The Assassin’s Billionaire Bodyguard
Chapter 8

"Tell me exactly how this is going to go?" Isabella eyed the antipasto platter with a twist of her lips. She grabbed a slice of the bread and pulled it apart with her fingers.

"I think the best thing to do is to let Portia know."

She made a face, "how exactly are you intending to do it?"

"I'm going to tell her."

"You're just going to come out and tell her?" She trailed off as he pulled his phone from his jacket and dialled his daughter and put her on speaker. She pushed a morsel of the fluffy bread between her lips to stop herself interrupting him. "Hi Daddy," Portia's whiney voice cut through the air

"Question for you Portia," he sounded very matter of fact.

"Of course, you can ask me anything," she mewed like a kitten.

Isabella made a face of disgust. Her father would have used a belt on her hide for speaking so ingratiatingly sulking.

"When you told me to talk to Isabella, was it for the purpose of me taking her off Evgeni's hands?"

"What do you mean?" her tone changed, and Isabella couldn't stop her smirk.

"Take her out, wine her, dine her and make her forget Evgeni exists." He winked at Isabella. "It's what you meant right? Keep her away from Evgeni?"

"It was not what I meant." She hissed like a trapped kitten. "You are not supposed to be engaging with the enemy."

"She's not the enemy. Evgeni is the enemy. Also, for the record, she wasn't at work tonight when you were tossed out on your a*s from Draxton. If you ever pull a stunt like it again, I'm going to do more than take your credit cards away for a month. I will single- handedly replace you a job which will occupy all your time, so you don't have the ability to engage in such nonsense again."

"Oh my god, she tattled on me?"

Isabella realized for the first time in her life not all British accents were sexy.

"I just finished saying she wasn't there. Do you really think I wouldn't replace out from someone at Draxton, Clara Draxton, one of the richest people in the world, had to have her personal security agent remove you from her place of business? She did me a favor keeping you out of the press. I'm wishing right now, she hadn't." His green eyes flicked to Isabella's and noted her discomfort. He reached for her fingers, and she pulled back scowling at him. It made him smile wider.

"Anyway," he said interrupting the whining coming from the other end of the call, "I'm going to finish eating my dinner. I just thought you should know, I'm dating Isabella. I'll be home late." "Not funny Torres," Isabella folded and unfolded her arms over her chest.

"I bet she stops calling you now." He smirked widely.

"I'll take your bet," she pulled her phone back out of her purse and turned it on and set it on the table. Immediately a dozen messages from Evgeni pinged along with a handful of missed calls.

Cam saw the last message, reading it upside down and made a face, "does the message actually say, 'you are mine'?"

"Meh," she waved her hand impatiently, "he's said more caveman crap than this. Once he told me his father runs the mafia and I would never get out alive."

Cam blanched and dialed a number again. "Mikhail, I'm dating Isabella Ruiz. Call your son off before I deal with him." He saw the flush of rage crawl up from her neck to cheeks and he didn't look away, he listened to Mikhail affirm he would handle it and then thanked the man and hung up.

"How dare you?"

"I did exactly what we agreed we would do," he didn't flinch. He leaned back so the server could put their meals in front of them and took away the appetizer platter.

Isabella stared at the beautiful plate of inky black pasta and considered dumping it on his head. "You did not need to call his father."

"I did," he scrolled her phone. "Those messages are abusive, belittling and disgusting. I can guarantee your sister-in-law didn't know how bad these were otherwise I know she would have had Ben intervene. You are not just an employee of Draxton, you are Clara's kid sister, through marriage or otherwise, and I know some of the stuff Ben would do for her. I do not think for one minute she would tolerate this bullshit."

"I can manage him myself. Your kid, fine, you deal with her. She's crazy but I can clean up my own mess with him and you did not need to call Mikhail. I can take care of this."

"Yet here we are at dinner with him knowing you were out with someone else, sending you narcissistic abusive messages. You don't strike me as the kind of person who let's people get away with too much Isabella. Why are you letting him? Do you owe him something?"

"No," she looked away to study a painting on the wall nearby. It was abstract with lots of red and gold. She thought it reminded her of blood on a field at dawn. She was contemplating spilling his. She took a breath, "I don't owe anyone anything, but I also don't need someone fighting my battles for me. I can clean my own mess."

"We will agree to disagree."

"This was a bad idea," she scowled as she felt control slipping out of her grasp. She felt her breath catching. "Excuse me a minute please?" She grabbed her phone and her purse and beelined for the bathroom.

Her head was throbbing and while she was in the bathroom, she called for a ride share to pick her up. She stood there leaning against the door of a stall banging the back of her head against it. "Stupid Isabella, stupid, stupid, stupid. You let one controlling man replace the other. You may as well just sleep with your sister." A woman stepped into the bathroom, and she pointed at the door, "get out." "But I,"

"Get. Out." Her voice lowered into a growl and the woman walked out backwards.

She waited four minutes and she stepped out of the bathroom and then headed straight to the kitchen grateful it was busy and nobody even looked up to see who was coming or going into the area. She walked to the staff entrance and smiled at one of the line cooks, "what a night. I'm going to grab a smoke before my next table." He nodded at her, and she stepped into the alley

She strode through the dark alley to the end of the street and looked for the license plate matching her shared ride. She climbed into the car and mentally flipped off the man in the restaurant.

An hour later the sound of pounding on her front door had Casper barking like mad as she took the stairs from her basement two at a time. She looked through the spy hole and grimaced. She tore the door open, her face soaked with sweat. "What do you want?" Cam pushed past her, "You left me sitting in the restaurant for nearly thirty minutes. I had to ask the server to go check to see if you were okay," he trailed off as she stamped away from him and descended to the basement with a dog at her feet. He noted she was not wearing the same skirt and blouse but instead was wearing a short crop top and a pair of biking shorts.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found himself angling his head in shock. "What the hell? You have an entire gym down here." He stood there watching as she landed a couple of roundhouse kicks to black punching bag hanging from the ceiling before she threw a couple jabs. Her form was impeccable, and he let his eyes take it all in. He realized there was more to Isabella Ruiz than a gorgeous body.

"You," she threw a punch, "are" she kicked her leg out straight to the dummy, "an a*****e."

He twisted his lips. "I've been called worse."

"You do not get to dictate my life!" she spit out furiously. "I have two brothers, three sisters, a sister-in-law, two parents, too many aunts and uncles to count and I fight every single day of my life to maintain my autonomy. I will not have some a*****e deciding on a whim he gets to call all the shots over the only part of my life I can control." She stood with her hands resting on her hips glaring at him furiously.

"What would you have had me do? We agreed to date."

"I didn't agree for you to call his father and act like you now own me. Torres, you made it seem to Mikhail and anyone else listening I was now your f*****g property!" She screamed with frustration and punched the bag again. "Nobody owns me. Nobody ever gets to own me."

She kicked the bag three more times for good measure and then moved to the treadmill mumbling under her breath the whole time, as sweat pooled down her chest. She started running on the treadmill and heard the surprised sound of the man still in her basement as the small dog managed to get on the treadmill with her and ran, easily keeping up to her tempo.

"Now I've seen everything," he quipped from the door.

She rolled her eyes and kept her face averted from the wall of mirrors on the far side of the room. Casper was her workout buddy and she adored him. This man standing in her basement door watching her run was an intruder. She never needed a guard dog. She could relieve her own fears. She needed the comfort Casper gave her. Right now, the dog sensed she simply needed someone on her side, a comrade and he was giving it his all to be her friend. Someone had once tried to buy her against her will, to keep her as a prisoner and her freedom was too valuable to her to ever let anyone think they owned her. Casper knew all her dark secrets and so he stayed at her side, running along with her.

Finally, she looked up in the mirror and saw Cam had taken his coat off and it was draped over his arm. "Why are you still here?"

"Because I f****d up and I'm waiting for you to stop running so we can talk like adults. I'm hoping it's soon because your dog looks like he needs water."

She wasn't quite sure what to say to his comment about talking. "He can get on and off as much as he likes. Right now, he's sensing I'm stressed so he's hanging close."

He laughed, "what? Is your wiener dog an emotional support animal?"

She held his eyes seriously in the mirror, "yes in fact it is exactly what he is. He's specifically bred and trained for just such a purpose, and he has fathered many just like him."

His eyes widened incredulously as they flicked back from her and the tiny-legged dog running beside her. "You're telling me, he is your emotional support dog?"

"Yes," she didn't miss a beat on the spinning track but did slow it down a few paces.

"He's a Dachshund." Cam's green eyes were now focused on the dog and how it did indeed appear to be in sync with its master.

"We are both aware of his breed," she took it down another notch until they were simply walking as her breathing started to even out. She dug in a cup on the treadmill for an oversized scrunchie to pull her hair into a ponytail. What was once sleek and straight was now damp and frizzy. "Why do you need an emotional support dog?"

"None of your business," she responded quickly. Casper let out one bark at her and she grimaced, "I don't have to tell him shit." She argued with the dog.

"Seems like he wants you to."

"He's not always right. He predicted the Rangers would win the cup last year and look how far off he was." The dog barked again, and she shook her head. "No way buddy and keep back talking and I'm not giving you the treats that arrived in the mail today." Cam couldn't help it, he laughed when the dog looked over his shoulder at him as if to say he tried and then stepped off the treadmill to wait patiently for his master and his treat.

"He's incredible."

"He's my best friend," she jumped off the equipment, grabbed a towel, and wiped her face. She turned to face him, holding each end of a towel in her hands around her neck. "Why are you here?" "Truthfully, I came to tell you off for being rude and ditching me in a restaurant."

She rolled her eyes at him. "You're lucky I didn't follow-through with my first thought which was to dump the pasta on your head."

"I am most grateful," he gave a shake of his head, "but now I'm here, I'd genuinely like to apologize for being a domineering a*****e and making you feel like I was staking a claim. It wasn't my intention. I'm sorry. I was out of line."

"Well," she looked at Casper, "not the worse apology we've ever heard, is it?" He barked twice and she nodded, "yeah, yeah, I'll offer him a beer but he's getting your beer, not mine." She motioned for him to walk up the stairs ahead of her and wondered why she was cutting the weird rich man so much slack. As she watched his a*s ascend the stairs ahead of her, she realized maybe she knew why.