by Celia Crown
Even looking at him offends him. I can’t do anything right when it comes to Silas.
All of them left the hall presumably to where their car is, but I’m swept into another conversation again. I focus on this night as a challenge to get as many interested parties as possible.
Some of them spark an interest, but none of their selling points makes me want to work for them.
Two hours passed and my tummy is filled with stuffed mushrooms and oysters. I’m not fond of raw food, but a hungry woman is more terrifying than a woman scorned.
I keep feeling eyes on me, but when I look back, no one is there. It’s not a curious type of feeling; it’s more like I’m being watched and slightly hunted when I move across the floor.
I occupied my mind with people who are more self-absorbed than a narcissist, they provide entertainment for the nagging feeling the back of my head.
Although the event is still going on in full swing, I figure that it’s time for me to go home and sleep off the pain in my feet. These killer heels aren’t a joke.
The feeling is still there when I go near the exit, but it’s much hotter at the back of my skull. I risk a glance behind me, and I thought I caught a glimpse of green eyes.
That would be impossible; Silas had gone with Sebastian. It’s his job to be the other bodyguard for the client, but that didn’t stop my heart from giving a hopeful jerk before disappointment punches me in the guts.
I shake away the feeling, but it persists until I’m in the car. The feeling fades away little by little with the barrier of the car, and it’s gone when the car drives away.
Chapter Two
Silas
Sometimes I hate my best friend, and this is the time that I wish a demon bites that cheeky grin off his face.
“I don’t know why you’re so against it.”
The nerve of this guy.
“The answer is still the same.” I turn away from him as I fix my bottle of water.
The company is not overflowing with workers; there are only a handful of people who are professionally trained to become security guards because rich folks pay top dollar for the best.
Other employees are located on the floors below us where they ensure that the company runs smoothly. The top floor is where the owner of this company works. He’s an older man, much older than all the bodyguards that work here.
His story has been posted on every news article when it started to gain media attention because of his work. His family had died due to being famous and rich, and he wishes to prevent any tragedies to those who are vulnerable.
As long as they pay the price. He says that he never wishes kidnappings on anyone, but he still wants to get paid, and so do everyone else.
Sebastian and I have been lucky to be chosen by him to join his team, but we’re not the youngest ones. There is a twenty-year-old boy who has been recruited just a year ago.
Something about his criminal background stands out, and I think it has to do with the ability to calculate an escape route when he’s experiencing the adrenaline rush of being chased by the police.
“This is Tori we’re talking about. You can’t avoid her forever.”
That name brings a snarl on my lips as I shoot him a glare. Unbothered by the heated gaze, Sebastian rolls his eyes distastefully and scoffs loudly.
He knows that Victoria Valentina and I haven’t been on speaking terms for the last seven years, and it’s all her fault. She’s the one that made us like this; she’s the one that turned our friendship into a mangled mess.
Sebastian doesn’t know the reason, and Victoria doesn’t care about the reason, but I remember every shitty moment of that day.
“I can,” I snap back. I have been doing it for the last seven years, and I’ll continue to do it.
If Sebastian wasn’t friends with her, I wouldn’t have to hear her name ever again. It’s because they are friends that I’m forced to endure the torture of knowing what is going on in her life. I know more about her than I would like, and I have that meddling Sebastian to thank for it.
She’s a renowned mathematician now. After her true calling in a prestigious college, she had been climbing up the social ladder at a remarkable speed that leaves everyone behind.
A bitterness coats my tongue. I pinch my tongue between my canines to bring me back to the grinning face of my friend.
He’s been demoted to asshole.
With fame come crazies. After solving a mysterious puzzle shrouded in numbers that baffled professors at Ivey League schools and professional puzzle solvers, Victoria had garnered more fame than necessary.
She’s bringing threats to herself and on her own volition. It’s her fault. Her troubles shouldn’t extend to others, but because she’s a dumbass like Sebastian, I have to clean up the mess.
“You can’t trick little old Detective Sebastian.” He waves his finger in front of me as chews with his mouth open.
Meat sauce drops on his plate while he disgustingly licks his lips. I reevaluate why I’m friends with this ill-mannered man, but then I remember that he’s the first one to approach me when I put my ‘resting bitch face’ as he calls it.
It’s a face that comes in handy as I don’t like crowded spaces. People steer clear of me as if I’m carrying a plague that will wipe them out with one stare.
“You were so happy to see Tori!” he squeals, hand clenching around the plastic white fork.
The cafeteria bustles with people coming and going. We stay in a corner to be away from the chattering and clattering of utensils while people glance at us. We’re well known in the company, for Sebastian’s title of ‘Man-Whore’ and my unapproachable presence.
Sebastian carries that name with so much pride that it’s sickening, but it doesn’t deter women from exuding provocativeness when he’s nearby.
Seeing it from an outside perspective, I would have felt secondhand embarrassment if I had the ability to care enough.
“I wasn’t,” I huff. He ignores me and the temper rises in my voice. I swallow down the detest with the cold water. It makes the irritation in me sizzle away until he brings it back up again.
“I saw you looking at her.”
I set a deadpan expression. “I was scanning the floor.”
It’s part of my job description to know my area well for potential dangers that require me to make a hasty exit with that woman sticking onto Sebastian’s arm. I had to wonder if I needed to get a saw to remove a limb, and at this point of annoyance, I didn’t care which one I would have cut off.
“You were smitten,” he corrects with a laugh. “Still are.”
It would be so easy to take the back of his head and slam his face down on his fork. A reenactment of the Joker scene and the pencil should satisfy the raging beast in me.
“I don’t know what happened between you two,” he says, jabbing the fork on his plate and sighs. “But I do know that you are still that love-sick puppy from seven years ago. You can’t hide that, Silas.”
“I’m not in love.”
I was, a traitorous voice whispers in my head. I still am.
I crush the empty water bottle, and the plastic gives under the power of my fingers. It’s loud, but it didn’t reach to the other tables that were higher in chatters and gossiping.
“When we left the event last week, you looked like you were about to bite the head of our client because she wanted to leave before Tori did.”
I was annoyed with the spoiled princess because she was complaining about every little thing to anyone with a pair of ears. Her brother had to stop her and ask us to take her home with him, so she doesn’t cause a scene in front of powerful people.
“And then you went back, ten miles of total driving from her home to the event hall.” Sebastian wiggles his eyebrows.
“She was still technically my client.”
He snorts, chugging down his smoothie. “Tori never hired you, and you were never paid. She only provided the invitation.”
Don’t
do it, I think to myself as I look down at the metal tray reflecting the green in my eyes.
“You just wanted to make sure Tori was safe. What a nice boyfriend you are.”
Yes, do it, the voice in my head grumbles. My hands itch to hold the tray and smack it over the head of my friend, but I have been learning to control my temper for the last couple of years.
I’m not going to let that effort go to waste no matter how annoying Sebastian is.
“Admit it,” he teases with a crooked grin. “You miss you, and it felt nice seeing her again.”
It was more than nice. It was fantastic. My head and my heart hadn’t been on the same level after Victoria and I stopped talking, and at times I would think that it’s my fault for having a pride bigger than goddamn Russia.
She tried. She tried to call me so many times, but I never picked up because I was angry and I was hurt. Avoiding her was what I did, and I got rid of all the traces of her in my life.
The pictures that we took, the scent of her on my bed when she would be too tired to return home, and the little trinkets that she would buy for me because she thought a bunch of cuteness would cut away some of my angst.
Despite the pain that roared in my heart when I saw her again in that black dress and brown eyes, I never thought something good would come out of having a spoiled brat as my client.
I missed her. A bit too much, and now I am a bit too obsessively clinging onto the brief glances that I caught of her. I was afraid, so afraid of whatever emotions were raging inside me that I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.
“Well,” Sebastian hums with a smirk. “You’re going to be seeing her a lot, so get used to it.”
I cannot believe the audacity of Sebastian to be able to pull something off like this and get away with it with our superiors.
“It’s just a week,” he comments with mirth. “A week with Tori in a romantic hotel room. Oh, the possibilities!”
“It’s a damn conference, and I thought you saw her as your older sister,” I snappily hiss at him.
“I do,” he admits. “But she is a really gorgeous woman too. I can appreciate and not cross the line of pseudo-incest.”
I narrow my eyes at him, getting ready to break his shin when he puts his hand out. “Not trying to poach on your territory, but I’m just saying.”
A small part of me wants to know whether I’m angry about the fact that he’s talking as if Victoria is an animal or that I’m even upset at the thought that I just had. I don’t care. I don’t care about her, and I have stopped caring about her a long time ago.
This means nothing. It’s a job just like any other, and I just need to focus on making sure she’s not dead or kidnapped during the convention. When it’s over, I wouldn’t have to see her again.
“How’d you pull this off?” I grunt, accepting that there is no way I can get out of this assignment since the head bodyguard had approved of this contract.
“You can never underestimate the power of persuasion and a good conversation,” he says, puffing up his chest.
I merely stare at the idiocy radiating from his body.
“Okay,” he sighs in defeat. “I didn’t want pretty-boy Hendrick to be anywhere near Tori.”
My brows knot, a silent storm brushes past me in the back of my neck. The hair stands as I recall the man being a charmer, oozing in confidence that borderlines narcissistic disorder.
He’s even worse than Sebastian, and I thought he was bad until I met Hendrick. Shame is not in that man’s dictionary.
“You could have done it,” I point out the obvious fact.
“Can’t,” he shrugs his shoulders. “I have knight duty with our princess.”
It seems that the client from last week still wants to sink her claws into Sebastian. She has money to waste, and Sebastian has a lot of flirtatious pickup lines to use, so it’s a match made in heaven.
I can avoid the hell out of those two, but I can’t avoid Victoria.
“Alright,” Sebastian claps his hand and steals the crust of my sandwich off my tray. “Chop chop, you need to meet her at her home.”
The tray is looking more and more pleasing to smack over his head as of now, and the self-control has been a long journey that I conquered—which will be the end when I have him withering in pain.
It’s good to let my anger out because bottling it up would lead to a catastrophic explosion that will level this building if I’m livid enough.
“When does it start?” I ask, frowning and letting him know that this is no way going to be a pleasant experience.
“The flight is tomorrow, but you should start today. You know, for proficiency and good ratings.” Sebastian crackles, slurping his smoothie.
His boiled chicken, grapefruit, chia seeds, kale, and the souls of a vile human being death juice. The first ingredient alone should be banned from being near a straw, and Sebastian should go get his head checked by the residential doctor that’s given through employee benefits.
“Did she agree to this, or is this another one of your stunts?” I ask, and I had to because he has a track record of being a nosy moron.
He’s the middle man between Victoria and me, and that’s a huge responsibility that he’s terrible at.
Over the years, he had been trying to trick me into seeing her again, and I could dodge it with more effort than I like to exert. Last week was inevitable. We had no choice but to get her involved. Or rather, Sebastian had to put his nose in places where it doesn’t belong, and now I have a body and a heart that side with Victoria.
Every part of me is a traitor, all except my brain. That section is the powerhouse, and I need to ignore the irrational desire to touch her, and it is harder than anything when I saw her last week.
She was so beautiful, so bright among those gossiping women and I could see the way men looked at her.
The way their eyes would wander from her thick, brown hair and shining brown eyes, a dress that showed too much and too little, and the same Victoria is still there despite the years of being apart.
I was beyond livid that night but seeing her again had done something to me. I knew that there was no way I was going to survive those big, brown eyes, but she never came up to me.
Not once did she attempt to come to me, and I was disappointed. Disappointed in myself too, for being a man not knowing what he wants.
“Why are you still here?” Sebastian raises an eyebrow. “Time’s ticking. You don’t want to go at nine at night, do you? Knowing you, I think you’re betting on her guard being at the lowest to be the asshole that you are.”
I don’t stop the kick to his shin, and he yowls with a pained groan; he drops both of his hands down to his leg while hovering over his plate of food.
He grunts out, “Unless you want Hendrick to take your place. Tori could use some eye-candy.”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” I snap and push my plate towards him.
He’s fine the moment the rest of my food reaches near him. Sebastian devours two plates of food while piling on the details that I should be getting through my superiors, but his relationship with them is better than mine, so he gets away with many things.
I take in the details until the very end, and I bid him goodbye. I was going to round kick him to the wall if he says anything else inappropriate, but he doesn’t as he bids me with a good luck kiss.
The repulsed shudder is my only answer as I turn away. I don’t need anything for this job, only me and my knowledge. Everything would be fine as long as I am just her bodyguard and not interact with her; it would be the same as any other job.
The time to get to her gated home is too short for the boiling itch under my skin. I want to turn the wheel and speed away, but my pride won’t let this small thing hinder my ability to do my job.
Parking my car in the front, I brace myself with an iron-willed concentration. I won’t let the thumping loudness in my heart distract me from this, and she certainly isn’t going to be a difficult clien
t.
It’s just a week.
She opens the door with her bright smile and messy brown hair. Victoria’s clothes are messy, but it’s the style that brings back a sense of déjà vu and memories. She hates tight clothes and fancy designs; she likes to sit in her sweatpants and loose t-shirts with weird graphics on them.
She says that when she looks in the mirror, she’ll laugh at the shirt and it takes some of the stress away.
“It’s good to see you again!” she chirps, the vibrancy of her eyes blinds me, and her sweet voice mutes any vexed emotions in my gut.
I settle for something better than nothing. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” she says and lets me into her home. “You would never agree to this.”
It hurts. It hurts more when she looks as if she is the one at fault.
She is. She’s the one that caused this.
It’s her fault—but why do I struggle to breathe?
This weakness of mine is her; she’s the reason why I’m feeling like the sixteen-year-old boy again.
I hate this. I hate being near her and having the urge to claw at my skin to stop the itch. It’s an itch that’s been going on for years because I miss her touch. I miss everything about her, but I despise her with every cell in my being.
It’s not fair that she’s not that affected by this whole thing while I’m the one who’s suffering as if the end of the world already came. I barely survived the first apocalypse on that day when I was young, and I won’t be able to do it again.
I know I can’t. Victoria knows things about me that even I don’t understand, and it’s why I fell in love with her. She understood me and accepted me in ways that no one would dare to try, but she was brave despite how many times I have burned her with this irate temper of mine.
“I’m sorry Sebastian dragged you into being my bodyguard,” she says as I hear the door behind me closes.
“I thought they would send him or someone else,” she mumbles, but my keen hearing craves for her voice.
I still don’t have the courage to look at her.
