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Chapter 5

  • Sia took her time admiring Julian. His black hair was
  • still wet from his shower, and his bare arms showed powerful muscles. He was
  • wearing a black shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows and dark blue
  • jeans with white and blue sneakers. Blue
  • would’ve matched his eyes better, Sia thought to herself before she
  • remembered that he was her new bodyguard, not her client.
  • After almost 14 years of having no partner or, rather,
  • avoiding the need to find one at any cost, Sia was surprised that Julian, aka
  • Lucifer, had sparked an interest in her at all. Not that she would fuel it, but
  • there was no reason not to admire this fine specimen. That is, unless she got
  • caught in the act.
  • Leo was already waiting for them when Sia took Julian to
  • the living room. She could tell just by looking that Julian was surprised at
  • the lack of resemblance between her and Leo. Unfortunately, Leo looked exactly
  • like his father, which should’ve been cause for pain to Sia, but she loved Leo
  • with all her life.
  • Leonard and Julian introduced themselves to each other
  • and had a polite conversation. Julian was yet again aware that Sia appeared too
  • young to have a thirteen-year-old boy. She was like a puzzle to Julian, a
  • puzzle he was all too excited to solve. He wondered if this attraction he felt
  • towards her was because she wasn’t like the other women he’d met before, those
  • who were ready to throw themselves at him to get his attention. He shook his
  • head. No. Sia wasn’t like most girls, he thought to himself. She was
  • confident and hardworking and a very independent woman. And he decided that he
  • liked her just for that.
  • Julian decided to turn his attention towards Leonard. He
  • had to say, he looked damn fine for a thirteen-year-old kid. Girls must be all
  • over him by now. Right from first glance, Julian had no doubt that Leo was
  • Sia’s son. He looked like the spitting image of his mother except for the white
  • blond hair and the violet eyes which he must have inherited from his father.
  • For some reason, he was glad that the resemblance ended there.
  • Leonard looked closely at their new “bodyguard” as his
  • mother showed him around. He knew the situation was serious, more than his
  • mother let him believe. Someone was after them or, more precisely, his mother.
  • He took his time assessing Julian Turner. The man was built like a tank, and
  • that gave him assurance that no one would get to his mother as long as Julian
  • was around.
  • Leo looked up to see his mother and Julian engaged in
  • some serious conversation, but there was something in their gaze that caught
  • his attention. Julian was looking at his mother like he had been wandering
  • around in a desert for days, and she was the only oasis he saw. But strangely,
  • even his mother was admiring the man.
  • Leo smiled slightly. This would be the first time he’d
  • ever seen his mother interested in another man. The only man she had ever been
  • with had been his father, and she deserved someone much, much better than him.
  • He frowned as he vaguely recalled his father. The only thing he remembered was
  • that he had the same hair and eye color as him . . . and his mother crying. His
  • mother was always crying whenever he was around. Leo grimaced as the images
  • flashed before his eyes. He looked at the couple ahead once again, and the smile
  • returned. Julian was a nice guy, he
  • thought. Hopefully, Julian would treat her better.
  • “I’ll be leaving now for practice,” he called out to his
  • mother. After receiving her and Julian’s approval, he headed out the door,
  • eager to know what the future would hold for all of them.
  • *           *           *
  • Sia brought Julian to her office that afternoon. He was
  • to stay with her at all times and also with Leo if needed.
  • After checking her entire office for any bugs or suspicious
  • items, he sat guard outside her office, near the secretary’s desk. He learned
  • that the girl’s name was Millan Steiner, and she just turned twenty-five. She
  • was pretty, but Julian lost all interest in her as soon as he had seen Sia.
  • He had been sitting there for some time when an idea
  • came to mind. He stood up from his seat and asked Millan for directions to the
  • control room and headed there. The control room was on the floor below which took
  • him barely two minutes to reach. When he entered, he found that there were two
  • guards sitting in front of the TV screens. Judging from their appearance, they
  • appeared to be pretty lazy.
  • He went ahead and introduced himself to them as Sia’s
  • new guard. He became friends with them quickly and even offered to help them in
  • their duty. He grabbed a chair and sat in between the two men and chatted some
  • more about the fashion house over a few cups of coffee.
  • But in reality, he had hardly paid attention to them as
  • his entire attention had been caught by the top left TV screen which showed Sia
  • working in her office.
  • Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun, brows
  • furrowed in concentration as she sketched something on a piece of paper before
  • taking a piece of cloth and working on a mannequin. She would then fold each
  • piece of clothing with precision, small pins sticking out from her mouth, as
  • she sewed the fabric together. All in all, Julian thought she looked incredibly
  • sexy in her blue sundress as she worked her way in the office.
  • They had been sitting there for a while, observing the
  • cameras, when Julian noticed that one of the guards had fallen asleep and the
  • other was typing away on his cell phone. Taking the opportunity, he quickly
  • wrote down some important numbers from the computer and also took out a small
  • button-sized satellite transmitter device from his pocket and fixed it on the
  • side of one of the screens, hidden from plain sight. Though he’d have preferred
  • to ask the guards for help, their sheer lack of sense of duty threw him off.
  • With guards like these, no wonder the assailant had been able to get that
  • dangerously close to Sia.
  • “Well . . . I’ll be heading back now,” Julian said as he
  • stood up from the chair. “It was nice chatting with you guys. See you around.”
  • The guard who was still awake nodded and focused back on
  • the TV screens. Julian left the room smirking. He had done his job without them
  • even noticing. After all, he was called Lucifer for more than just one reason.
  • Although these two guards had been the easiest he’d ever dealt with. If only
  • all the people he went up against were this sloppy.
  • Julian had just reached the reception area when Sia came
  • out of the room looking flustered and tired. Two people, a man and a woman, went
  • inside her office and then came out a few seconds later, carrying a large bag
  • and a notepad, which he assumed were the designs for the dress. Sia gave them
  • some last-minute instructions before breathing a sigh of relief.
  • “Millan, get us some coffee,” she told the girl and
  • stretched her aching muscles which gave Julian a nice view of her long slender
  • arms and the shape of her breasts as they strained against her dress.
  • “I checked out the control room.”
  • Sia was startled to hear Julian’s voice as she quickly
  • let her hands fall to her side.
  • “Oh?” she asked stupidly, her mind almost blank from the
  • stress.
  • Julian chuckled before giving her a heart-stopping grin.
  • “I set a satellite monitor in there so that all the footages shown here will be
  • transferred directly to my laptop. That way, I can’t miss any details. We need
  • to know if there will be another attack. And also, I think you need new
  • guards,” he said. “The guys I just met were too busy snoozing and checking
  • hamburgers on Instagram.”
  • Sia sighed audibly and ran her hands through her now
  • loose dark brown strands. “I knew they were no good right from the start! But
  • the company provided me with the cheapest offer at the time I first started
  • here. But now it’s already been five years, so I couldn’t possibly just throw
  • them out.”
  • “It’s not a matter of whether they’ve stayed here for
  • five, ten years, Sia. It is a matter of them doing their job well,” Julian told
  • her on a serious note. “If they keep working like they do right now, it won’t
  • be long before your assailant succeeds in his twisted mission, whatever that
  • mission may be.”
  • Sia decided that there was no point in wasting her
  • empathy on people who weren’t even willing to do the job she paid them to do.
  • But more than that, it was time to tell him the truth. He had to know the whole
  • story to investigate her case. Although the truth was something she would never
  • want to repeat, not even to herself, she had to tell him now. It was time.
  • “Julian . . .” she sighed, “I have to tell you
  • something.”