Page 29 of Protect Your Queen

And just like that, my brother’s word was final.

Chapter ten

The Queen and Her Court

Chris

There was no way in hell they were going to be interviewing Jestiny. Did I have an inkling about where the family’s wealth came from? Sure. The fingerprints of it were all over the place. The underground MMA ring, the shipping company that had no real assets, and the associations with less than savory businessmen… my little Songbird was the only one with wealth that could be traced by forensic accounting.

But that didn’t make them bad, necessarily. Rich people hid their money all the time.

I had worked in the gray for so long, I knew that bloody hands weren’t always the devil’s playthings.

The Barkadas had a meteoric rise in both influence and wealth that couldn’t be explained away with Jestiny’s status as a Beauty Queen or even as a pop star. She was plucked out of obscurity, and her label backed her completely. That wasn’t normal for the industry. Something else was going on that I couldn’t find in the fucking books, or through my open-source background into the Barkadas.

Would Callum MacLachlan take the family on as a client if their money was dirty? I wasn’t sure. His reputation implied that he wouldn’t.

Whatever they were involved with, it didn’t matter. Because I saw the look on her face. I saw the helplessness in her eyes when her siblings talked around her. Whatever was happening, she wasn’t involved with it. If she was, she was a reluctant participant.

At the end of the day, my job was protecting the little Songbird, not her flock.

Now, I was going to jump on a particular grenade called plausible deniability.

Hell, I had already been grazed by a bullet, so what was another scratch?

Brian was in the little office, pulling first aid supplies off a shelf. The look in his eyes made me wince. The man was sad about something. or maybe he was shaken up by the evening’s turn of events. His client was almost run over, now there was a shooting… that was a lot for most people.

He also genuinely liked Jestiny. It was clear as day. He liked her the way a man might love his daughter.

He took one look at me, and the detectives that followed, and almost dropped everything to the floor.

“Brian,” I said, nodding to the guests. “This is Detective Tanner and Detective Delgado. They’ll be asking a few questions about what happened tonight. I was hoping you could help stitch me up at the same time.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m sure,” Brian said, then proceeded to ignore them as he prepped the kit with shaky hands.

I pulled off my blazer and slung it on the back of a chair.

“Is that GSW from tonight’s shooting?” the male partner chirped in. He had the slightest rural drawl.

“I wouldn’t call it a gun shot wound,” I said, spelling out the words of what a GSW was with a smirk, folding up my white sleeve and taking a seat, holding my arm out so that Brian could come and have a look. “More of a scratch.”

“Are you some kind of tough guy?” That was the woman again, her slight Spanish accent coming through the more sarcastic she got.

“Nope, just a bodyguard.”

There were shots fired. I was grazed in the arm. The client was unharmed.I had done my job.

“And what qualifies you to be a bodyguard?” she asked, tilting her head as she tried to look at my arm a little closer.

“The fact that I have a body, and an ability to guard.” To make my point, I took off my white button-down shirt, and lay it across my blazer.

With one of my most stunning assets on display – my torso – I flexed my pecs, and smiled as she averted her eyes. I was doing this so that Brian could get better access to my arm, of course. Not because I wanted to make things awkward for the Detective who had zero interest in me.

“You’re a real smart-ass, huh?” Detective Delgado was not amused.

I wanted to say “better a smart-ass than a dumbass”, but I shouldn't be antagonizing the police. I was just feeling a little combative. The police showing up at her door unannounced made Jestiny uneasy, and I didn’t like that at all.

“I was former Delta and did ten years in the service. Now, I work for Caledonia Security.” Brian moved a wet towel over my skin to clean off the wound. Then he wiped my cut down with an alcohol swab.