Page 107 of The Enemy Protector
That’s the problem.
Normal people don’t survive in this world.
I drag a hand down my face and exhale slowly, forcing the anger back into something usable. I changed the conditions and expected her instincts to stay the same.
That’s not how this works.
Yuri didn’t take the shot.
He took the picture.
That’s worse.
And now I have to decide whether I let her feel safe for one more day…or remind her exactly what kind of world she’s living in.
“Where was this found?” I ask.
He looks uncomfortable. “It was delivered to one of the warehouses. Hers.”
“You intercepted?”
He shrugs. Sofia doesn’t need to know I’ve moved men to keep an eye on things. She’s capable, but the operation she’s trying to take over is far bigger than she knows.
We’ll talk about that one day.
For now, I need to focus on the real threat.
He had a man close enough to touch her, and he took a photograph instead.
That was a choice. He wanted me to see the photograph. He wanted me to understand what he was communicating:I can get to her. I chose not to. This time.
Yuri, who has been in this city long enough to build a network and patient enough to wait for the right pressure point, has apparently decided that the pressure point is her fear.
He thinks she's a twenty-one-year-old woman with more inheritance than spine, and that given a clear exit, she'll take the door and stop being inconvenient.
He doesn't know her.
This is his first miscalculation. There will be others.
The obvious move is not to tell her. Keep her insulated. Keep her moving through her days not knowing how close the threat is sitting. Last night flashes through my mind. Those tears. Tears of relief. She felt safe.
I can’t take that from her.
I have done this in some form for years. It's efficient. It keeps her functional. I can keep her safe.
“More guards,” I say. “But I don’t want her to know.”
“I’m going to need to move some things around. We’ve already upped security at the dock. I assumed that’s where he would try to make a move.”
“He’s after her—not me.”
He gets to her, and he gets to me.He knows it. And that makes me want to kill him twice.
If I tell her, she responds.
If I don't tell her, she might find out another way, and then I'm not just dealing with Yuri's next move, I'm dealing with Sofia's legitimate fury on top of it.
I pick up the photograph.
