Page 58 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

And this is it.

Gianna walks up to me, and her daughters finally peer out from behind their mommy’s legs, watching me with those wide eyes that belong to Leonid. “Do you want to leave?”

I swallow the lump in my throat, but it won’t go down. “No.” I don’t know where this admission leaves me exactly, but in this moment, it’s true.

Her expression softens. “You’re coming with us. Have you eaten? I was going to prepare some fruit for me and the girls.” She climbs the porch steps and halts outside the front door, waiting for me to join them without another glance at the security guard.

I follow them inside and close the door behind us, leaving my weapons outside with the asshole, vowing to get them back later.

16

FINN

Aiden eyes up me and then Connor when he walks into his boardroom and closes the door behind him. He’s thirty minutes late. His PA, Brenda, said that he’d been held up when we arrived and told us to help ourselves to coffee and water while we waited.

Two cups of coffee later, and neither of us has spoken, and the air in the room could be cut with a carving knife.

Now, from the frown lines creasing Aiden’s forehead, I’m guessing either his previous meeting didn’t go well, or he deliberately kept us waiting in the hopes that we’d resolve our disagreement.

“I’ve asked Brenda to acquire a couple of antique pistols and clear us a spot outside Cloud Gate at dawn tomorrow.” Aiden fills a cup with black coffee and carries it to his seat at the head of the table. “We’ll settle this the old-fashioned way.”

Aye, option two.

“You know, duel at dawn,” he continues. “Of course, you’ll have to forfeit seconds unless you want to drag a couple of unsuspecting witnesses in off the street while they’re posing with the Bean.”

“Funny.” Connor isn’t smiling though. “Or you could just give my brother a pistol and ask him to put a hole in my other hand.” Connor waves his left hand in the air.

His right hand is covered by a splint. The surgeons fused the tendons together after Tamara shot him and warned him that the recovery period could take up to twelve weeks, but there’s no guarantee that he will get the full use of his hand back when it heals. Or if he does, it will be a long slow process.

“It can be arranged,” I say.

I don’t like fighting with my brother, but I’m standing by Tamara on this one.

She gave him the opportunity to let her pass. As did I. I asked him to trust me, and he didn’t, and it’s that lack of trust that is making me stand my ground. We’ve been in this together since I was old enough to leave home without the authorities coming looking for me, and I took Connor with me because there was no way our pa deserved any more of our time or energy. The first time I ask for anything in return, and he threatens to kill the woman I love.

“You know what my pa would do,” Aiden says. “He’d give you both a pair of boxing gloves and stick you in a locked room until one of you submits.”

“Fine by me.” I shrug and drain the dregs of coffee in my cup.

“Or you could hand him a golf club,” Connor suggests, “and ask him to play nine holes with me.”

I smile. “I’m up for that too.”

“Of course you are. If all else fails, you can always pick it up and beat me with it.”

“Jesus, fuck!” I crack my knuckles, a gesture that doesn’t go unnoticed by Aiden. “You were more of a fucking adult when I snuck you out of our house and told you to never look back. At least then you weren’t wearing those privileged fucking blinkers that you picked up from Walmart with your first paycheck.”

“And you were still playing fucking God even then.”

Aiden watches the insults hurling back and forth like he’s in the audience at Wimbledon’s Center Court, then slams his hand on the table making the cups and glasses rattle.

“Tell me what happened.” He raises his hand, palm facing outward, at Connor and addresses me.

“I already told you.”

Connor and I agreed on a story before I tracked Tamara to the dock and took her home on the back of my motorcycle. I half-expected him to spill his version of events to Aiden when he came out of surgery, but he didn’t. Because he knows that the longer we persist with the lie, the harder Aiden will come down on me when the truth comes out.

But I refuse to tell Aiden what really happened until I have Tamara’s consent and I know that it won’t cause trouble between her and her Pakhan. And I haven’t seen her since she spent the night at my apartment almost three weeks ago.