Chapter 2 Cesar
Cesar
Iknow she's going to be trouble the second she steps off the helicopter.
Wind whipping that blonde hair across her face. Designer clothes and perfect make up. The way she moves—chin up, shoulders back, like the world owes her something and she's here to collect.
Diamond Sterling. A girl who’s as rich as her name sounds. Twenty-three years old. Two million followers. A mouth that's made her famous and an attitude that's made her enemies.
My new assignment.
Dios mío.
I watch her cross the helipad, cataloging details the way I've been trained to.
Five-four, maybe five-five. Petite but not fragile—there's curve to her hips, her chest, the kind of body that was made to be grabbed.
She's not looking at the house. She's looking at her phone, frowning at it like it's personally offended her.
No signal out here. I could have told her that.
She looks up and sees me in the doorway, and for just a second, she stops.
I see it—the quick assessment, the way her eyes travel up my body and catch on the tattoos, the scar, the parts of me that don't fit in her world.
Most people look at me and see a threat.
She looks at me like I'm a puzzle she wants to solve.
That's going to be a problem.
Charles Sterling's instructions were simple: Keep his daughter alive.
Keep her off social media. Keep her on the property until the threat is neutralized.
He didn't say anything about keeping my hands off her.
He didn't have to. That should be obvious.
She's the client's daughter, fifteen years younger than me, and so far out of my league she might as well be on another planet.
I'm an ex-con running a security business held together with duct tape and favors.
She's a billionaire's princess who's never heard the word "no. "
This job is my ticket out of the void. Sterling's connections can legitimize everything I've been building for four years—proper licensing, government contracts, the kind of work that doesn't require me to pretend I don't see things. I need this to go clean. I need to keep my distance.
And then she walks past me without a word, heading straight for the east wing like she owns the place, which I guess she sort-of does, and I catch her scent. Something expensive and soft, vanilla and my cock stirs in my jeans like a fucking traitor.
Down.
I follow her. She doesn't acknowledge me until I start laying out the rules, and then she turns with those blue eyes blazing, all righteous fury and pouty lips, telling me she wants a different bodyguard.
No.
I see the moment it lands. The shock that someone isn't giving her what she wants.
She's not used to it. Probably hasn't heard that word since she was a child, if ever.
Her cheeks flush pink and her jaw tightens and she looks at me like she wants to claw my eyes out.
I've faced down men with knives who scared me less.
"Go to hell," she says, sweet as poison.
"I've slept in worse places."
It's not a lie. Eight years in Corcoran will cure you of any illusions about hell. But I don't tell her that. I turn to walk away, already calculating security rotations and perimeter checks and anything else that will keep my mind off the curve of her waist in that expensive little outfit—
"I'm going to make your life hell. You know that, right? I'm going to be the worst assignment you've ever had."
I stop. I should keep walking. I should not engage with the bratty princess who's trying to get a rise out of me. I should remember that I'm a professional, that this job matters, that she's young enough to be—not my daughter. Not quite. But young enough that I should know better.
I look back at her. She's standing in the hallway with her arms crossed, chin lifted, daring me to react.
Brat.
"I spent eight years in prison, Miss Sterling. You're not even close to the worst thing I've had to survive."
I leave before I do something stupid.
The adjoining room is small and sparse. All I need is a bed, chair, and monitors showing every camera angle on the property. I requested minimal furnishing. Less places to hide, easier to sweep. Also, I don't need comfort. Comfort makes you soft.
I check the perimeter readings. Motion sensors active. Gate secure. No movement on the road for the past three hours. The threat assessment Sterling's team provided is thorough—some obsessive fan who crossed the line from worship to rage, detailed enough in his messages to warrant real concern.
You're going to die screaming.
I've seen what men like that are capable of. The ones who fixate, who build entire fantasy worlds around women who don't know they exist. When the fantasy breaks, they break with it. And they want to take the object of their obsession down with them.
Diamond Sterling has no idea how much danger she's in. Or maybe she does, and that's why she's acting out. Fear makes people stupid. Makes them push against the people trying to help them.
I should feel sorry for her.
Instead, I'm thinking about the way she said go to hell. The flash of heat in her eyes. The way her body language shifted when I told her no—not retreating, but leaning in, like she wanted to see what would happen if she pushed harder. She wanted a reaction. She wanted me to lose control.
And part of me, the part I've spent fifteen years trying to bury, wanted to give her one.
She doesn't come out of her room for dinner.
I make food anyway. Chicken, rice, vegetables.
Simple. I learned to cook from my grandmother, back when I was young enough to think I'd have a normal life with a wife, some kids, and maybe even Sunday dinners.
Before Rosa's boyfriend put her in the hospital.
Before I put him in the ground. Prison taught me a lot of things.
How to wait. How to watch. How to survive on nothing and want nothing and need nothing.
But it didn't teach me how to stop wanting.
And right now, on the other side of that door, there's a blonde brat in silk pajamas who looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I bite.
I do.
I clean the kitchen and try not to think about it. Try not to think about her smart mouth and the way it would look wrapped around—
No.
She's a job. A principal. A package to protect and deliver safely. She's not a woman I get to want.
At ten o'clock, I do a perimeter check, walking the grounds in the dark, letting the cold air clear my head.
The ocean crashes against the cliffs below, loud enough to drown out thought.
Not loud enough, apparently. Because I keep seeing her face when I said no.
The way her eyes widened. The way her breath caught.
I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to back her against that wall and show her exactly what happens to little girls who throw tantrums. Wanted to put my hand over her mouth and feel her muffled protests against my palm.
Wanted to bend her over my knee and spank that attitude right out of her until she was crying and apologizing and begging me to stop.
And then not stopping. Not until she was squirming, wet, desperate for something she didn't know how to ask for.
I stop at the cliff's edge and stare out at the black water, ignoring my painfully hard cock.
This is not who I'm supposed to be anymore.
I spent eight years in a cage, and when I got out, I promised Rosa I'd be different.
Better. I'd build something legitimate, something that would make up for what I took from her—not her abuser, she never mourned him, but her brother.
The one who wasn't a killer. The one who could have been something other than what I became.
I'm supposed to be a professional now. Professionals don't fantasize about spanking their clients' daughters until they cry.
After midnight, I'm in my room, reviewing the threat file again, when I hear it.
Soft. Muffled. Coming through the wall.
Crying.
I go still. Listen. She's trying to hide it by pressing her face into the pillow, probably, swallowing the sobs so no one will hear. But these walls aren't as thick as she thinks, and I've spent too many years learning to hear things people want to keep hidden.
Diamond Sterling is crying alone in the dark.
I should go to her. Check on her, make sure she's okay, do the professional thing.
I don't. Because if I walk through that door right now, I'm not going to ask if she's okay.
I'm going to pull her into my arms and hold her while she cries, and then I'm going to tilt her chin up and wipe her tears away and tell her she's safe.
And then I'm going to kiss her. And I won't stop there.
So I stay on my side of the door. I listen to her cry herself to sleep—it takes almost an hour, those muffled sobs fading into silence, her breathing finally evening out.
I don't sleep. I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling and think about the way she looked at me when I told her I'd been to prison. Not scared. Not disgusted. Fascinated. Like she wanted to know what I'd done. What I was capable of.
She has no idea.