Chapter 5

Sia took her time admiring Julian. His black hair was still wet from his shower, and his bare arms showed powerful muscles.He was wearing a black shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows and dark blue jeans with white and blue sneakers. Blue would’ve matched his eyes better, Sia thought to herself before she remembered that he was her new bodyguard, not her client.

After almost 14 years of having no partner or, rather, avoiding the need to find one at any cost, Sia was surprised that Julian, aka Lucifer, had sparked an interest in her at all. Not that she would fuel it, but there was no reason not to admire this fine specimen. That is, unless she got caught in the act.

Leo was already waiting for them when Sia took Julian to the living room. She could tell just by looking that Julian was surprised at the lack of resemblance between her and Leo. Unfortunately, Leo looked exactly like his father, which should’ve been cause for pain to Sia, but she loved Leo with all her life.

Leonard and Julian introduced themselves to each other and had a polite conversation. Julian was yet again aware that Sia appeared too young to have a thirteen-year-old boy. She was like a puzzle to Julian, a puzzle he was all too excited to solve. He wondered if this attraction he felt towards her was because she wasn’t like the other women he’d met before, those who were ready to throw themselves at him to get his attention. He shook his head. No. Sia wasn’t like most girls, he thought to himself. She was confident and hardworking and a very independent woman. And he decided that he liked her just for that.

Julian decided to turn his attention towards Leonard. He had to say, he looked damn fine for a thirteen-year-old kid. Girls must be all over him by now. Right from first glance, Julian had no doubt that Leo was Sia’s son. He looked like the spitting image of his mother except for the white blond hair and the violet eyes which he must have inherited from his father. For some reason, he was glad that the resemblance ended there.

Leonard looked closely at their new “bodyguard” as his mother showed him around. He knew the situation was serious, more than his mother let him believe. Someone was after them or, more precisely, his mother. He took his time assessing Julian Turner. The man was built like a tank, and that gave him assurance that no one would get to his mother as long as Julian was around.

Leo looked up to see his mother and Julian engaged in some serious conversation, but there was something in their gaze that caught his attention. Julian was looking at his mother like he had been wandering around in a desert for days, and she was the only oasis he saw. But strangely, even his mother was admiring the man.

Leo smiled slightly. This would be the first time he’d ever seen his mother interested in another man. The only man she had ever been with had been his father, and she deserved someone much, much better than him. He frowned as he vaguely recalled his father. The only thing he remembered was that he had the same hair and eye color as him . . . and his mother crying. His mother was always crying whenever he was around. Leo grimaced as the images flashed before his eyes. He looked at the couple ahead once again,and the smile returned. Julian was a nice guy, he thought. Hopefully, Julian would treat her better.

“I’ll be leaving now for practice,” he called out to his mother. After receiving her and Julian’s approval, he headed out the door, eager to know what the future would hold for all of them.

*           *           *

Sia brought Julian to her office that afternoon. He was to stay with her at all times and also with Leo if needed.

After checking her entire office for any bugs or suspicious items, he sat guard outside her office, near the secretary’s desk. He learned that the girl’s name was Millan Steiner, and she just turned twenty-five. She was pretty,but Julian lost all interest in her as soon as he had seen Sia.

He had been sitting there for some time when an idea came to mind. He stood up from his seat and asked Millan for directions to the control room and headed there. The control room was on the floor below whichtook him barely two minutes to reach. When he entered, he found that there were two guards sitting in front of the TV screens. Judging from their appearance, they appeared to be pretty lazy.

He went ahead and introduced himself to them as Sia’s new guard. He became friends with them quickly and even offered to help them in their duty. He grabbed a chair and sat in between the two men and chatted some more about the fashion house over a few cups of coffee.

But in reality, he had hardly paid attention to them as his entire attention had been caught by the top left TV screen which showed Sia working in her office.

Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun, brows furrowed in concentration as she sketched something on a piece of paper before taking a piece of cloth and working on a mannequin. She would then fold each piece of clothing with precision, small pins sticking out from her mouth, as she sewed the fabric together. All in all, Julian thought she looked incredibly sexy in her blue sundress as she worked her way in the office.

They had been sitting there for a while, observing the cameras, when Julian noticed that one of the guards had fallen asleep and the other was typing away on his cell phone. Taking the opportunity, he quickly wrote down some important numbers from the computer and also took out a small button-sized satellite transmitter device from his pocket and fixed it on the side of one of the screens, hidden from plain sight. Though he’d have preferred to ask the guards for help, their sheer lack of sense of duty threw him off. With guards like these, no wonder the assailant had been able to get that dangerously close to Sia.

“Well . . . I’ll be heading back now,” Julian said as he stood up from the chair. “It was nice chatting with you guys. See you around.”

The guard who was still awake nodded and focused back on the TV screens. Julian left the room smirking. He had done his job without them even noticing. After all, he was called Lucifer for more than just one reason. Although these two guards had been the easiest he’d ever dealt with. If only all the people he went up against were this sloppy.

Julian had just reached the reception area when Sia came out of the room looking flustered and tired. Two people, a man anda woman, went inside her office and then came out a few seconds later, carrying a large bag and a notepad, which he assumed were the designs for the dress. Sia gave them some last-minute instructions before breathing a sigh of relief.

“Millan, get us some coffee,” she told the girl and stretched her aching muscles which gave Julian a nice view of her long slender arms and the shape of her breasts as they strained against her dress.

“I checked out the control room.”

Sia was startled to hear Julian’s voice as she quickly let her hands fall to her side.

“Oh?” she asked stupidly, her mind almost blank from the stress.

Julian chuckled before giving her a heart-stopping grin. “I set a satellite monitor in there so that all the footages shown here will be transferred directly to my laptop. That way, I can’t miss any details. We need to know if there will be another attack. And also, I think you need new guards,” he said. “The guys I just met were too busy snoozing and checking hamburgers on I*******m.”

Sia sighed audibly and ran her hands through her now loose dark brown strands. “I knew they were no good right from the start! But the company provided me with the cheapest offer at the time I first started here. But now it’s already been five years, so I couldn’t possibly just throw them out.”

“It’s not a matter of whether they’ve stayed here for five, ten years, Sia. It is a matter of them doing their job well,” Julian told her on a serious note. “If they keep working like they do right now, it won’t be long before your assailant succeeds in his twisted mission, whatever that mission may be.”

Sia decided that there was no point in wasting her empathy on people who weren’t even willing to do the job she paid them to do. But more than that, it was time to tell him the truth. He had to know the whole story to investigate her case. Although the truth was something she would never want to repeat, not even to herself, she had to tell him now. It was time.

“Julian . . .” she sighed, “I have to tell you something.”