Page 54 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

She eyes up the tilted chair one last time and lies down beside me.

“Finn…” she says after a while.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I like it when you call me your butterfly.”

15

TAMARA

“I’m relieving you of your duties for the foreseeable future.”

Leonid eyes me coolly from behind the wide mahogany desk in his study, his expression neutral. Yet, he makes me feel like I’m a naughty child who has pushed my luck too far and deserves to lose my favorite toy as punishment until I learn who has the final word.

“Because I shot the Irish enforcer?” I’m still standing, feet planted squarely apart, arms folded across my chest.

His eyes don’t register any reaction. “Because you disobeyed orders and crossed a line, Tamara.”

Okay, shit, so yeah, I shot a few Russians at the dock before I went to Finn’s apartment last night, but they fucking deserved it too. “Tell me that Andrej wouldn’t have done the same.”

“This has nothing to do with Andrej.”

“Tell me!” I snap. His calm voice rattles me today in a way that it never has before.

I’ve seen him show emotion. He and Gianna’s relationship was complicated to begin with. Leonid abducted her during a flight from Montenegro to Chicago to use her as leverage against her family, a Sicilian mob that was trying to take down the Ivanov organization at the time, and they fell in love while she was being held captive. But the Sicilians invaded his mansion and stole Gianna back again, tipping Leonid over the edge of a precipice that resulted in him taking on the entire Sicilian mob single-handed.

Angry Leonid I can handle. Angry Leonid I can respect. He will rage and curse and threaten to kill everyone who crosses his path, until it is out of his system and he can deal with the situation logically.

But this calm is unsettling because I don’t know what’s going on inside his head.

“What would Andrej have done?” I demand.

Until his younger brother met Cartier, he had a reputation for being the sadistic member of the Ivanov family. I was here one time when he packaged up the severed hand of an enemy to deliver to the man’s organization as a warning. I know what he can do.

“He would not have shot the Russians in plain sight on a working dock and then escaped on the back of a motorcycle belonging to a member of the Irish clan.”

“He’d have let them get away with trafficking women and children into the city.” My chest is heaving with the effort of controlling my temper. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry if that’s what you truly believe of us, Tamara.” Leonid sits back in his seat. “I thought you knew us better than that.”

“What have you done to find Ivana?”

“I said I would look for her, and I’ve kept my word. I will let you know when I have information regarding her whereabouts.”

Why does it feel like he isn’t doing enough? I know I could do more, but my hands are tied by my role as Leonid’s enforcer, whereas he has resources in every corner of the city, twenty-four-seven, and Victoria who could find a grass snake in a pit filled with vipers.

“What about the Irish mob?” I ask.

“I’ll handle them.”

“How? Are they the reason why you don’t want me to work for you?”

“No, Tamara. You’re relieved of your duties and your weapons until we find Ivana because you are a fucking liability.”

Something breaks open inside me, and I don’t bother trying to repair it. “If I’m a liability, it’s because you turned me and my sister into weapons. You taught us how to fight. You taught us how to hit a moving target and never miss. You turned us into enforcers without ever asking if that was what we wanted.”

I’ve never spoken these words out loud before. I’ve never raised my voice to Leonid or Andrej, or refused to follow an order, and I feel cut adrift in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. Leonid offered us a lifeline. Screw that! He offered us a life, and a home, and skills that we would never have acquired otherwise, but with Ivana missing, and no work for me to carry out, I understand that there is nothing else left for me.