Breaking My Bodyguard novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Order

The page was dated three years ago.

It was written in black ink, in my father's slanting hand, and it was short.

Rafe,

You are the only man I trust with her.

If the Brandolinis ever take her, and you cannot get her out, you will not let them keep her.

They will use her against me, against the family, against everything her mother and I built.

She would hate being a weapon.

Put one in her first.

Do it quickly, and do it so she does not know.

Burn this after you read it.

C.S.

I read it once.

Then I read it again, because the first time the words wouldn't go in.

Put one in her first.

The room tilted.

I put my hand on the desk.

"This is the order," I said.

"Yes."

"This is what he told you in the study."

"Yes."

"You've had it for three years."

"Yes."

I looked up.

Rafe stood in the moonlight with his hands open at his sides.

He didn't try to take the page.

He didn't try to explain it.

He looked at me the way a man looks at a firing squad.

"He wrote it the night you hired me," I said slowly. "The night I turned twenty."

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