Close Protection by Riley Morgan Page A

passion and emotion. They don’t think. Zeus laughed. He pointed to one body. The father of a man who had died in Zeus’s service and who had tried to kill him with a butter knife. Andris shot him dead before he even raised his arm. Another, a man who had hired a hitman to kill Zeus. At the end of a gun, Zeus talked the man down and tripled the assassin’s pay to kill the man that hired him.
    There were dozens of bodies on Zeus’s arm. Surely there was more blood on his hands than was tattooed there.
    “Anyway Ramon, you see why I’m not terribly worried. I can handle myself. Nobody. Nobody fucks with me.”
    Ramon was going to ask the old man why he needed someone to watch over his step-daughter then, but he was interrupted by a ringing phone.
    Zeus pointed to the door, and Ramon stepped outside. For the first ten minutes, the only sounds that Ramon could hear from inside the officer were jubilant laughter. Then it went quiet for a few minutes. When he heard Zeus again, he was screaming. Ramon strained to hear the words. The boss sounded hurt and defensive.
    “I know, I know, I know,” he said.
    Ramon waited, holding his breath.
    “Well he shouldn’t be such a giant pussy. Would you have ever let that happen to yourself?”
    “I didn’t think she’d break a glass over his fcking head!”
    He had to have been talking about Lena. And by extension, Damien. Ramon wondered if Zeus was talking to the man he’d seen in the car at the gate the day before.
    “Listen to me. I promise you…”
    “I know that she’s a difficult little bitch, trust me, I know better than anyone.”
    “You have my word. My little bitch will marry your big pussy.”
     

PART THREE

Lena
    Lena was sitting up watching a cooking show that was indistinguishable from all the other cooking shows, starting a celebrity chef that was indistinguishable from all the other celebrity chefs. She’d seen this episode before, she thought, but it was still a welcome distraction from her feather down prison.
    She was relieved when there was a knock at the door and Ramon came inside. She reached to her nightstand and grabbed a voice-changer toy that she’d found while digging through the drawers looking for something to keep her from going craz.
    “Good morning handsome,” she said in an artificial chipmunk.
                  Lena had taken to embarrassing Ramon with little pet names like this. Yesterday, when she old him how much Tia and Michaela liked him, how they thought he was cute, Lena realized that he was completely oblivious to the effect that he had on them. How typical, she thought. The entire idea that he might be desirable to someone seemed to make him uncomfortable, and Lena was happy to abuse that.
                  In the grand scheme of things, he had been the cause of a great deal of discomfort for her, so it only seemed fair that she could repay the favor. Ramon sat down on the bed now and asked how she was doing.
                  “I’m good,” Lena lied, sounding like a robot.
                  The truth was that she was feeling even more empty than she had the day before. She hadn’t been out of bed except to hobble to the bathroom since the night that Damien had showed up. She was starting to go crazy in her room, and wanted more than anything to get out. But her feet were still bloody and swollen and hurt like a motherfucker to stand on.
                  “I could carry you down to the pool,” Ramon suggested. The idea made Lena throw back her head and laugh.
                  “I’m serious,” he said, taking the voice changer and answering her with the “slo-mo” setting.
                  And he was.
                  Lena considered it for a moment, and couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t.
                  “Get my swim suit, it’s in the top drawer there.”
                  Ramon opened her