Page 86 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

But I doubt it. I didn’t toss his son from a moving ship in the middle of the freezing ocean.

We stop outside a closed door, and Aiden gestures with his gun for me to enter.

I turn around and face the claustrophobic hallway behind us. The Bratva have us cornered, so if they’re going to attack, now would be the time to do it.

But still, nothing moves, and Leonid gave me five minutes.

Finn leans down and kisses me on the lips, shamelessly unembarrassed by his boss watching us. “Right here, sweetheart,” he whispers in my ear, his breath tickling my neck.

I hold my gun steady, open the door, and step inside.

This must be the bridge, the room from where the ship is controlled.

A man is sitting on a seat facing me, an expanse of dials and digital screens behind him, his feet up on a chest, crossed at the ankles. One arm is loose by his side, in his other hand is a revolver pointing straight at me. Apart from the thick silver hair, he is an older version of his son, Mikhail.

But it is the scar on his face that has sucked the air from my lungs and is squeezing my chest like a metal vise. The jagged mauve scar from underneath his left eye to the corner of his mouth. The scar caused by the knife my sister stole from the orphanage kitchen.

I would recognize those cold dark fisheyes anywhere. I’ve been seeing them in my nightmares for seventeen years, and every time they appear, I stare straight back at them and tell the asshole, “This is for my sister.”

“I’ve been waiting for you.” His voice isn’t what I imagined. It’s deeper than in my dreams, gravelly, like pebbles dragged along a riverbed in a storm. “Think you can take on the Bratva? Well, go right ahead. I haven’t had a belly laugh in a while.”

Same arrogance.

Same vacant eyes like the man is already dead inside.

But something is missing.

He doesn’t recognize me. He bought two little girls from a Russian orphanage all those years ago, shipped them across the ocean and had them stolen right out from under his nose, and he doesn’t even remember me.

It hits me like a sledgehammer. The nightmares have all been mine. He altered the destiny of two eight-year-old girls, and we haven’t even remained as a fragment of a memory in his consciousness. We were nothing to him. And we are still nothing to him now.

“You don’t remember, do you?” I step closer.

His eyes narrow, roaming my body from head to toe, missing nothing. “Did we fuck sometime? What happened? Did you think that it meant something to me, that I’d come back for you one day and drag you out of the gutter?” His top lip curls just like his son’s did, his scar turning a livid shade of purple. “I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you’re just like every other fuck I ever had. Forgotten.”

It isn’t his blatant misogyny that turns my stomach; it’s his use of the word ‘sweetheart’. That’s Finn’s word. I could cut out his tongue for daring to use it.

“I’m not your fucking sweetheart.”

He smirks at me now. “That’s better. I like my women with a bit of fire.”

I hold his gaze. “I thought you liked them young and vulnerable.”

His face visibly darkens, and he sits forward in his seat, his knuckles turning white around the revolver. “Careful. You slander people like that, and they might take offence.”

“It isn’t slander though, is it?” I’m vaguely aware of my heightened pulse ticking away the five minutes that Leonid gave me to avenge my sister. “Tell me, do you still buy little girls from orphanages?”

His left eye twitches. I’m getting to him.

“Or is that scar a reminder that two little girls almost beat you once?”

His eyes scan my face, recognition finally setting in, and his smile widens. “Was that you?” He blinks me into focus, matching the woman standing in front of him to eight-year-old me. “How did you…”

I can almost hear the coins dropping inside him, clink, clink, clink.

“Oh, this is too fucking brilliant. That was your sister?”

“Ivana. She has a name, asshole. You couldn’t take that away from her, and guess what, because of you, we’ve had a better life than we would ever have had if you hadn’t bought us from the orphanage.”