Breaking My Bodyguard novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Cellar

The cabin had a root cellar under the kitchen.

By four in the morning the prisoner sat in it, tied to a wooden chair with his own belt and a cord from the curtains.

His name was nothing.

Rafe wouldn't ask for it.

"Names get used," he said.

I stood at the top of the cellar steps in Rafe's sweatshirt with a blanket around my shoulders, and I wouldn't go back to bed.

The man's nose was swollen and purple.

He looked up at me with one eye open and smirked.

"Princess."

"Tell me again," I said.

"I told your dog."

"Tell me."

He wet his lips.

"A call came to our boss last Friday night.

"A voice from your father's house. It gave the lake, the road, the day.

"It said the Don wanted this done quietly."

"Why would my father want me shot?"

"Nobody wanted you shot."

"Then why were you firing at the bed?"

"Not at you," he said. "At him."

He tipped his chin toward Rafe.

"The Don wanted the dog gone and the girl brought to Silvio, not a scratch on her. A wedding gift."

My stomach went to ice.

Rafe stood behind me, perfectly still.

"That's a lie," he said.

"Why would I lie? I'm tied to a chair."

"Because you're paid to."

"I'm paid to bring her back," the man said. "Ask your boss why the girl's father wants her married so fast."

I turned and went up the stairs.

I heard Rafe say something low and hard to the man.

I heard a thump.

I walked into the living room and stood in the broken glass in my bare feet and didn't feel it.

My father had said the family dies with me.

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