Page 97 of Possessive Mafia Bodyguard

The foyer has been decorated with white and gold swaggers, the ceiling-high potted plants have been strung with hundreds of fairy lights, and more lights twinkle around the front desk, the carefully curated artwork, the white Grecian-style columns, and the windows.

But there is nothing to welcome visitors to the gala event taking place later this evening. No one is bustling about supervising the catering, and there are no reporters hovering around hoping to snap the first photographs of celebrity guests as they arrive. Leonid sent us ahead of the event to oversee security, but I don’t see any members of his team either.

“Where is everyone?”

Ivana looks equally as perplexed, her eyes scrunched up beneath lowered brows. “They must be arriving later.”

“Too late for us to check everything is in place.”

Uneasiness has settled in my gut where it frequently likes to live these days, and my hackles are up. I check my weapons, run my hands over my pockets, and wriggle my feet inside my boots. Everything is in place. My movements have slowed a little with my advanced pregnancy—I’m about to enter the third trimester—but Leonid still trusts me to lead the team on events like this one.

With Ivana by my side.

She is still pale. I’m starting to wonder if she will ever regain the olive complexion she had before she entered the Atlantic Ocean, and the wound around her neck from the rope Boris Petrov used to drag her around his ship has left a livid scar. But she has worked tirelessly with a physiotherapist to strengthen her muscles and is stronger now than she was before she was attacked in Russia.

“I’m calling Finn.”

I slide the cell phone that Finn insists I carry around with me from my bra and locate his number while I wander behind the front desk. The computer screen is on but locked. The desk is immaculate as always. But nothing about this sits right with me.

Where are the welcome packs, the guest lists, the order of events?

Where is Patrice, the woman who is like a sheepdog when it comes to making sure that everyone is where they should be and no stragglers step out of line?

I look up to find Ivana watching me with a lopsided smile. “What?”

“Things are off kilter and your first instinct is to call Finn … from a cell phone.”

Heat floods my face, setting my already overheated skin on fire. “I’m pregnant. I need to be able to get hold of him when I go into labor.”

She sucks her lips so hard they disappear. “You still have three months to go, and you’re not having contractions now.”

I’m thinking of ways to justify calling Finn instead of Leonid, and I can’t. Well, I can, but it means acknowledging that we’re going to have a baby together soon, and I’m more excited about it than I’ve shared with anyone. Including my sister. Because I made this baby with the man I love. The man who claimed my heart when he kissed me behind a shipping container at the wrong port one night, and shot wide to let me get away. The man who taught me that miracles do happen, but we too often think of them as normal.

Like the life growing inside my belly.

I tilt my chin. “Finn was supposed to meet us here.”

“With Connor?” Ivana’s cheeks flush pink, and I smile to myself.

I’ve seen the way she looks at Finn’s brother, following him with her eyes as if they’re magnetized, lips parted, hardly daring to breathe until he is out of sight. But when I questioned her about it, she shut me down with an eyeroll and a flick of her black hair.

“It can be arranged.” I watch her closely.

She flicks her fingers at me in a small dismissive wave. “Are you going to call him before the event starts or are we handling this situation ourselves?”

She has less patience these days. Or maybe I’m the one with less patience reacting more quickly to situations and comments that would’ve once washed over my head.

“Both.” I step away from the desk and hit the green button on my phone.

The call goes straight to voicemail, and I don’t bother leaving a message.

“Finn must’ve gotten held up at the refuge.”

He has been helping out at the women’s refuge for the last few months, carrying out maintenance, painting rooms, even doing some plumbing when they had a leak in one of the bathrooms. When I asked him why, he said he was paying it forward and stopped any further questions with a kiss. I haven’t pushed it. Working at the refuge makes him smile, and I get the best of him when I stay over at his apartment.

I walk past Ivana and check out the corridor leading from the foyer to the pool and spa area in one direction, and the ballroom in the opposite direction. It’s empty, but it isn’t the emptiness that’s making me feel unsettled, it’s the silence, the lack of business as usual, the stillness.

“Ready?” I raise an eyebrow at my sister.