’s refuge.”

I know what Leonid’s wife Gianna is doing: she’s trying to make Ivana feel useful.

But just because we’ve never questioned the Pakhan before, doesn’t mean we can’t start now.

“Alright.” I tilt my mouth into a smile I don’t feel inside. “I won’t speak to him.”

Not right now, anyway. But if Ivana thinks that I’m letting this go, she’s mistaken. I broke my promise to never let anyone hurt her when I didn’t go to Russia with her. I should’ve insisted. I should’ve threatened to leave the Ivanovs, or bought my own plane ticket to Moscow, or convinced Andrej to let me go with her.

I won’t let it happen again.

I arrive at the Port with a small team of four men, and we spread out to cover as much of the terminus as we can without getting noticed by the Petrovs. From my raised vantage point, crouched on a small grassy bank behind a line of empty shipping containers, I have an unobstructed view of the ships currently moored up at the Iroquois Landing.

Ignoring the names painted onto the sides of the vessels, I focus instead on the crew. Whatever they’re transporting in and out of Chicago, it’s illegal, and they will wear it on their faces like an invisible mask.

Floodlights bathe the terminus in a stark white glow. I track the men in hardhats to begin with, my gaze following them from ship to storage point outside a warehouse, where cranes are waiting to stack them inside for onward transport. They move with the efficient confidence of men who can get the job done as quickly as possible and with the minimum amount of effort and resources.

Nothing they are moving is illegal.

Compartmentalizing them into people I don’t need to expend any further energy on, my eyes land on a man wearing a black suit.

Immediately, my hackles are up, and my body is poised to attack. My hands instinctively reach for my guns as I hear a click from somewhere behind me.