Close Protection by Riley Morgan Read Free Book Online Page A

into the living room. She could smell tequila on his breath. She turned to run to Zeus’s office but Damien caught her shoulder and spun her back around. Without thinking, she swung her arm in a wide arc, smashing the glass into the side of Damien’s head. There was a scream and the sound of shattered glass hitting the tile. There was a lot of blood. But it only took a moment for Damien to straighten up. The rage in his eyes had intensified. He looked exactly the way that he did the last time he’d hit Lena. She tried to pull away from him, but it was no use. He had a grip on the bust of her dress and pushed her back through the shattered glass, up against the wall, and pulled back his hand.
     

Ramon
                  There was a scream outside Zeus’s office. Ramon did not wait for the old man before moving to act. He opened the door and ran out into the empty dining room. He turned just in time to see Lena whirl around and smash a drinking glass against the side of a man’s head.
                  Ramon would later be embarrassed by how long he stood paralyzed. The sight of his prissy princess of a client fighting like a barroom brawler was simply too much for him to comprehend. When her victim rose up, undeterred, he snapped back to attention.
                  The man grabbed Lena by the collar and pushed her across the room. She hit the back wall with a thud and the man drew back his arm to strike her. But Ramon was already on top of him.
                  When the man went to throw his punch, he was caught off guard by a strong hand at the crook of his elbow. Ramon pulled and the man went down to the ground with a thud. Lena tried to drop on top of him, her fists balled and her teeth gritted in primal aggression, but Ramon held her back easily. With one arm around Lena and one foot on the man’s chest, he looked back and forth between them, trying to sort out what had happened.
                  Once it dawned on Lena that she was not going to be allowed to attack the man, she relented and Ramon let go of her. She started towards the dining room, turning on a dime and delivering a swift kick to the man’s ribs before Ramon could do anything to stop her.
                  He turned to the man on the ground who had the good sense to know when he was beaten.
                  “Let me guess. Damien?”
                  “Let me guess. The whore’s new fuckboy?”
                  Ramon leaned onto the foot on Damien’s chest, putting more weight on his sternum. Damien groaned as the air in his lungs was forcibly removed.
                  “My name is Ramon, and Mr. Boldova pays me very well to see to it that Lena is neither harmed nor bothered by anyone. If you want to find out just how well he pays me, come back here again.”
                  Nobody ever called Damien a fast learner, but he caught on quickly to Ramon’s lesson. As soon as the boot was removed from his chest, he scrambled to his feet and ran out the door. Ramon watched him as he sprinted to a car that had been left idling in the driveway. He climbed in and the engine roared as he peeled out and raced back to the gate at the main road.
                  When Ramon turned around, Zeus was standing in the middle of the broken glass in the living room looking around, trying to figure out what had just happened.
                  “Why are you and Damien fighting?” he asked Lena as though their brawl had not been terribly out of the ordinary.
                  “Because he’s a stupid selfish jackass,” Lena spat.
                  “He’s a nice boy. You should give him a chance.”
                  Ramon acknowledged that it might have been possible that he was missing part of the picture, but he failed to see any way of looking at the situation that made Damien look like a