Page 4 of France Face-Off (Brotherhood Protectors International #6)

Alex gave him the name she’d assumed since her parents’ death.

It had been a name on one of the passports they’d made for her.

They’d kept a safe hidden behind a wall in the kitchen pantry, where they’d stored passports from over a dozen different countries with as many different names on the passports and thousands of dollars in different currencies from the other countries.

Should their cover be exposed, they had to be ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice.

Their final assignment had been in Russia, where they’d attempted to provide their daughter a stable environment as they’d worked as sleeper agents from the time she was twelve until she was almost twenty-eight.

Images of that fateful evening flashed through her mind, hardening her heart and her determination.

Two years had passed since she’d lost her parents.

During those years, she’d focused on retribution.

She was getting close to discovering the man behind their hit order.

Nothing and no one would stop her from avenging her parents’ deaths, not even this man in the tuxedo she’d noticed from the moment she’d stepped into the reception hall.

He’d been hard to miss. A dark-haired, handsome man, mingling with the paunchy, gray-haired statesmen from the attending countries, was bound to stand out.

Not that she was there to flirt with the attendees of the Energy Summit.

She was there to get the final piece of information she needed to nail the one responsible…

the one who’d given the order to terminate her mother and father.

“If you turn me in to the security staff,” she said to the man in front of her, “I will tell them the same thing I told you. I was defending myself.”

“And it will be your word against Petrov’s. Who do you think they’ll believe? A foreign diplomat or a woman nobody knows?”

Alex bristled. She might be a nobody. It didn’t make her less of a person.

Her parents had made a lifetime of being nobodies, and yet they’d infiltrated the Russian government and had become trusted servants to various politicians.

During that time, they’d fed information back to the US government as members of the CIA.

“What were you doing in the garden with Petrov to begin with?” the stranger asked.

She tipped her head up and stared straight into his eyes. “He asked me to come see the hotel garden, not that it’s any of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll rejoin the reception.”

“And I’ll accompany you,” he said.

“That won’t be necessary. As you are fully aware, I can defend myself.”

He lightly cupped her elbow. “I’m not so concerned about your safety so much as I am for the safety of the guests at this reception.”

“You have my knife, and it’s sharp, so I wouldn’t sit while it’s still in your pocket. And it is one of my favorites. I would like it back before I leave France.”

“You’ll have to tell me where you’re staying, and I will return it after the diplomats have dispersed to their own countries.”

She allowed the corners of her lips to turn up in a tight smile. “I am staying here at the chateau, like the rest of the guests at this reception.”

“All the more reason for me to keep this knife.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. I need to get back. My services might be required.”

“Something you might have considered,” he said, “before you attacked Petrov.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “He attacked me and, if you were watching, you would have seen that.” She pushed her shoulders back and stared up at him. “You know my name. What is yours, so I can retrieve my knife once the event is over?”

“Daniel Rayne.”

She studied his face. He didn’t look like a Daniel. “I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure meeting you, only the jury’s still out.”

His lips twitched. “Trust me, the pleasure would be all yours.”

She moved to go around him.

He dropped his hand on her elbow and stepped into her path.

“I’m unarmed,” she said in clipped tones. “I’m not a threat to anyone.”

He chuckled. “I’m not so certain about that, not after seeing how you threw Petrov over your shoulder like he didn’t weigh two hundred pounds.”

“I’ve had lessons in self-defense. A woman can’t always hide a knife in her clothing.”

“You managed to quite nicely, which is surprising as tightly as that dress fits your body.”

Her cheeks heated. She chose to ignore the fact he’d noticed how her dress hugged her figure. With one eyebrow cocked, she asked, “And what is your connection to this reception?”

His lips spread into a smile. “I’m an escort.”

She laughed. “I should’ve known.”

His brow wrinkled. “And why should you have known?”

“I mean, look at you.” Alex waved a hand at him.

“You aren’t old enough to be one of the politicians or delegates.

You’re too good-looking to be one of the scientists, and your moves are too skilled.

” Her eyebrows dropped and her eyes narrowed.

“You’re too skilled to be just an escort.

I’d venture to guess you’re more of a bodyguard or additional security hired by the chateau or some of the attending diplomats. ”

His grin broadened. “So, you think I’m good-looking, huh?”

“That’s all you got out of what I just said?” She rolled her eyes.

“It’s nice to know the suit is working.”

Alex tilted her head to one side and studied him anew. “If you were part of the chateau’s security team, you would’ve already turned me in as a potential threat; therefore, I’ll mark that off my list.”

“And your self-defense techniques are too well-honed for you to be simply a translator,” the man in front of her said. “So, what else are you? A spy? A call girl?” His gaze narrowed even more as he pinned her with his gaze. “Or an assassin?”

Her tight lips eased into a sultry smile. “I’m a translator,” she said, “and you’re keeping me from my duties. Now, either you move, or I scream.”

He held out his arm. “Allow me to escort you back to the reception hall.”

“I can get back there on my own,” she reminded him.

“I know that, but I don’t trust you to follow me in. You might be hiding another knife under that silver dress. I’d venture to guess you probably wouldn’t trust me to follow you in, considering I still have the knife with which you tried to kill Petrov.”

She frowned. “I was not trying to kill the man. He just needed him to understand that no means no.”

Daniel’s lips widened into a grin. “Or nyet means nyet .”

“If you were close enough to hear me say that, you were close enough to know what was going on.”

Still, he held out his arm, refusing to move until she took it.

“Fine.” Alex hooked her hand through his elbow, and they started toward the reception hall, moving down the long corridor.

The arm under the tuxedo sleeve was thickly muscled. The man’s chest was broad and probably as muscular as his arm, making her feel small next to him. As she’d noted, he’d easily disarmed her when she’d been holding the knife over Petrov’s chest.

She’d been angry with Petrov for grabbing her and refusing to let go. She had not intended to kill him, yet. Her intent had been to reinforce the idea that not all women wanted to make love with him.

Alex had briefly toyed with the idea of holding him at knifepoint to get the answers she wanted about who had given the kill order for her parents.

It was probably just as well that Daniel had stopped her before she had gotten to that point.

Her anger might have been her downfall and exposed her as the phantom assassin responsible for the deaths of a number of Russians, including the team that had been sent to kill her parents, and the middlemen who’d passed along the order.

One government official who had passed that order along, a man her parents had worked closely with for many years, someone they had trusted as a friend, who’d been to their house and shared meals with them, had been their Russian contact when they’d first come to Russia.

Alex might have spared him when she had gone to question his role in her parents’ death, but things hadn’t worked out that way.

He had been surprised to see her and apparently scared, afraid that she knew too much and could expose him to the government officials with whom he worked closely.

More than that, he seemed afraid someone would find out she hadn’t died in the fire that had consumed her home and parents.

When he’d attacked her, she’d had no other choice. The man she’d considered a family friend had become just another puppet to the one who’d given the order to kill her parents.

Thankfully, they had met at a quiet place by a river. She suspected that he had chosen that location for easy disposal of her body. It had served that purpose, but she had disposed of his body in the river instead.

Anatoly Petrov had been his boss. Alex knew from all her research that Petrov reported to the President of Russia.

He also had connections to the Russian mafia that dealt in a number of illegal activities, including human trafficking and drug trafficking.

Alex suspected the mafia was also involved in siphoning off natural gas, selling it to other sources in Russia and to other countries.

Petrov wasn’t the one calling the shots. Though Alex had been tempted, she wouldn’t have killed him until he’d given her the name of his connection to the mafia and the one ultimately responsible for putting the hit out on her parents.

The team that had performed the hit had not been Russian military or Russian police. They had been a highly trained mercenary team, their payment source a Swiss bank account.