Page 18 of The Bodyguard

“Tell her to stand and leave the gun on the chair, or I’m going to kill you really slowly.”

In any other situation, this wouldn’t have worked. The nanny had that cold, dogmatic look in her eye, and at the first hint of an order from any one of the six men here, Princess Lia would have been shot.

But she wouldn’t do it if her brother’s life is threatened.

The resemblance took a while to connect. Same skin coloring. Same eye and nose shape. It might not have been obvious to an untrained eye, but I wasn’t untrained.

The boy wears a thick copper bracelet on his wrist. The phrase "J'aime ton frère"—French for "I love you, brother"—is engraved into the metal.

From the white sleeve of her shirt, I caught a glimpse of a similar-looking bracelet. I don’t doubt hers would say something similar.

This isn’t a FATM thing. It’s a sibling thing.

“Tell her to get up and put the gun on the chair,” I say again. He’s sobbing. I press harder into his face. He starts to whimper, begging her now to leave. That he doesn’t want to die. He tells her I killed everyone else.

I don’t want her to see me this way, but the princess, who had gone into almost a catatonic state, has now forced herself out of it.

“Lia,” she says, stumbling toward me. The dazed confusion in her eyes makes me want to kill them all over again. “Lia.”

The nanny puts the gun down, with the napkin still covering it, and rises.

She’s conflicted, but her brother means more to her.

“There’s a situation in Princess Lia’s playroom,” I say as soon as Igor answers.

“Fuck,” the man breathes on the other side. The call is disconnected.

“Please don’t kill him,” the woman begs me now. A minute later, Igor enters the playroom, his gun drawn.

I hear him swear again. He’s quick, and I know he’ll have the situation under control. But I only take a breath when I see the little princess in her father’s arms.

From the camera view, I can see that he’s aged ten years possibly in the last hour. A flood of security personnel enters the playroom. The woman is taken away.

I release the boy's face from my foot. The princess has taken the iPad and is now weeping openly at the fact that her father and her sister are safe.

I need to get her out of here. And get a cleanup crew in here. Four of them are dead. Two are still alive. I let the two amateurs live. Apparently, I shot the other one’s ear off and not his head.

They’re too scared to move. I’ll leave the option to escape on their own. Chances are they’ll decide this isn’t the life for them.

I turn away from her and pick up the discarded guns. It’s carnage. Blood everywhere. Fuck.

I watch her take a panoramic view of the living room. At the human destruction that I caused.

“We have to leave,” I tell her. I go into the room and pull on a T-shirt. I wet a towel and come back. She hasn’t moved.

“Now.” I’m brisk and cold as I throw the towel at her. I have to get her out of my sight.

Out of my fucking reach.

I can still smell her on my fingertips. My cock can still taste the sweetness of her pussy.

“Get in the car,” I tell her. “Get in the fucking car right now!”

She finally starts to move. Wiping the blood off her face as she does. I want to carry her out. I want to shield her eyes from the monster I had become.

I should be kinder to her. I should be comforting her. She went through a horrific ordeal. Violence is not something she’s accustomed to experiencing. I should be holding her.

But fuck, if I touch her again, I will destroy her completely.

---