The Bodyguard's Twisted Game

1. Roman

Roman

Something is wrong tonight.

Someone.

The worst part of my bloodline, creating more problems for me, when I asked for none.

My eyes scan the sloping hill, the scent of recently cut grass filling the night air. I look at every empty bench dotted along the cobbled walkway skirting the hill, checking to see if Yegor brought backup tonight.

No parked vehicles.

No one on foot.

It’s second nature for me to keep a close watch on my surroundings.

It’s not that I’m afraid of whatever pathetic attempt at negotiation my cousin is planning tonight. Fear isn’t an emotion I’m capable of anymore when it comes to my family.

It just makes me fucking sick.

My skin crawled when my cousin told me to meet him here.

I still feel unclean for agreeing to it, even now.

I hate negotiating.

It requires talking, which I hate even more.

Problems are better solved with strength, or strategy, or silence. People crack under the pressure of silence, when they realize you aren’t just going to fold and give them what they want.

It’s one of my deadliest weapons.

But it doesn’t fucking work with Yegor.

“Are you going to speak?”

My deep baritone cuts through the air. I pace past Yegor’s shadowy form, standing beside a solid tree trunk, and I nod toward his dark figure the moment I clock where he’s standing.

A dank mix of cologne and incense lingers in the air around him. Inheriting millions hasn’t improved his taste.

My boots crunch on the gravel path under the canopy of trees.

Yegor cocks his head to one side. “You wouldn’t be meeting with me if you weren’t at least a little interested in what I have to offer, Roman.”

“You have nothing I want.”

“I think I might.”

“Skazhi eto, blyat,” I tell him, keeping my voice low. Fucking say it.

He knows enough Russian to understand that, even if his mother never spoke it as much as mine did.

I glance down at my phone and tap out a quick text.

Roman

It’s just Yegor. No company.

Maks Petrov

Got it.

Maks is standing 50 feet away right now.

Because I did come with company.

Maks is behind a tree, in the shadows, watching over me with a loaded gun. He’s the only one of my cousins I’d trust with my life. Maks is more like a brother to me than a cousin, and he always has my back.

Can never be too careful taking meetings these days.

“I have a job for you,” Yegor tells me, pacing around beneath the tree. When he steps out into the pale moonlight, he’s smiling at me.

“From the Bratva?”

“Yes.”

I set my jaw, then release it. “I told you not to contact me with more jobs.”

“Yet you accept them from Maks?”

“I respect Maks.”

He bites the inside of his cheek. “Then why did you meet me?”

My finger twitches at my side. When I don’t respond to him, the low chirp of crickets is the only other sound in the night air.

A breeze blows through the leaves, and cooler air kisses my skin for the first time in months.

The ending of summer can’t come soon enough. I need the cold.

“I met you here because I don’t want you showing up at my fraternity house,” I finally tell him. “And I thought you might have been stupid enough to try it.”

The fact that Yegor has come this close to the school’s edge already makes me consider sending him home with a black eye.

We’re not on the Crimson College campus anymore, we’re below it. Technically. I don’t conduct family business on campus.

One of my rules.

I’ve also told my cousins, a thousand times, not to contact me with petty new small-time jobs from within the family, but Yegor seems to think he’s an exception.

Repeatedly.

He looks like he’s trying to play the part of a young mafia kingpin’s son in a slate peacoat and black hat. The only thing I’m afraid of is his ignorance, because in my eyes, he still looks like a baby.

“There’s a new sophomore transferring into Crimson this fall,” Yegor finally says. “Someone wants him taken care of.”

“Kill him yourself. I’m done doing dirty work.”

“Not taken care of like that. Protected.”

I exhale, my chest falling.

I wasn’t expecting that.

Yegor’s favorite jobs often involve cutting limbs… breaking bones… securing prizes like molars.

Not protecting people.

I nod. “Who needs protection?”

Yegor slides his phone out of his pocket, stepping over to my side. He opens a trashy website for celebrity news, and at first I think he’s playing a cheap prank on me.

But the headline at the top reads:

Younger Landrey Brother Expelled From Manhattan U Falcons, Spiraling Amid Controversy.

The pictures show a young jock.

Very toned.

Blond.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” Yegor asks. “You know how many people would kill to spend one night with this guy?”

The first photo shows Tate Landrey outside a nightclub wearing a black tank top that seems specifically designed to show off all of his most prized muscles.

Superficial athlete’s muscles, of course.

He couldn’t last twenty seconds in a real fight.

There’s a man on his left side and a woman on his right, and both are kissing each of his cheeks, the woman digging her fingers into his blond hair. He holds up his free hand to flip off the camera, biting his lower lip.

My gaze passes over the word “bisexual” in the gossipy article about him, and I reach down to scroll past it.

“Little Landrey is coming here,” Yegor says.

I glance up. “Am I supposed to know who this person is?”

“You know who Luke Landrey is, yes? You’ve never heard of Tate?”

“Luke Landrey, the Reapers’ quarterback?”

“Someone doesn’t read the news,” Yegor says.

“Tate Landrey is Luke’s younger brother.

Their whole family is football royalty. Tate was set to go pro in a few years, until he got kicked off of his college team.

He’s fucked. A black mark on the Landrey family.

They tossed him in a summer of intensive therapy, and then decided to ship him off here upstate for his next year of college. ”

I glance back at the first photo. “So this boy is coming to Crimson.”

Yegor nods. “Aleksander heard news that Luke Landrey was looking to hire a bodyguard for his brother. I thought you’d jump on the job.”

I frown.

Yegor is getting jobs from our other cousin, Aleksander, now? These two shouldn’t hold any power in the family.

They will need to be handled.

Eventually.

I keep my eyes glued to Yegor in front of me, never glancing over toward Maks in the shadows.

“I don’t want this job,” I tell Yegor. “I could only bodyguard when I’m not in my own classes, anyway.”

Yegor peers at me. “I know you don’t have that many classes this year. You only need one or two to finish. You’re trying to drag out your time in college. The whole family can see it, Roman.”

I press my tongue against the inside of my cheek, staring at him.

This is why I keep everything to myself.

Why I don’t talk to people.

I don’t tell people shit, and it has absolutely fucking nothing to do with being shy. It’s strategy. Yegor has no right to know about my schedule, my lack of classes this year, or that yes, I’m prolonging my time in college so that I don’t have to do other things.

Telling people information gives them ammunition.

I never want a single soul to have ammunition on me.

“My reasons for staying at Crimson aren’t your concern. I said I don’t want the bodyguard job.”

“You will when you know what it pays.”

“I don’t care what it pays.”

Yegor rolls his eyes at me. “Why wouldn’t you do it?”

I can tell Tate Landrey is trouble just from looking at him.

Too pretty.

Filthy rich.

Probably has gotten his way since birth.

“Is this boy actually in danger?” I ask. “Why would he need a bodyguard?”

“The kid’s gotten some death threats, typical internet bullshit. Nothing’s going to happen to him. But Luke Landrey is loaded and worried about his baby brother, so he’s willing to pay. Enormously. And I’ll get a ten percent finder’s fee, of course.”

I glance back down at the article open on Yegor’s phone again.

I scroll lower, looking at photo after photo of Tate Landrey.

I tap on another suggested article about him.

This one shows photos of him on a small yacht, apparently taken at the beginning of summer, lounging on chairs and drinking with friends.

Apparently that’s part of what a “summer of therapy” is for someone from the Landrey family. Vacations off the coast of Italy.

I'm very aware of his father and brother, even if I’ve never heard of him. A generation ago, Christopher Landrey was one of the best pro football players of all time, and now Luke Landrey is one of the most famous quarterbacks in the country.

Tate Landrey actually is football royalty.

“Looks like he’s having the time of his life, doesn’t he?” Yegor says.

I shake my head. “Something about him looks sad.”

He snorts. “Sad? He’s probably fucking models and partying until sunrise each morning.”

Yegor is so fucking wrong.

Tate Landrey might be fucking models and partying, but he’s clearly not happy.

Before my mother died, she told me all the time that I had a gift. In Russian, she’d say, “Moy sostradatel'nyy mal'chik.”

My compassionate boy.

I know the look that I see in Tate Landrey’s eyes.

Even in these grainy photos of him on the yacht. I’ve seen how people lose themselves when their lives are bottoming out, empty, and they’re in free-fall… and he looks completely lost.

I don’t think my mother was right.

I’m not compassionate, I just see reality for what it is.

“Fine,” I tell Yegor. “I’ll watch over him. But come to me again with another request, and I will break both of your hands in your sleep.”

It’s four nights later before I get another shred of news about the Landrey boy.

Yegor Petrov

He arrives tonight.

Roman

Need more info. When? Where?

That’s all I was told.

Address of his apartment. Now.

He will be in a dorm on campus. Fucking relax.

I squeeze my phone in my hand.

The heavy thud of music reverberates across the first floor of Onyx House.

Tonight is the first party of the fall semester, and I plan on rewarding my cock with something beautiful.

I’m hungry.

Desperate, even.

My cock has a reputation of its own, and women are often very curious to see if the rumors are true about my size.