Page 21 of Guarded Rebellion

Eventually, I had to leave. Lab was over, so I walked out to Lev. He didn’t speak to me, though, too busy on his phone.

Grunts and sounds of affirmation were all he spoke or shared with whoever was on the other line, and I grew curious. Business matters of the family weren’t anything I had to worry about, but he looked so severely serious that I was intrigued.

If something could botherhim, the formidable and impassive brute of a man who showed little emotion, it had to be something significant.

That wasn’t the only time he was on his phone, either. All night, he took calls. Then the rest of the week, too. Each time he was preoccupied with whoever was calling him, I was spared his direct judgment, taunting, or orders not to stray. He was with me, always near and diligent in securing my safety, but he wasn’t speaking to me.

Which is a good thing, right?The first day, I told him not to talk. I hadn’t assumed I could order him mute, but now that he wasn’t talking to me and held up with his phone, I had to suffer the irony of wanting his attention back on me.

What if he’s going to be pulled off my security detail? What if Uncle Oleg is going to have him deal with something else? Or with someone else?

I wasn’t privy to business matters. I didn’t want to know the details. But it wasn’t hard to imagine a strong, serious man like Lev being more useful in another way.

Starting my “grand escape” from the mansion, I'd wished for any other soldier than Lev to be with me nonstop.

After coming to experience a sliver of the excitement he caused me to feel with his hands on me, his body so close and trapping mine in place, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him in this proximity.

I wanted Lev. No one else.

Who am I kidding?

It wasn’t as though I could ever act on this desire. All I could do was dream for something different from what I would be permitted to have—a husband I wouldn’t want and a life without passion.

9

LEV

Every call I received pulled me further from Eva.

She was just supposed to be a job. The Boss’s expectations of me were that I supervise her while she attended her classes on campus. Being her shadow, warning her from considering any risky behavior, and dismissing any threats. Those were my primary tasks, and without anything of substance to report as intel on the Petrov student here, it was all I concentrated on.

Still, I was tied to the family and held to the obligations to take the calls from my fellow soldiers and other leaders within the organization. As of late, over the course of the week since I caged Eva to the wall and pushed the boundaries of wanting her under my submission, countless messages and calls had come in to me.

I was required to answer them all. My assignment of staking out, hunting down, and killing Yusuf Ilyin was over, but lingering questions and concerns kept me accountable.

“Do you know who he was?” a supervisor asked. He wanted the same information others in the Baranov Family had been inquiring about.

“No,” I replied, not breaking my stride as I walked with Eva. She glanced over her shoulder, noticing my one-word reply. I was careful never to speak about specifics out loud, and that included watching what I said around her. She was an insider. Eva was tied to the family and would otherwise be safe to hear anything I said, but I couldn’t trust this college campus. In this crowded corridor that led to another lecture hall, anyone could be listening.

“You have no clue?” the man asked.

I just fucking said that.“No,” I repeated, keeping my voice level and dull, emotionless and sans the frustration that built within me.

A month had passed since I’d taken out Yusuf, and it seemed those four weeks were all that were needed for lots of questions to arise. Another man had been around Yusuf throughout my stakeout before I could get to him and kill him. And that man was an outlier. I failed to identify him as an Ilyin soldier. I couldn’t place him as a man from another organization either.

I’d killed him, though, catching him near the cabin when I had the clearance to kill Yusuf. Only now, reports were coming in that he was a dead man walking again. That he hadn’t died by my hand. That I hadn’t killed him that day.

Eva reached the doors to the large auditorium and flicked a hand at me. I couldn’t tell if it was a wave or a shooing gesture of her wishing me to leave her be. Since that close moment where I’d held her neck and warned her off flirting with anyone here, she’d been more aloof than ever.

Or maybe it just seems like that because I’m always on the fucking phone.Being tugged in another direction with these rising questions about the day I’d killed Yusuf weren’t aiding anything between us. I’d been distracted and distant.

But isn’t that for the best?

Rurik didn’t need to advise me to forget about having Eva. Any tryst or intimacy would be frowned upon and forbidden. I hadn’t lost sight of my place and I knew what hers was. Yet, I couldn’t click off this bone-deep desire that flared to the surface when I witnessed her sassy expressions and pouts of annoyance with me.

“We can discuss it tomorrow,” the leader replied, clearly irked that I couldn’t provide him with any other details or answers.

I wouldn’t shirk from dutifully answering any questions about Yusuf’s death, but I couldn’t abandon my post with Eva, either. “Yes,” I replied anyway, knowing that another soldier could stand in for me while I returned to the Baranov mansion to speak with the Boss and other concerned leaders tomorrow morning.

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