All Chapters of BEAUTY AND THE BODYGUARD: DANGEROUS DESIRE BOOK 2: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

NANCY'S POVJust that one word. Flat. Final. Absolute.“Dad, please—”“No, Nancy.” He stepped closer to the bed but did not sit down. His voice stayed quiet, but every word was sharp and certain and left no space for argument. “You are not going anywhere near him. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until I decide otherwise.”“He’s hurt.” The tears were falling freely now. I didn’t try to stop them. They ran down my face and dripped onto the soft fabric of the nightgown. “He got shot getting me out of that place. He stood between me and those men and told me to run even though he was the one who was bleeding. He—”“He is the reason you were in that place to begin with.” My father’s voice did not rise, but it grew harder with every word. “He worked for Viktor Russo. He lied to both of us from the first day. He put my daughter in the hands of my enemy. I will not have you sitting at his bedside like he is some kind of hero.”“I’m not asking you to call him a hero.” My voice broke completely

NANCY'S POVOne month later.It had been a full month since I started my new life in France.My father had arranged everything the way he always arranged the important things — quietly, completely, and without leaving any loose ends for someone else to find. A new name that felt strange in my mouth the first dozen times I said it. New documents that listed a life I had never lived. A quiet apartment on a quiet street in a quiet part of the city where no one had ever heard the name Nancy Valentino. Money in an account that belonged only to me. A clean, empty life waiting for me to decide what to put inside it.I had even dyed my hair blonde.I stood in the small bathroom of the apartment the day I did it and watched the dark color disappear under the bleach. The chemical smell was sharp and unpleasant. When it was finished, the woman who looked back at me from the mirror was a stranger. Lighter. Softer around the edges. Someone who could walk through a market or sit in a café without a

ZADE'S POVI stopped on the opposite sidewalk and stared at the doors she had disappeared through. Panic rose fast and sharp, crowding out every other thought. All the worst possibilities arrived at once. Was she sick? Had something from the cellar — an infection, an injury that had never fully healed — finally caught up with her? I wanted to cross the street and go in after her.I wanted to push through the doors and demand answers from the first person in a white coat I saw.I stayed where I was instead. Hands shoved deep in the pockets of the black hoodie. Jaw locked so tight the muscles along it ached. Eyes fixed on the wide glass doors of the hospital without blinking. The fear sat heavy in my chest, right next to the tight pull of the healing bullet wounds. Every minute that passed made the worst possibilities feel more solid. I kept seeing her pale and hurting somewhere inside those bright walls. I kept thinking about how far she was from anyone who knew her real name or wha

NANCY'S POVThe next day the nausea was worse than usual.I woke before my alarm with the familiar sour wave already rising in my throat. I barely made it to the bathroom. Afterward I sat on the cold tile floor with my back against the wall and pressed a damp cloth to the back of my neck until the worst of it passed. My stomach felt hollow and tight at the same time. I had managed nothing more than a few dry crackers and a sip of water the evening before. The thought of real food still made me uneasy, but by mid-morning the emptiness had turned into a sharp, demanding hunger that I could no longer ignore.At the office I moved through the usual tasks on autopilot. Answering the phone. Sorting invoices. Making coffee for the two older men who ran the small import company. No one asked why I looked pale or why I disappeared into the restroom twice before noon. The work was deliberately simple, the kind of under-the-radar job that asked almost nothing of me except quiet reliability. That

NANCY'S POVThe words landed between us like something fragile and dangerous.I looked up.He was watching me with an intensity that made my chest ache. There was no performance in his face, no careful mask. Just raw, exhausted honesty.“I didn’t plan it,” he said. “I tried to stop it. Every day on that island I told myself I still had a mission, that I still had to finish what I started. But you… you got under everything. The way you looked at me. The way you trusted me even when you shouldn’t have. The way you said my name. I fell for you, Nancy. I loved you. I still do.”The confession sat in the quiet room and refused to leave.If he had said those words to me on the island—before the recording, before the betrayal, before I learned he had been the enemy the entire time—I would have been over the moon. I would have kissed him until neither of us could breathe. I would have believed we could build something real out of the strange, intense thing that had grown between us.But he wa