The Alpha Bodyguards Books #1-3

Chapter Eleven

H is eyes on me, he ended his call. “Okay, when did the last letter show up, near as you can tell?”

“After I left this morning to see Mr. Luna.” There was nothing in front of my office before I left. It was the first thing I’d started checking two weeks ago, after the initial letter.

“What time was that?” He glanced down at the letters again.

“About a half hour before you showed up?”

He read the third one and anger contorted his features before me masked it. “The staff, the caterers, they here when you left, but Mr. Sherman wasn’t.” He glanced up at me and frowned. “Any correlation between his house calls and your letters?”

“No, this is the first time a letter has shown up when he has been here.”

“And what about the caterers or staff?” Scanning through the next letter, his frown deepened.

“My housekeeper and chef and Nikolas and Genevieve have all been here before when I’ve received the letters.”

He read the next one and fired off another question. “Day, night?”

“Both.” I hesitated, debating how much to tell him. “There’s been no pattern.”

He looked up. “What?”

His eyes were beautiful. Deep blue like the ocean back home. “Excuse me?”

He scanned my face as his eyebrows drew together. “You’re holding something back. ”

I looked out the window at the yacht that was a present from my father before glancing back at the man in front of me. “I’ve had letters delivered outside my bedroom door when I’ve been asleep.”

“ Jesus fuck ,” he ground out as his hand fisted. Holding up the now crumpled letters, he glared at me. “This isn’t nothing. There is some seriously fucked-up shit in here, Princess.”

I didn’t know if he was mocking me by calling me princess, or using it as a term of respect, or unaware he was saying it. Maybe it was something altogether different. “I have a name.”

He ignored my statement that sounded more pleading than scolding. “This sick fuck is talking about touching your hair, running his hands all over you, then in the same breath demeaning you for crazy shit.” He pulled a letter out of the pile, seemingly at random, and read from it. “ You will enjoy my dirty hands running up your soft thighs, pushing aside that hideous orange dress you so stupidly wore. Do you not know what clothes like that say about you? ” He looked up at me. “This isn’t nothing,” he repeated.

I swallowed. That was the letter that made me seek out him and his boss. “I got that the day before yesterday. He’s… escalated.”

“I’m getting that.” He roughly folded the letters and put them in a cargo pocket on his muscular thigh. “We’ll go over these later, but for now, two of my colleagues, Collins and Sawyer, are on their way. They’ll walk the property and see if they notice anything off, as well as do some recon for a layout for a new security system for you. You need to check your e-mail and sign the contract Luna sent you. Then we’ll get a new system underway for you. It’ll be up and running in a few days, but in the meantime, I’m going to assume anyone could be behind this, or in on it.”

“The car bomb?” I didn’t want to ask, but I would be a fool not to.

He stared at me for a full five seconds. “I’m not thinking it was on the wrong car now.”

I nodded as my stomach bottomed out, because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t trust Nikolas, but not for this reason. I didn’t trust him simply because he was lazy and had an attitude. I didn’t know if I trusted Genevieve either, because I didn’t actually know her very well. Now, I was wondering if there was anyone I could trust besides the man in front of me. I was so upset, everyone had started to look like a suspect. “I don’t know who to trust anymore,” I admitted.

Damian looked out the window as if scanning for someone, then his ocean blue eyes settled on me again. “Obvious signs point to male, twenties to thirties, antisocial or unhinged. But that doesn’t mean he’s acting alone or hasn’t coerced someone to be his delivery boy, or girl. So we’re going to proceed as if everyone who has contact with you, your home or your business is suspect. Okay?”

“Okay.” The second I said it, I had to admit, it felt a bit like handing over the torch. Nothing was actually okay. But my initial reaction to keep everything a secret out of fear—fear for my employees, fear Nikolas would tell my father and he would demand I return home, fear I would endanger anyone else—those thoughts disappeared in Damian’s company.

And I did not want to return to Naximos. It was beautiful, but it was small, and the gossip and social circles were even smaller. I’d always felt claustrophobic there, and I’d never had any aspirations to rule a country. My half brother would make a good king when the time came for my father to step down. In the meantime, my plan was simple. Stay away, stay quiet, keep to myself and tax none of my father’s resources.

My plan had been working for years, until two weeks ago when I stumbled upon the first letter outside my office door one morning. And not just outside my door, but leaned up against it. There was probably some kind of psychology behind the placement, especially when the letters continued to come and the writer of them had referred to himself and his letters as gifts, but I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t even figure out what would drive a person to do such a thing as send the letters in the first place.

But now I told myself I didn’t have to think about it.

I could let the man in front of me handle it, the very capable man I’d accidentally stumbled upon in a video on the Internet. The footage had shown a young actress erratically running on the beach in the middle of the night, while a sole figure stood with his hands on his hips watching her. Then he’d dropped his head, inhaled, looked up and, quicker than a gazelle, he’d caught her and thrown her over his shoulder. While all of that was impressive, it was the next part that had had me replaying the footage over and over.

The young girl had instantly bucked at being captured and had started crying out. While her words had been garbled in the footage, you could clearly make out the fear in her voice and the words drowning and row . Instead of the man simply overpowering her and walking off with her—because anyone could clearly she was either drunk or on drugs or having some sort of breakdown—he’d quietly started speaking to her. With no regard for the cameras filming him, he held her over his shoulder in one arm and started to make a rowing motion with the other. She immediately calmed down, and he’d walked off the beach while holding her and rowing.

The compassion he’d shown for her was what made me seek out the logo on his shirt and call Luna and Associates.

Unaware of my thoughts, the man from the video looked down at me with reservation. “There’s three ways we can handle this,” he began, but then he didn’t continue. Studying my face, it was as if he was searching for something.

Uncomfortable in my own thoughts, under his scrutiny, in the small enclosed space with him, I steeled myself. “Which are?”

“We surround you with security and don’t let him get close, or we stand back and let the opening and party play out.” He paused. “Or we draw him out.”

My stomach knotted. I didn’t know how much was from his presence or from his last sentence. “Which means?”

“Skipping the event would be safest.” He didn’t answer my question. “Second safest would be to surround you with security at both events and not let him get close.”

“If I’m surrounded, then he could choose not to reveal himself.” That much was obvious.

“Exactly. ”

“Then what would we do?” Because I wasn’t sure that would make the letters stop.

“Install a new security system, give you twenty-four-hour protection and wait for him to make another move.”

“How long would that take?” I would be a mess every time I drove somewhere, wondering if another bomb was going to be planted while I was away from my car, and worse, if it was and I didn’t know it.

He shrugged. “Days, weeks, an hour, never. Don’t know.”

I didn’t want to be surrounded, and I didn’t want to live like this a second longer than I had to. “And the second option? What would that entail?”

“I’m with you at both events, but not too close. We wait for him to show himself, then I react.”

“React?”

He nodded once. “Take him down.”

“And will that work?” I bit my tongue to keep from letting the rest of my fears escape, but then they just spilled out, as if this soldier-for-hire was the answer to all my prayers. “What if he gets me on the boat? What if you don’t see him in time? What if he harms me and the boat was only a ruse for him to escape?”

“I served three tours in Afghanistan with the US Marines, and I’ve been in personal protection going on four years. I’m trained to do what I do. I’ll protect you from anyone at the party.”

His speech was pretty and had all the right words, but it was the last three that stood out like a glowing neon sign. “At the party?”

“I can stop physical threats coming at you, but I can’t stop a sniper’s bullet. I don’t know what this stalker’s end game is, and I won’t know what I’m up against until it happens.”

In other words, no guarantees. I closed my eyes a brief moment. “And the third option?”

“We draw him out.”

I sucked in a breath. “Which means? ”

He didn’t hesitate. “We play up what I’m assuming was your original plan.”

We both knew I was going to parade him as my date in hopes to deter my stalker. But seeing the severity of the situation now, the explosion, and getting another letter this morning in broad daylight, the game had changed. I knew it. Damian knew it. And probably Mr. Luna knew it.

Drawing my bottom lip into my mouth, not sure I could form the words, I waited for him to fill in the details.

And he did.

His blue eyes staring down at me, his gaze unwavering, his expression determined, he said exactly what I was hoping he wouldn’t say.

“We give him a show.”

Oh God. “A show,” I absently repeated, stupidly wondering what that would entail.

Without an ounce of humor or flirtation, he winked at me. “Ready for a fake engagement?”