by Kendall Duke
The Bodyguard’s Bride
The Bodyguard’s Bride
By
Kendall Duke
Published by JT Publishing
Copyright © 2019 by Kendall Duke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder.
Printed in the USA by JT Publishing
All material is intended for adult purchase and purview.
Author’s Note
This story picks up immediately after the events of The Bodyguard’s Baby. This series is meant to be read in order, although each portion is enjoyable on its own. This book is the finale, and will be most enjoyed as a happy conclusion to the serial beginning with The Bodyguard and the Virgin. All four books are also available in The Bodyguard Anthology, placed back to back.
The Day After…
There was something to be said for being rich. I’d certainly never thought of myself as poor before, but now I knew what true wealth could buy—besides peace of mind. I hadn’t been aware when we were staying at my father’s house how many expensive security measures were actually in place, but now that I was living openly as Ivan’s fiancée, I was privy to the incredible amount of protection it took to exist as a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia.
And it also kind of solidified my father’s place in my mind as a villain.
My father wasn’t the kind of man to dote on his child. He wasn’t really that interested in me, and although it hurt me when I was young, I grew so accustomed to being on my own that eventually I preferred it—especially when the woman I thought was my nanny, Vera, locked me in my room for days at a time. It turned out she was a moll working for the mafia too, and my father’s mistress. My life was shaped by people from this nebulous world, and there was no warm memory to counter my father’s shady dealings. He was hardly around, and hardly knew me.
But in a strange way, I had him to thank for the love of my life.
If my father had never defected, I never would have met Ivan. He never would’ve broken into my house, or been assigned to watch me. We never would have had the chance to fall in love. And I wouldn’t be where I am right now, laying on a duvet that probably cost as much as a reasonably priced new car.
I also wouldn’t be pregnant. I wouldn’t be getting married. And I would never have been able to pursue my life-long dream of becoming a doctor.
I looked over at the source of such intense change and joy in my life and felt my heartrate pick up speed; Ivan was resting against the headboard, not wearing a stitch of clothing. At my father’s house, in spite of whatever dirty-doings we might have gotten in to, he constantly wore an expensive tailored suit. But here, in the strange penthouse suite he apparently lived in most of the time, Ivan was naked. A lot.
And it was something to behold.
Ivan was six feet, four and a half inches tall, naked and fresh out of the shower. He had fine, silky dark hair that haloed a chestnut color you could only see if he stood in direct sunlight, and his eyes were a smoky blend of grey and dark brown so opaque they looked like quartz. Ivan spoke fluent English, but lost articles and possessives when he was nervous, aroused, or around me—which might not have been a coincidence. He was solid muscle. He trained every morning for two and a half hours, had biceps like pythons, slept for five hours at most and ate his own weight in food. He was incredibly clever with machinery and gadgets and any technical doo-dad you could think of, but was dyslexic and hated reading. He was extremely dominant, an alpha male in the classical sense, with a tendency to brood. His face was so perfect he could have been a model. He loved so fiercely he got tunnel vision; he loved so much he forgot himself; he loved so deeply that his commitment was total.
And he was mine.
So I had to thank my father, the man who put me in the terrible position of being some kind of exchange currency for his mistakes; he gave me this man, this incredible human being, who was now drinking strong coffee and raising one silky black eyebrow at me while he winked and I laid there, spent and thrilled and terrified and excited all at once. My father, the villain in my story, gave me this life.
So I’m grateful to him, even if he wasn’t a very good father.
~~~
The Day Before…
“Ivan, there’s no way this place is safe,” I told him, looking out at the expansive view of downtown Washington DC, the Potomac river winding by. Lights twinkled all over the horizon, and the highways spreading like spiderwebs in all directions sparkled like they ran on electric current. I would never have guessed it was three o’clock in the morning if I didn’t know better; there was so much movement and light. It was very different from the suburbs where I’d spent my entire life.
“This place is safest in Washington,” Ivan reassured me. He was relaxing on a recliner by the long couch that oversaw the windows; it occurred to me that I’d barely ever seen Ivan relax. He sat, sure, and he cuddled with me, but relaxing was different. He’d always been on edge at my father’s house, I realized. Always. His duty as a bodyguard was never forgotten. But here, apparently, in a place that I would’ve thought impossible to secure, he seemed very comfortable. Ivan pointed to the corners of the room. “Laser trips, security cameras for all public rooms. I will not tell you where my weapons are, but there are many, and they are easy for me to get. Floor below ours is leased only to my security team. No one above us—top floor. No roof access. One way windows, bullet-proof, key-lock, card-lock, milaya, do you need to know more?” I’d never heard him say so much at one time, but security was his specialty—well, one of his specialties, apparently. The rest were tangential to security, and much bloodier… Unless you counted what he could do in the bedroom, and that was certainly special to me.
“I guess not,” I told him, wringing my hands. He immediately got up, came over to me and pulled me onto the couch so he could hold me close. “I’m alright,” I promised, but I wasn’t completely alright, and he knew it. I couldn’t help but remember that we were here because someone tried to either kidnap or kill me in my old house. We didn’t know which, but either fate would have been terrible; I was just an asset to my father, and he’d already bartered with my life once. If his purpose had been to reunite with me, he would probably just sell me again.
Technically, Ivan owned me. To the mafia world my father belonged to, Ivan had purchased this asset, and if he wanted me back, he had to steal me.
I wasn’t delusional enough to imagine that my father loved me so much he was trying to free me from Ivan—although that’s how it would look to the rest of their associates. I knew he must be angry about the way the deal he’d disrupted had isolated him from contacts and forced him to join a different organization, probably losing several other coveted assets in the process as well. Hopefully everything else my father lost when he stole from the family could be counted in dollars and cents, not human lives.
But I wouldn’t put anything past him now.
Ivan stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. “Milaya,” he murmured, “you know I would do anything to keep you safe, da?”
I did. I’d seen Ivan in action—as much as I might not want to think about it—and I believed he would and could do just about anything to protect our fledgling family. “Yes,” I told him, but I couldn’t stop shivering. He reached down and held my hands between his. I raised my eyebrows at him. “Is this where you tell me to drink milk and run a luke-warm bath? Because…” He laughed, remembering how uninterested I’d been in this particular pres
cription before.
“Nyet,” he said, and then gently put me down on the couch. “I am ordering food for you now—what would you like? They don’t have many options in the kitchen, but someone on my team can get you anything you need.” He strolled over to a landline phone sitting on a desk and picked it up, then said a few words into the receiver. Ivan glanced back at me and smiled. “Ice cream? Chocolate?”
“Yes, please,” I said, already feeling pampered. He spoke in Russian and hung up before coming back over to me.
“Julie,” he said softly before pulling me into his lap. “Do you want to talk about what happened tonight?”
“Not especially,” I mumbled, feeling cold all over. I wished I could forget it. I wished my father wasn’t such a scumbag.
“My father was head of family,” Ivan said suddenly, and I looked up at him. His lovely dark eyes were watching mine intently. “He was very bad man. Make much money—this is how we will go legit one day, with money my father make before he die. He sell many weapons, to many bad people; he never care what happen once they pay. It is not his business. But he die when an arms deal go wrong—he meet someone worse than he is, da?” Something told me Ivan hadn’t liked his father very much, although he rarely mentioned him. Maybe that was it, though. I knew he loved his mother; I had no idea his father was once head of the Russian organization both Ivan and my father once belonged to. “My father die, Sergei take job, and he make some new friends—political friends.” Ivan sighed. “These are very… how you say… Fickle people. They change like the wind.” He made sure I understood his meaning before he continued. “But with father’s money and Sergei political people, we becoming legitimate business. We have very big company. But is very cut-throat—we have old deals, old business, must be finished.” Ivan squeezed my hands. He wasn’t looking at me now; he was thinking about something else and his gaze roamed the room as he spoke, as if he could hardly bear sitting still. “I am part of this—I belong to this group. Julie, you too are part of this group; you marry me, you are father’s daughter, you part of group.” Once again he looked at me to make sure I understood his meaning, and when I nodded he nodded back. “But our baby cannot be part of this. Baby must have different life.”
“Yes,” I agreed immediately. I didn’t want our child to even know about the mob, to live the way Ivan and I had when we were children. I didn’t want that boogey man haunting our baby.
“But for our baby to be free of this,” Ivan said slowly, carefully, “I must finish old business. I must help us become legitimate business—”
“By doing totally illegitimate things,” I said, pulling my hands away. “I get it, Ivan.”
I did. I understood exactly what he was telling me. The saddest moment in our relationship—once we were able to have one—came when Ivan revealed that he believed he wasn’t good enough for me, because he belonged to the mafia. He thought I was a good girl, that I had a chance at a normal life, and he didn’t and never would. From what I’d seen, this was just honesty. Ivan had killed a lot of people. He told me this in his own words, but I’d seen him do it in the last four hours, and I knew that wasn’t the kind of thing a person shrugged off, no matter how calm they appeared. If his whole life, for years and years, was killing inconvenient people at the behest of his family, he was in for life.
But I didn’t have to like it.
I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to help people, to make their lives better. I wished the incredible wealth my father had been hiding from me could be mine so I could spend it making other peoples’ lives better—people he had probably hurt, just by doing business. Arms deals. Political collusion. Money laundering, racketeering, drugs, prostitution… I knew what the Russian mob was like. It was a jackal, a thieving, tearing beast.
But Ivan was right. He had to help legitimize that monster, or our baby would be stuck in the same life. Somehow, some way, he would end up in a similar situation, looking at the web around him and not knowing how to get free.
My ties were more tenuous than Ivan’s, but they didn’t feel that way when everyone I loved—Ivan and my child—was at risk because of the connection. I turned and looked at Ivan. “How do you know the business is able to become legitimate?”
“I know because I am Alexei second in command,” Ivan said, eyeing me. “You not know this, but I am very important, Julie.” He shrugged, some of the sexy arrogance he wore like cologne returning. “Is better, always, to be legitimate. Is only way to survive long-term.” His eyebrow raised and he glanced at me. “You know this term, this word ‘legitimate,’ is American only for ‘legal.’ You know is not same thing as ‘good,’ or ‘right.’”
“What do you mean?”
“All big business is bad and wrong,” Ivan said bluntly, and used his finger to draw a circle in the air, creating a visual for the cycle he described. “To make so much money is to do what is… Logic. What is simple, for make most money. Many times, this is not best for people. That is what I mean.” His finger made a triangle now. “Legal. Bad. Wrong.”
“Well, legal is certainly better than illegal,” I said, frowning. Ivan shrugged.
“Is more like… Obvious,” he said, nodding to himself. “Illegal is when wrong is obvious. Legal is when wrong is hidden.”
“Okay, smart guy,” I said, sighing. “What are these legal but terrible things your company will do?”
“We already do,” Ivan said, and I saw him reach out to grab my hand but he stopped himself. He wanted to have this discussion without the interference touching caused. “We have tech company work with North Korea, we have mines in China, vice-versa; we no more make bombs but cyber-bombs, yes,” he said, his voice sad. “All this is legal—or will be, soon. I just…” Ivan sighed and surprised me by rubbing his temple with his thumbs, as if he had a head-ache. “I want you still love me, Julie,” he said softly, surprising me, “even though I not very good man. I want you love me anyway.”
“I don’t think you’re bad,” I said, and I couldn’t help but come to him then and curl up next to him on the couch. “I think you’re wonderful.”
“You must love me then,” he said, and gave me a tired smile. “Is because I buy you ice cream, da?” And when I laughed at his teasing he gave me the sweetest smile, and of course I loved him. I grabbed his face and kissed him.
“I love you very much,” I said. “I think you’re amazing, Ivan.” I leaned back but let my palms rest on his stubbled cheeks. “But if what your company is doing really bothers you, then change it.” His eyebrows jumped up in surprise. “I can tell it does bother you—and not just because of the baby,” I said, knowing that this would be his first thought. “It bothers you because you’re not a bad man. A bad man wouldn’t care. You do.”
Ivan was quiet for a while. “Is not so easy. You know this, smart American girl.”
“Of course I do,” I said, leaning back on the expensive couch. “But we’re looking at our whole lives here. We’re looking at our child’s whole life—our other children too,” I said, thinking about the future. Ivan’s eyes widened even more. “We’re thinking about everybody. That’s what’s bothering you, right? What happens to everyone, if the world just keeps on going the way it has, with people like our fathers running things. Well, you run things now,” I said, and poked him in the ribs in that way that made him laugh. “So change it!”
“You very bossy,” he said, capturing my hands.
“And naughty,” I said, giggling as he began to tickle me back, only a little, since he didn’t want to hurt me or the baby. “Don’t forget naughty.”
“You right,” he said, his breath catching. “You are very naughty—”
Just then, the doorbell rang. Ivan gave me a calculating look and then stood up. He returned from the foyer a minute later with some chocolate ice cream and what looked like five different kinds of smoothies, a rainbow of fruity colors in tidy glass canisters that he carefully placed in a small fridge I hadn’t noticed before. “We have a kit
chen,” he said, “but I never use. Is in servant side of suite, for live-in workers, and I have none of these. So I just call room service.”
“This is really late for room service,” I said, coming over to taste the ice cream.
He guided me to another room in the suite with a full dining room set and placed my ice cream on the table before pulling out my chair. “If room service closed I don’t know,” he explained. “I call my team, floor below, they bring me what I want. If it come from hotel, okay, if not, they go get.”
“So room service is really just… Ivan service?” He shrugged.
I sat down to enjoy my ice cream. His wealth was going to take some getting used to. “That is pretty… Convenient.”
“You don’t like this,” he said, sitting beside me. I looked down at my ice cream. “I did not want you to see how I live before you, Julie,” he said, and when I didn’t look at him he reached over and pulled my chin up to face him. “I very happy with you.”
“How?” I waved with the spoon around the room. “How is living in a normal house in a normal suburb anything in comparison to this?”
“I like…” He thought for a minute. “I not grow up in this place, you know—I grow up in Russia.” He sighed. “My mother very nice woman, very sweet. That is how she have relationship with father, he…” His brow furrowed. “He… fool her? He trick her.”
“He took advantage of her?”
“Da, this is it. Like chess game. He win, she lose,” he said, willing me to understand. “I live very good life in Russia, but is not fancy like this. I come here when I am seventeen, to start work. Have more money than I understand, very sudden.”
“Did you buy your mom a house?”
“No, she dead,” he said, and I could tell this still made him very sad to think about, although it must have been years before. “She die when I am fifteen.”