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I nodded, leaning forward with interest.
"So, tell us what the scope of this job is," I replied.
"I need bodyguards," he replied. I frowned. I had seen a few men on the door when we had arrived. It looked as though he already had his security detail locked down, at least as far as I could see.
"You need bodyguards?"
"Not for myself," he continued. "For my daughter, Olya."
"Your daughter?" Solomon echoed incredulously. I could already tell he wasn’t into this idea. And, shit, it didn’t exactly appeal to me either, playing babysitter for his kid.
"Yes," he went on. He could tell neither of us was exactly taken with the idea. "She’s just arrived back from a year abroad in Budapest, and I can tell it’s made her...reckless. Now she’s returned, I’m worried she’s going to be a target for the people who want to cause me trouble. You understand?"
I nodded. Solomon didn’t respond.
"I want to hire the two of you for, let’s say, the next year," he went on. "To live with her, watch over her, keep her safe against any threats that might come her way."
Solomon shook his head.
"With respect, Maxim," he replied. "Our skills are more suited to work out in the field-"
I shifted slightly, silently telling Solomon to shut the fuck up before he made an enemy of the man we really wanted on our side. No, it wasn’t exactly what we were used to, but that didn’t mean that it was a good idea to turn him down right off the gate. I didn’t want to piss him off. And, besides, it sounded like easy work. If he was offering a decent wage for it, then maybe we would have been smart to actually give it a go.
"I’m aware of what your skills are," he replied coolly, his eyes flashing with annoyance for a moment.
"Which is why I’m offering excellent remuneration for your time," he continued. "A million dollars. Each."
My eyes widened. A million? A million fucking dollars? I must have been hearing him wrong. I leaned forward, parting my lips, intending to double-check I had heard him right, but he just lifted his hand to stop me in my tracks.
"I’m aware of how it sounds, but I promise you, this isn’t some kind of scam," he replied. "I have the means. And I want the very best to take care of my daughter."
Solomon tensed beside me. Much as it would have been a step down in terms of the work we had done before, how in the hell could we turn down that kind of money? How could we walk away from something like that? It might not have been what we expected to be doing, but, shit, we would have been idiots to pretend like we didn’t need that kind of cash.
"We’ll do it," I blurted out before I could stop myself. I likely should have stopped to consult with Solomon first, but there was no way I was letting this offer slip through our fingers to go to someone else, who would never have been able to deliver on the kind of quality we did, anyway.
"You will?" Maxim replied, his face lighting up with relief. He clapped his hands together. "That’s fantastic news. I’ll organize payment at the end of this week – half now, and half at the end of the year. Does that sound fair?"
"Sounds good to me," Solomon replied. I breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, so he wasn’t going to totally hand my ass to me when we stepped out of this office. Much as it wasn’t exactly our wheelhouse – we were more about causing trouble than fighting it off – for that kind of cash, there wasn’t much in the world I wouldn’t have put up with for a year or so.
I extended my hand to Maxim to seal the deal. I could deal with what this was actually going to mean once we were out of here. For now, all I could see were the dollar signs, flashing before my eyes – and I was willing to do whatever it took to get that in my bank account.
Chapter Three – Solomon
"I still can’t fucking believe we’re doing this," I muttered to Alex, as I followed him towards the apartment building that was going to be our new home.
"Remember how much we’re getting paid for it," Alex reminded me. "That’s what matters here. Right?"
"Yeah, I guess," I agreed, with a sigh. The moment that money had arrived in my bank account last Friday, I had felt a wash of resignation, knowing there was no way I was going to be able to find a way out of this. We were well and truly stuck now, stuck with going along with this crazy job, and I had no idea how I was going to keep myself from losing my mind with boredom.
Babysitting some entitled rich girl? It wasn’t the kind of shit I lived for, to say the least. I didn’t know much about the Antonovs, but what I did know was that Maxim had done his best to keep Olya out of the line of work he was a part of. Which meant the chances of us getting to involve ourselves in anything interesting was virtually nil. I had nothing to look forward to now, no action to throw myself into – just sitting around, watching her brush her hair or call her friends or text boys or whatever the hell it was girls her age got up to.
I guessed I should have been glad for such a cushy job. No way would I have to worry about anything as long as I was living there, no – I could relax, and focus on the cash that I was earning just by keeping her from getting in too much trouble.
But trouble was how I lived my life. Trouble was what I knew. It was what I had always known, ever since I had started working in the Bratva world as a teenager. I’d been a messenger then, running from place to place to fill people in on information that was too important to write down and risk falling into the wrong hands; even then, as a sixteen-year-old, I could still remember vividly the feel of the thrill of this work, knowing I was involved with something important. I was barely more than a kid then, but being part of something made me feel...worthwhile like I was doing something that really mattered.
And, now, I had made a decent name for myself. A good enough name, apparently, that the Antonov family wanted to work with me. I’d skirted around the edges of their territory a few times before, but most of the people I had worked with over the years had known better than to get involved with their shit – they knew they were too big to take on, too big to handle, and they left them well alone.
But now? Now, I was working for them. Something I would have found exciting, no doubt, just a few months ago, but this job already bored the hell out of me. We hadn’t even met her yet, this Olya chick, but we were going to be living with her for the next year. I could already feel the boredom starting to settle in, and I wondered how long I would last without losing my mind.
