Protective

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Yeremy

I did as Lana told me. I stayed on the sidelines as she worked.

The studio was as busy as you could imagine. There were people everywhere barking out orders at assistants, rounding up models, working with the photographers, and everyone else was surrounding Sage trying to get her opinions and approvals.

Lana was a bit different. She was there at the center of the madness, answering questions while simultaneously asking them. She had already made sure her models were dressed and so was she.

She was sitting there getting her makeup done while telling the photographer exactly what she wanted from him. She was demanding really. They followed her as if it was second nature.

I looked at all of them, glancing at all of there faces. None of them looked dangerous. Everyone that was here, belonged here. I had checked the list twice.

I sighed as I leaned against the wall. Mikhail had called me yesterday to let me know updates on my father's murderers. They had expanded the business to Yekaterinburg now.

I was going to kill every single one of them. I was not sure how I was going to do it just yet, but I knew I'd do it and I know I'd enjoy doing it as well.

I was ignoring my feelings and I knew better than to do that. My father died two years ago and have I truly mourned him properly?

He was the very last of my family. My mother had died during childbirth and all I knew of her was her face in picture frames.

My father was poor as a child. He lived on the streets and eventually resorted to being a simple drug dealer. He learned whatever he could about the trade and after making enough money he made a trip to Colombia.

There he met his supplier, a man named Joaquin Villamisar. Joaquin sold him the drugs and my father distributed them to different gangs throughout Russia.

He became very powerful very quickly. He met my mother had a child, then mourned the loss of his wife quickly enough to raise me.

I was a happy kid. Not so terribly spoiled like some people, but I wanted for nothing. I got the best money could buy of everything. My father was adamant in giving me everything he never had.

But all I really wanted was to learn his business. He didn't want me to. He wanted me to go to college and be a lawyer and a doctor. I wanted none of that. I even graduated early so that he would take me under his wing.

It was the biggest argument between us and it stayed that way up until he was killed.

He'd probably hate that I was here doing this. Learning from a man my father feared just as much as he respected.

He wouldn't have understood but it seemed like I finally understood him.

I understood him as I watched Lana.

She posed in front of the camera with nothing but a bathing suit. Every single one of her limbs posed perfectly as the photographer directed and I finally understood.

My father wanted me to have the option Mikhail is giving her.

He wants her to be happy and pursue whatever she wants in life. He wants her to make her own choices that will stray her away from this kind of life. He makes the hard choices so she didn't have to.

My father was only in his line of work for survival, I understood that now.

But what he couldn't understand was that I wasn't in this for survival. I did the shit that I did because I loved it and I'd kill every single person that turned on him to get that life back and to avenge the man that wanted a better life for me.