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A loud knock on my door startles me so much that I jump, squeak, and almost fall over. “He-Hello?”
“Olivia,” Dad’s voice booms through the wooden panel between us. “Open up. Right now.”
“O-Okay.” I don’t know why I’m stuttering, but it’s like my words won’t work. Without really knowing how I manage to do it, I force myself to move, but it’s as though I’m doing it in a haze, my body operating on nothing more than muscle memory since my brain certainly isn’t capable of giving any commands right now.
When I finally make it to the door, my Dad marches in uninvited, his cheeks flushed but the rest of his face somehow pale. His eyes are wild as he makes a cursory sweep through my room, his hand on the gun in its holster at all times.
My gaze tracks his movements, but I’m still too shocked to do much more than stand there, watching him with wide eyes for the few seconds it takes him to conclude that there’s no one else in here.
“All your emails come through the company security filters,” he says curtly. “We saw the picture.”
Shit. I hadn’t even considered that yet. It can’t have been more than a few minutes since I first opened it myself. “I… I was just about to c-call you. Shouldn’t you be at the… the venue?”
The stammering is getting better, but I’m still struggling to speak as the cloudiness slowly clears from my brain. Dad turns back to me after moving the curtain back to peek out the window, but he lets it drop closed again as he faces me. His jaw is so tight his teeth are going to crack if he doesn’t relax.
“Obviously, we’ve got a problem,” he says. “The guy was following you today. Did you see anything?”
I blow out a breath through my nostrils, shaking my head as the shame finally starts trickling into my consciousness.Oh, there you are. I knew you’d be here soon.
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry, Daddy. I had a feeling we were being followed, and I kept my eyes wide open all the time, but no. Nobody jumped out at me, and I didn’t notice anything out of place.”
“Fuck,” he curses under his breath. “That means he either has some kind of training or he’s good at blending in at the very least.”
“I wish I could tell you more, really, but all I’ve had to go on is this feeling that we’re being watched.”
He gives me a sharp, steely look. “How long have you been having this feeling, and why didn’t I know about it?”
“Vincent thought I was just being paranoid. Maxim felt like we were being watched in Dublin too, but I didn’t have anything concrete to go on. Just a gut—”
“Your gut is what keeps you alive in this business,” he roars, hands flying up and into his hair as he starts pacing. “You’ve known you were being followed since Dublin, and you haven’t said a word to me about it. Jesus. Maxim felt it too?”
I nod mutely.
Dad’s head starts shaking. “I’m your father, Livvy, but I’m also in charge of the agency that’s been keeping these families safe for decades. If you got even a whiff of a threat, you should’ve told me.”
“I know, but I—” I cut myself off because, really, all I’m doing is making excuses. “You’re absolutely right. I should’ve trusted my gut and reported the feeling to you, especially since Maxim felt it as well. I didn’t, and that put us both in harm’s way. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re damn right it won’t,” he mutters, but he seems to calm down a little as he drops down on my bed and sits, knees spread apart and back ramrod straight. “You and Vincent aren’t stepping a foot out of the door until this thing blows over.”
“You’re putting us under house arrest?” My jaw threatens to drop before my teeth start grinding together. “You can’t do that. Vincent will never go for it. He won’t stay put just because you tell him to, and we’ll be more careful from now on.”
“Sure, you will be because you’re not going anywhere.” He keeps his dark eyes on mine, and I can see that he means every word. “I will not have you out there on the streets with this guy. As for Vincent going for it, leave that to me. As soon as Jonathan gets offstage, I’ll apprise him of the situation, and we’ll take care of it. Me, him, Camille, the other bodyguards, and you.”
His gaze turns hard. “Just not by doing what you were doing in that picture. What the hell were you thinking?”
And there it is. The reprimand for kissing him. I knew this was coming too. “I wasn’t thinking anything. Vincent kissed me out of the blue while we were arguing about the feeling I had that we were being watched. It was nothing. Really.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” he mutters, cocking his head as he looks at me. “Is that the first time it’s happened?”
“Yes,” I mumble, but before I can explain that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing that won’t be repeated, my mother bursts in.
“Anderson let something slip about a situation involving Olivia,” she says to my father, speaking so fast that I almost can’t make out what she’s saying. “What happened? What’s going on? You know, just because I spent my days holed up in our room, working, doesn’t mean you guys shouldn’t keep me in the loop when there’s a situation involving my own daughter.”
While she speaks to him, she strides over to me and pulls me into her arms, enveloping me in a big hug as though she needs to reassure herself that I’m here and fine and whole. “What’s going on, baby girl? I knew I should insist that you take over my side of the family business instead of Dad’s.”
“It’s nothing, Mom. I’m okay. I just got a creepy email and—”
“It’s not nothing,” Dad says, getting up and coming over to us with a meaningful look at my mom. “Remember that internet troll I told you about? He is now, most definitely, a stalker, and it seems that while he was watching Vincent, Olivia has caught his attention as well.”
