The Client (18+ Only)

PROLOGUE: In Which She Takes One for the Team

PROLOGUE: In Which She Takes One for the Team

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“No. It’s much too soon, Vanya.”

“Come on, Father. What do you have to lose? Lena can do this job,” my oldest brother, Ivan, replied, ignoring my father's use of the affectionate nickname he so despised.

“I don’t know. She is a girl and she is my lastborn. If anything happened to her…”

It was nice to know my blood had so much faith in me and my gender. Not.

“You don’t want to give her a tough job and she just wants a job,” Ivan insisted. “This is a win-win solution. Assign her to this Lancaster guy. She’ll never see any action this way.”

“Lena will know what we’re trying to do. Obviously, if Lancaster isn’t in any imminent danger, she’ll figure out that we sent her there because we don’t trust her.”

“Even she can’t fúck this up, Father.”

Well, that just did it. Clearing my throat loudly, I rapped on my father’s door and pushed it open without waiting for a response. I folded my arms across my chest when he and my brother instantly stopped talking, their faces a picture of embarrassment. Together, they made an impressive pair. My father was a beefy man in his late fifties who had been in the Russian army before coming to the States and settling here in San Francisco, where he met my mother. His dark hair had long turned silver but the years had been kind to him. My brother was taller and leaner, wearing his thick black hair much longer than mine.

Yet they were afraid of five-foot-three me.

“Funny, despite the sign outside saying Anosov and Sons Security, I still thought I was part of the team.” Despite my sarcasm, I was a little hurt. “Guess I was wrong.”

“Docha,” Dad began, “how much of that did you hear?” He seemed wary and I couldn’t blame him. My temper rivalled even Ivan’s.

“Oh, just that you two” – I motioned between my brother and father – “feel that I’m an idiot who’d screw up protecting my pinkie finger, let alone one of our clients.”

Ivan rolled his eyes at me. “Come off it, Len. You’re still a rookie at this. Do you know what kind of training Alex and Dave – not to mention the rest of our men – had to go through?”

My blood began to boil at the mention of my other two older brothers, whose asses I’d been kicking since the seventh grade. “Yeah, and I went through the same. I have the same skill set. I’m good, Vanya – if not, better than any of them.”

This was the hugest problem with being an only girl: Being told that you couldn’t do anything because you didn’t have a second head between your legs. Alexei and David – both twenty-eight and older than me by three years – were good-natured even if they were overprotective. Thirty-year-old Ivan was a complete dick. This was probably due to the fact that the stick up his ass had termites.

“You don’t have to raise your voice at me, Len,” he said quietly. “I’m only looking out for you.”

“If I wanted that, I wouldn’t have become a bodyguard, would I? I would’ve gone to culinary school like Mom wanted.”

“That’s what you should’ve done, all right.”

“You’re such a sexist piece of crap, Ivan.”

We glared at each other until our father cleared his throat. It was a well-known fact that Ivan and I could go at each other like a pack of hungry cannibals and Dad obviously wasn’t in the mood to clear the debris of our verbal assault.