Page 88 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

I must. For Ivana.

For me.

We all stand back as Aiden shoots the lock open, the sound of splintering metal carving slices out of the night air and making my heart skitter.

I hardly dare breathe as he opens the container door slowly. My legs tremble; if Finn wasn’t supporting me, I would be watching this from the deck on my knees. He is doing more than simply holding me up, he’s breathing for me, caring for me, loving me in every way imaginable even though I give nothing back.

The stench hits us first, and I turn away, retching onto the decking beneath my feet as graphic memories are rekindled. Finn doesn’t speak. He rubs my back in silent solidarity, letting me know that he is there for me when I’m ready.

Leonid joins us as Aiden and Connor shine flashlights into the container. I meet his gaze briefly, and what I see in his eyes draws tears to mine. He remembers the moment he discovered me and Ivana huddled together in a container just like this one, as vividly as I do. It hurts him too. It probably hits him a million times harder now that he has daughters of his own.

Connor turns around to face us, struggling to contain the tears welling in his own eyes. “I… I don’t know…”

I push away from Finn, take the flashlight from Connor, and peer inside the container.

The sight makes my stomach roll. There are bodies everywhere, blue lips drawn back from shriveled gums, maggots crawling over rotting flesh, buzzing flies attracted to the stench. This must’ve been what Leonid saw that day seventeen years ago when he opened the door to a container, not knowing what he would find inside.

If he’d turned around and walked away, Ivana and I wouldn’t have survived. We’d have been another statistic, victims of abhorrent child traffickers who don’t even remember the faces of the children whose lives they destroy.

“Tamara.” Leonid’s voice jolts me back to the present. “Here, let me.” He holds out his hand for the flashlight.

I shake my head. “No. It’s my turn, Leonid.”

I watch him exchange glances with Finn who is standing behind me, and whatever he sees prompts him to stand back.

I step inside the container, the toe of my boot nudging the body of a young woman. I peer down at her, at what’s left of her, and realize that she must’ve been one of the first to die. I can’t help her.

Raising the flashlight, I cast the glow across the rear of the container where the bodies are huddled together in a macabre bonfire heap, a sob building inside my chest and making everything hurt. All dead. Traffickers have such little regard for human life that they treat these people as objects with no care for if they live or die.

I can’t swallow. I’m numb, the flashlight an extension of my trembling hand.

I’m about to turn away, when I catch a glimmer of something that makes my heart skitter. I step closer, the flashlight glow shimmering with my movement.

“Hello?” I murmur. Then I repeat it in Russian. “Privet.”

Nothing moves. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe it was the last of my hope projecting life into this unimaginable horror.

But then the light settles on a small face. Dark sunken eyes. A child buried beneath a pile of bodies.

I gasp. My heart stutters and then picks up a crazy pace.

One child out of many. It’s desperately sad, but if we can save her, we won’t have failed completely.

Ignoring the bile rising in my throat, I crouch low so that I’m at eye level with the terrified child. “My name is Tamara,” I say in Russian, keeping my voice low and steady. “I want to help you.”

The child doesn’t move. Who can blame her? She has watched everyone around her die. She has had no food or water since she left her home country, and she has absolutely no reason to trust anyone in the world.

I crawl closer. “What’s your name?”

Nothing.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. I’m not going to hurt you. I came to this country in a container just like this one, but I was lucky. I had my sister with me. What was even luckier for me and my sister was that someone found us and gave us a home. That person is here with me now. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve died too.”

The silence stretches on endlessly. If I can’t coax her out of her hiding place, she will always associate me with taking her against her will, and I will be as bad in her eyes as the men who bought her.

Then my heart leaps when I hear a whisper.

“Katya.”