Betrayed by My Bodyguard, I Replaced Him with a Loyal Hound

Chapter 3

I walked up to the cage. "Why are you kneeling?"

Leon lifted his head. His voice was raw from dehydration. "Port Bellano, seven years ago. Your car blocked the men chasing us. That's how I got the kid out."

I remembered the chaos. I didn't remember saving him. "And?"

"I owe you my life." His fingers tightened on the rusted wire. "Buy me. I'll kill for you, take bullets for you, guard your door. As long as you don't sell me, I'll never once disobey you."

The owner laughed and called him crazy. But I could see the only part of him still intact—his word.

"Open the cage."

When Leon reached the estate, the doctor said a broken rib had punctured his lung and he needed surgery right away. The moment an anesthetic needle came near, he snapped his restraints. Four nurses couldn't hold him. He only stopped fighting when I walked into the operating room.

"Once I'm under, I won't know if you're still here," he said.

"I'll be in the observation room."

"And when I wake up?"

"I'll still be there."

He watched me a long moment before he finally unclenched his bloodied fist. Even as the anesthesia pulled him down, he kept his eyes stubbornly fixed on me through the glass, like he had to be sure I hadn't lied before he lost consciousness.

Three hours later, the light over the operating room finally went dark. Leon was still out when they wheeled him past. I could have left him to the doctors, but I remembered that stubborn look right before his eyes closed, and I sat by his bed instead.

At dawn he opened his eyes, looked first at the door, then at me. The tension slowly drained out of his fingers.

10 days later, he ignored the doctor's orders and walked into the bodyguard training center. Adrian had needed two years to set the estate's overall training record. Leon knocked his name off the top in 18 days.

The final test was to get me through a hotel under a simulated attack. Training rounds left blue marks. Adrian had taken two hits and kept me untouched. Before it started, Leon asked the instructor to add three more ambushers.

The instant the smoke grenade went off, he didn't scramble to find the shooters like everyone else. He flipped a dining table for cover, then dressed a dummy my build in his own jacket. He sent the dummy down in the elevator and took me out through the laundry corridors. By the time the ambushers caught up to the decoy, he'd taken a car from the underground garage and driven me clear of the safe zone. Not one blue mark on him.

The instructor asked how he'd known the elevator was a trap.

"I didn't." Leon dropped the magazine out of his weapon. "I just assume someone's waiting for her on every route that looks safe."

He never trusted luck, and he never gambled with my life. Firearms, tracking, holding up under interrogation, high-performance driving—he picked it all up at a frightening speed. In close combat, he deliberately dropped his old suicidal style and used the taekwondo and grappling I required instead. Every night he finished training bruised and battered, and every night he took up a post outside my study. He never knocked, never disturbed me. He only made sure the light was still on.

"What are you doing out here every night?" I asked.

"Learning the sound of your footsteps."

"Why?"

"So I can find you in the dark, in a blackout or a firefight."

A month later, the Grayhaven Police Foundation held its winter charity gala. Everyone knew the Moretti family had just stripped its chief bodyguard of his post. They were all waiting to laugh at me.

Instead, I walked into the hotel with Leon. His tailored black suit hid most of the tattoos and none of the danger. He stayed half a step behind me, his eyes moving over the exits, the chandeliers, the servers' hands, every window a sniper might sit in. When a server offered me champagne, Leon swapped it for warm water.

"Who said you could decide for me?" I asked.

His eyes flicked to the hand I had pressed to my stomach. "You haven't eaten tonight. Drink on an empty stomach and you'll be hurting within 30 minutes."

I paused, then took the glass.

Someone asked whether I'd found a replacement a little fast.

"A replacement?" I swirled my glass. "Replacing him would mean I wanted another Adrian. Leon is an upgrade."

The words were barely out when an argument broke out at the ballroom entrance. Adrian stood there on a cane, in a rented suit, his injured right hand still not straightening. Erin clung to his arm. A diamond brooch that wasn't hers glittered on her chest. Adrian went pale when he saw Leon standing where he used to.