Page 1 of The Bodyguard

One

Rule number one: you don’t mess with my family. David broke that rule. His first mistake. His only mistake, but it was a pretty big one. A massive testament to the absolute arsehole I should’ve always known he was, that lapse in judgement is something I will never repeat.

You see, people who mess with my family – people who disrespect, steal from, cheat on someone within our, admittedly very close-knit circle, they rarely come out of that in one piece. Some have never come out of it, period, but David did. Because I made sure of it. Yeah, the man who cheated on me, stole from me, had some weird kind of assumption that he could get away with all that shit, well, he was either extraordinarily brave, or blindingly stupid, and knowing what I know now my money would always go on the latter and yet, he still got to walk away. Intact. Not even a bruise. Thanks to me.

“Do you regret it?” Ollie asks, perching his arse on the corner of my desk. “Letting David off the hook so easily?”

“I have my moments.” I look at my brother, throwing him a slight smile. “But I think it was the right decision.”

“Yeah,” Ollie sighs. “Not one everybody was happy with.”

I sit back in my chair and rest my steepled fingers over my stomach. “By everybody, you mean Dad.” Not a question. Of course he means Dad. Mikkel Nielsen. Outrageously successful. Extremely powerful. A man you don’t make a habit of crossing.

“He likes to deal with things in his own way, Lena. You stopped him from doing that.”

“David’s an idiot, but I’m not sure he deserved the kind of punishment Dad would’ve doled out, had he got his hands on him.”

“He stole from this family.”

“He stole fromme.” My dignity, mainly. But also money that didn’t belong to him, the main reason this family wanted to deal with himtheirway, not mine. But when all was said and done, it was a couple of hundred pounds, a drop in the ocean to the Nielsen family.

“Fromus.” Ollie points out before sliding down from my desk, digging his hands into his pockets as he walks over to the wall of glass that looks out over the River Tyne, the Quayside, and – if you’re from this neck of the woods in north-east England – the iconic Tyne Bridge from this contemporary, purpose-built office block, erected by our family’s own construction company. The company I run. “Anyway,” Ollie turns around and leans back against the glass, “if it had been left up to me…”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t.” I spin my chair around so I’m looking at Ollie. “David fucked up, big time. He lost his job, his home, the life we’d started to build together. A good life. ” I shrug. “He fucked up.”

“Understatement.” Ollie sighs and glances back over his shoulder. “We’ve got a meeting tonight. Me and Dad.” He looks back at me. “At the High Grange Hotel.”

I let out a low whistle and spin my chair back around. “Must be important business.”

“Stefan Novak.”

My chair spins around again. “Novak? When did we start doing business with that family?”

“This isn’t business as such. Over the past few months we’ve noticed the Romanians’ presence growing, and now they’re starting to infiltrate our territory. We need to have a quiet word, that’s all.”

I arch a brow. “That’s all? Novak has links to known terrorists…”

“We’ve known him a long time, Lena, and for the most part our families have respected each other, and kept our distance because you’re right. We don’t get involved with people like him, but he’s given us no choice now. We can’t just sit back and let him take what isn’t his. We don’t do that, either.”

“You should be careful. I’ve never trusted him. Never trusted anyone who’s close to him.”

“He needs to know there are rules. And he needs to know he’s breaking them.”

Children of a Danish father and an American-English mother, me and Ollie, we were never kept in the dark as to what kind of family we were being brought up in. The things my father did. The kind of man he was. Alright, maybe in the beginning, when we were just kids, our parents shielded us from it as much as they could, but as we got older we became very aware that we were no ordinary family. We were different. To the outside world, Mikkel Nielsen is nothing more than an extremely successful businessman, but he’s so much more than that. Yes, he’s a very wealthy man, a very powerful man. But he’s also a man many fear, like I said, you don’t mess with my family. That has consequences, which is why David was, quite literally, lucky to walk away.

“Did he ever say thank you?” Ollie crosses his arms and takes another glance back over his shoulder. He’s changing the subject, which is about par for the course. I only get to know so much before the drawbridge is pulled up.

“Didwhoever say thank you?” I’m facing my desk again, checking through another batch of emails.

“David. Did he ever thank you, for saving his life?” Ollie finally pulls himself away from the window and heads for the door.

“Saving his life might be a bit of an exaggeration.”

“He’s still breathing, isn’t he?”

I narrow my eyes again as I look at Ollie, a slight smile on my face, which is matched by him. We both know my ex-fiancé got off lightly. We also know he’ll spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, which is less than he deserves, but I’ll take it.

“Is Jake around?” Ollie asks, grabbing his jacket from the chair by the door. “We need him to drive us tonight.”

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