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.”