Close Protection Read online

  Lena expected to see fear in the eyes of each candidate. The absence of such was damning proof of idiocy. All the men that came before Ramon had been afraid, but they’d pretended not to be. This moron was scared shitless and didn’t even have the brains to hide it. And Zeus was eating it up. He loved a hireling who was afraid of the big bad boss.

  She looked down her nose at Ramon’s hopeful face. He might have been attractive if he had a spine under all that muscle. Or a brain behind those pretty brown eyes.

  As it was, she believed that he had neither, and as such, had no interest in speaking to him any longer than she needed to.

  “Do you have any questions for the man, darling?”

  She sized him up one final time, and could think of no reason to hear him speak another word.

  “No.”

  Zeus dismissed Ramon and Tia lead him out of the house.

  “Please tell me that I don’t have to listen to any more clowns like that,” Lena said to her step-father.

  “That’ the last of clowns. Now you have to pick.”

  “But they were all awful!”

  “Well you can pick one or I can pick one for you.”

  It didn’t matter to Lena who her step-father picked. They were all the same. Loud men with big muscles and small brains. She’d be able to scare them off without too much trouble, and before too long, Zeus would see what a colossal mistake it was to make her walk around with a shadow all the time.

  Lena went back to her bedroom, where she spent most of her time. The house was huge, but it all felt cold and alien. Her bedroom was the only space that felt like home. It had been her mother’s drawing room when she was alive. She used to sit here with Lena for hours and many of Lena’s fondest memories and happiest feelings had happened here.

  Even the memories of Damien hadn’t dulled the warm glow of the past. Lena groaned at the thought of him, she couldn’t wait to get that loser out of her head. Of course, Damien would be a lot easier to forget if he stopped bothering her all the time. They’d been together for a little more than a year. They met at the small university where her step-father had sent her and started dating at the end of their third year.

  In that time, Lena had seen a hundred sides of Damien. At first he was sweet and charming. He had always been charming. Things were good until they weren’t. Damien was just like all the other men that Lena knew. Proud and possessive and mortally afraid of change. He had propped himself up with lies and big talk. They had never fooled Lena, but she’d let herself pretend that they had for the sake of Damien’s pride. Eventually, the facade faded and neither of them could pretend that Damien was half as impressive as he wanted himself to be. It didn’t bother Lena, but Damien became withdrawn and quick to anger. He got worse and started to scare Lena away, and that only made him worse.

  When school was over, Lena broke things off, moving back into the walls of her family’s estate instead of into the apartment that Damien’s family had given him in downtown Miami. Damien did not take it well.

  Now, Lena spent much of her free time dwelling on the past, imagining things differently and wondering how the world might look.

  This kept her busy most days, as it did today. The sun had nearly gone down when Tia came and knocked on her bedroom door, summoning her for dinner. On Friday nights, the family ate together, no exceptions, no excuses. Lena wordlessly followed Tia downstairs and joined her stepfather and stepbrothers at the table. Dinner was uneventful. Like most nights, the men were happy to carry all of the conversation that needed to be had, and Lena ate quietly, relatively undisturbed.

  As they were finishing, the doorbell rang. Done with her meal, Lena got up to get the door herself. Nobody seemed to notice her leave the table. She walked across the dining room and into the front hallway, and undid the series of locks and latches on the front door. Standing in the doorway was a big man, with big muscles, and beautiful brown eyes.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Ramon

  Ramon hadn’t even made it back to Miami when his phone range. He had assumed that he’d blown the interview on account of how poorly Lena had responded to him. In reality, the only impression that he’d ever needed to make was on her step-father. The notion that he’d have let her daughter choose her own bodyguard was one that had never really crossed his mind.

  And Ramon had made a good impression on Zeus.

  He pulled over on the side of the narrow road that cut through the Everglades and pulled the wheel, turning around in a cloud of dust. He wasn’t sure that he was happy about the news, but he had to borrow money from Gabe for the gas to get out here, so he figured he might as well stick it out until he had some cash saved up or until the Buldova family drove him crazy. Whichever came first.

  It was nearly dark when he arrived back at the Buldova compound. He followed a henchmen to a garage behind the house and parked his decade old Honda next to a glittering red Ferrari. He followed the henchman back to the front door and rang the buzzer. The wait was agonizing. He glanced at his watch. It was about dinner time and he seriously hoped that he wasn’t interupting. Nothing made Ramon more nervous than knowing that sooner or later he was going to see what Zeus Buldova was like when he was angry. He hoped to God that it would happen later. He briefly considered making a run for it when he heard a series of clicks and clacks from the other side of the heavy wooden door. What good was that many locks when there were huge plate windows all around the house?

  One thing was sure, he had his work cut out for him if he was going to make this place safe for anyone in the family. The door swung open to reveal Lena Buldova. She did not look happy to see him.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked.

  Before he had any chance to answer, she turned and walked away. From down the hallway, he heard her announce his presence. A moment later, Zeus was in the doorway, food in his beard and a smile on his face. He greeted Ramon in the manner of false and cautious friendliness that all career criminals know.

  “Let me show you around,” he said.

  Ramon followed him into the house. He’d only seen a little of it earlier, and had not gotten a proper appreciation for how big it was. The family only used about a quarter of the rooms in the house. Zeus didn’t even know what was in most of them.

  “Here’s where you’ll stay when you’re on duty.”

  His new chambers had previously been a cleaning closet. Judging by the smell, the change had been made only very recently. The room was cramped and the air was sharp with chemicals, but the bed was comfortable. It was not the worst place that Ramon had ever called home, and even if it were, he would be spending fewer nights in this room than he might have thought.

  Lena

  The next day started off normal enough for Lena. She slept in, layed around in bed talking to friends from school, checking Facebook and Instagram, and trying very hard not to think about Damien and the three voicemails he’d left while she slept. She got up, showered and dressed, putting lounge clothes over her swimsuit, and continued about her morning, business as usual.

  But there would be no more business as usual for Lena. Her first clue to this was when she stepped into the hall and found Ramon sitting next to her door, reading a newspaper.

  “Good morning,” he said. Lena rolled her eyes and continued down the hall to the kitchen where her breakfast was waiting for her. Ramon neatly folded his paper and followed behind her, about ten feet back. Lena pretended to ignore him as she said good morning to Michaela and Tia, hugging them both. As far as she concerned, he was not in the room when she took her plate to the dining room and sat at the huge oak table, alone, eating her bagel with jam and drinking a glass of orange juice.

  Ramon sat across from her at the table, and casually resumed his reading. A few times, Lena saw his eyes lift up from the paper and scan the room, always returning to the newspaper after a few moments. His silence and his inscrutable gaze drove her mad. She ate in a hurry and said nothin
g to Ramon when she got up and walked outside to the pool.

  She was uncomfortable with the idea of Ramon creeping around while she went for her swim. She didn’t like the way his eyes seemed to be cold and distant. The idea of those eyes watching her as she sunned in her bikini made her squirm. But she found to her surprise that even after she pulled her sun dress over her head and began to rub oil over her olive skin that Ramon seemed more interested in the fence and foliage around the pool than he did with her.

  It was a nice change of pace. Nobody, ignored her when she laid out. She’d caught both of her step-brothers, and even Zeus eying her lean body. Even Tia and Michaela seemed unable to resist it, although Lena correctly believed that their interest was out of jealousy for her youth and strength. Some privacy would be very welcome.

  On the other hand, it was aggravating. Lena put high value on her ability to command the attention of men, and if there was one man in her life that she wanted to be able to control right now, it was this new meathead. Determined to turn the tables on Ramon, she cut her time in the sun short and decided to go for a swim.

  Without her bikini.

  She dove gracefully into the sunwarmed waters and swam to the far end of the pool and back without coming up for air. She emerged at the wall almost silently, taking a calm and composed breath before kicking off into a leisurely backstroke. She took a deep breath, arched her back, and pushed her chest out so that her breasts were just barely exposed to the hot Florida air.

  At the other wall, she rolled onto her stomach and began a slow forward crawl, taking her time, making sure that when she glanced at Ramon, she did so covertly. He had his back turned to her and was inspecting the top of the fence around the pool with monklike focus.

  Lena dried and dressed herself and went inside, Ramon following closely behind. She sat down in the living room in front of the massive flat screen that hung over the fireplace. She didn’t normally care for gossip talk shows or reality TV that promoted trashy, self aggrandizing behavior, but she was desperate to find a way to make Ramon as uncomfortable as he was making her.

  He was currently walking around the living room, running his fingers along the joints of the windows and doors, looking at the fireplace, carefully inspecting the walls, and generally doing a bunch of things that Lena declared to be “weird and kind of fucked up”. When Lena looked over at him to see if her programming choices were having any effect on him, he appeared to be taking pictures of the bay windows on the front of the house. She turned up the volume, even though it was already louder than she could stand.

  Ramon walked outside and wandered around the front of the house, not letting Lena out of his sight, but apparently taking the entire facade of the building into consideration. He took pictures, considered what appeared to be irrelevant details for great lengths of time, and paced around lost in thought.

  Lena began to flip through the channels. She got caught up watching three old men make fools of themselves in a trio of exotic cars and failed to see Ramon come back inside.

  “I love this show,” Ramon said somewhere behind her. Of course he would. Sexy cars and dumb guys making dumb jokes. She changed the channel and flipped through three hundred more before arriving at the conclusion that television would provide her with no relief today.

  She walked upstairs to her bedroom, making a point of turning around to look Ramon in the eyes when she slammed the door in his face.

  Ramon

  Ramon’s alarm went off at 6:30. It was the earliest he’d woken up in almost two months. More often than not, he was only just settling into bed at this hour. He was not bothered by the time, though. Waking up early isn’t nearly as bad as waking up with a crushing hangover, and the strangeness of clarity was not lost on him when he sat up in bed with a clear mind.

  He’d been shown another room on the top floor of the house that was effectively his. He was expected to stay in the tiny quarters across the hall from Lena when she was in the house, but when she was asleep, off of the compound, or otherwise not in need of his services, he would be allowed full access to the room upstairs.

  He walked up the creaking flight of stairs and at 6:33 stepped into the shower. He dragged a razor across his face and stood under the hot water like a priest in salvation. The new accommodations were good for him, he thought. The girl would be trouble, and if he wasn’t careful, her family would be real trouble. But getting paid to live in a mansion and having a professionally enforced sobriety, well, it was hard to beat that. Not that it would be easy. Ramon had been sober many times in his life. At first, he cherished the freedom of mind, the ease at which he could navigate the world with a clear head and a strong body.

  But without fail, insidious cravings set in and got stronger and stronger until he could not resist them any more. Once things got to that point, it was too late. Ramon bottomed out quickly, whatever life he’d made in his brief respite from madness was destroyed inside of a week, and he’d find himself living in solitude, drinking away whatever he’d saved.

  And then he’d end up on his ass.

  Gabe had intervened just in time. Normally the fall was a lot harder. This time, he had a hell of a cushion. Maybe it would be the break that Ramon needed to turn things around, to really get a grip and pull himself up. It was a nice thought, but he didn’t believe it.

  Anyway, that didn’t matter right now. He had a job to do, and he was going to wake up every day that he could and do the job in front of him until it was over or he couldn’t do it anymore. Don’t fuck up. That’s all he had to do. He dried himself off and tried on the suit that he’d borrowed from Gabe. It was a little tight across the chest, and the pants dug into his stomach. Ramon never understood how he managed to gain weight even when there was nothing in his fridge.

  Hopefully that would change too. He’d noticed that the Buldova family had a very nice gym, and the women in the kitchen offered to make him anything that he’d like. With resources like that, it wouldn’t be hard for him to get back into fighting shape.

  He walked downstairs. It was not yet seven o’clock, and there were no signs of life on the residential floor of the house. The kitchen was bustling, Tia and Michaela were already hard at work preparing the day’s meals and cleaning the house. He said good morning and tried to engage them in friendly conversation, but Ramon was never very good at friendly conversation, and the women were quite busy. Michaela did bring him a heaping plate of eggs with two delicious breakfast sausages and a wonderful glass of orange juice that he’d watched her squeeze herself.

  Not bad at all he thought to himself as he ate. He went back upstairs, stopping on the way to help Tia move the sofas so that she could sweep the floors. It was 7:15 and the sun was coming up. There was still no sound coming from Lena’s room, so Ramon retrieved the paper he’d bought from a gas station outside Miami and took a seat outside Lena’s bedroom and waited for her to come to life.

  Ramon read the entire paper three times before Lena walked out of her room just before noon. She did not seem entirely pleased to see him. He followed her at a distance, watching as she went about her day, looking for anything that could spell trouble for her. Her meals were safe enough, Ramon figured. He’d have to talk to Michaela about where their groceries came from, but once they were inside the house, it would be a challenge for anybody to tamper with them.

  The living room was problematic. It was covered by huge open windows on two sides. The compound had high walls around the perimeter, but anybody who could climb a tree and hit a human target at one hundred yards would find little trouble in artificially shortening Lena’s lifespan. As he sat at the table in the dining room, Ramon noticed that a more skilled marksmen could climb onto the guardhouse out by the road and would have a good shot of anybody at the dinner table. It was nearly a thousand feet away, but the right equipment in skilled hands would not be troubled by the distance. He made a note to advise Zeus on a nice pair of curtains, at the very least.

  After breakfast, Lena
went for a swim. The pool was less problematic. Anybody who wanted to do her harm there would have to get very, very close. It was unlikely that they would be able to achieve such a thing without getting on Ramon’s bad side. The walls there, however, did not make ingress into the compound much of a challenge. Grown on the other side was thick, a man could easily climb to the top of the wall and would have no obstacles keeping him from lowering himself down inside. An immense amount of landscaping would add a layer of difficulty, but Ramon decided he would advise Zeus on a spiked parapet. It wouldn’t keep would be invaders out, but it would ensure that they had to content with a much longer drop onto the concrete below. One that would be either inconspicuous or good for their health.

  There was also the apparently problem of Lena’s proclivity for nudity. It wasn’t a direct threat to her health, per se, but anybody with a camera and a crooked moral compass would be able to secure a good deal of leverage against her father, provided that he did not wish the entire world to know how his step-daughter kept her pubic hair. Ramon felt bad enough that he knew. His presence was obviously a source of displeasure, and he didn’t want to invade on her privacy any more than was necessary to do his job. He hadn’t considered that she might want to go skinny dipping, or how difficult it might be to resist the urge to pay slightly closer attention to her when she did.

  Thankfully, her swim did not last long. Ramon let out a deep breath when she climbed out of the pool and went inside, although he did wish that she would improve her attitude towards him some. Being a bodyguard isn’t the best work in the world, but it’s a lot better if your clients don't resent your presence. Lena went inside and watched some TV that did nothing to improve Ramon’s opinion of her, and rather than melt his own brain, he took a closer look at the house, the windows, and the various points of entry and means of defending them. The windows were his biggest concern. They were so big that boarding them would be ineffective and they exposed a good chunk of the living area to danger from literally tens of acres of relatively untamed swampland. Definitely curtains. Lena tried to slip upstairs while he was outside making considerations about the front of the building. He followed her upstairs but she went to her bedroom. Ramon had established with her father that it would be unnecessary for him to invade her space there, and he was happy to give her some privacy, and to give himself a break from her.