Her Bodyguard

Chapter Eighteen

"Who are you?" The man who opened the door asked.

Calida didn't bother staring at him. She had forgotten something and she was too busy fixing it. She took off the brass knuckles and pulled on her blue leather hand gloves. She pulled on the brass knuckles again before looking at the man.

"I don't think this is your house. Besides, I said I was looking for Joachim. Is he in?" She asked again.

"If you don't leave here right this second..."

"Who's that?" A voice from inside the house asked.

Calida smiled. The man in front of her looked surprised. Her smile was so sinister. It sent a cold shiver down his spine, and not in a good way.

"That must be Joachim. We should take our private discussion inside. Besides, I've been waiting for him for weeks now," Calida said, tugging at her gloves as she spoke.

The man moved to grab something in his jacket, but Calida moved faster. She swung at him, hitting him right in the Adam's apple. Another blow below his ear instantly smashed his jaw. The last blow to the side of the neck was going to cause irreparable damage. The man crumpled into a mess on the floor. Calida walked into the house and shut the door, locking it and shoving the key into her pocket.

She walked into the sitting room with a smile. Joachim, a well built man in his early forties, with a jagged scar on his left eye, was already sitting in the loveseat. Calida locked eyes with him. Her grin turned sinister once more.

"If it isn't Joachim the vile. It has been years since I last saw you," Calida said, sitting on the coffee table in front of him.

Joachim looked confused. He stared at Calida longer than necessary. She looked familiar, like someone he had met. The more he stared, the more her eyes and the freckles doting her face looked familiar.

"Who are you? Where's the lovely little lady that lives here," he asked sweetly.

Calida chuckled softly. "This question again? Everyone's so eager to know who I am. Think Joachim. I like the scar on your left eye. Did you get that from an angry child?"

Joachim's face contorted into something worse than a frown. He brushed the scar absentmindedly, as if recalling what had happened to him. It looked like some child scratched at him furiously with a piece of glass.

"How?" He asked her. "How did you know a child gave me this scar?"

"You're so stupid, Joachim. You still can't see clearly. Think again, Jo. Think again," Calida said.

Joachim's left eye twitched as his eyes went wide with recognition. He studied Calida for a few seconds. There was anger in his eyes, pain, raw, burning pain. And Calida was pleased to know why he was in pain.

"You little bitch! It was you! I'm going to finish what I started years ago!" He roared.

Calida relaxed, taking pleasure in his pain, and rage. It was the same rage she felt all those years ago, rage that she hid deep inside her. Rage that she would tap into while she drew breath from the beast in front of her.

"You probably have four men in this house. It should be five, but then, one man is already out by the door. I'll send you back to him, the same way I sent you back to him years ago, Jo! But you'll be dead."

Calida wasn't much of a talker. But she needed to tell Joachim what she was going to do to him. The nickname infuriated Joachim even more. Calida crossed her leg, expecting multiple attacks. She seemed calm, but she knew what to expect. She grabbed the glass of whiskey on the table and splashed it in Joachim's face. The man growled as he rubbed at his eyes.

Two men appeared in a jiffy, dressed in black suits, behind Joachim.

"Boss, are you alright?" One man asked.

"What the hell are you asking that for? Grab the bitch," Joachim yelled.

The first man to attack was big, but in Calida's opinion, he was dumb. She blocked a blow with her right hand, grabbed his hands and twisted it enough to break three fingers. The man groaned in pain. She pushed him off, getting up as well. The second man attacked, but she knocked him down with a clean blow to the cheek.

Calida dodged a blow from the first guy, pulling her gun out in a swift move and shooting him between the eyes. The man fell back immediately, dead. She turned to the second guy with a smirk on her face before pulling the trigger.

"Anybody else?" She said out loud.

Just as expected, two more men showed up. One from the garage and the other from the kitchen. She had her gun pointed in both directions at both men.

"One little misstep and you're gone, capisce?" She asked both men.

She couldn't let them go though. So when she saw one man move, Calida pulled the trigger. The guy coming from the garage fell against the wall. The man from the kitchen clutched his chest as he fell face first to the ground. Calida turned to Joachim, his eyes were bloodshot, but she didn't seem to care.

"You know, these men had nothing to do with what you did. Che sfortuna, really. But they do your dirty work. Sit down, Jo. Let's talk about old times," Calida said.

Joachim was dying with fear and she could smell it. That was the same fear she had in her eyes year ago.

"It is time to settle an old score," she whispered.

Joachim pulled a dagger out of his jacket and flung it at her. It stabbed her left side, digging into her. Calida pointed a gun at him immediately, unbothered by the knife that was sticking out of her.

"One move is all I need Jo. Calm down. In a second, you'll have the chance to fight for your life. I'd love to do it the same way you did," she told him.

"You're just like him," the man yelled, spitting on the floor.

Calida groaned, annoyed. The clean up team would have to scrub this place clean of death and dirt. She would never mention that this ugly man spat in their sitting room to Izar. Why did I call it our sitting room? She asked herself.

With no answer, she pulled the trigger, destroying his left kneecap with a bullet. The man cried out in pain. She had been expecting him to put up a fight. But he wasn't the same man she had known from years ago, the man who pulled her out from underneath her bed, the man that she had stabbed with a piece of jagged, broken glass. He was lucky to still have that eye.

She pulled the trigger again, this time aiming for his right shoulder. Then she started shooting sporadically, filling the man in front of her with bullets as memories tore through her. She only stopped when the magazine became empty and when the guns wouldn't fire anymore.

Joachim's body smoked, but not in a good way. His left eye twitched as she watched his breathing cease. She pulled out a burner phone and dialed a number she had saved on the phone.

"I need the cleaning team. Yes. I need the place to be sparkling clean. Like it has been untouched. Yeah! You know the address. Be here in 10. I won't wait," Calida said.

She checked the pulse of the man lying on the floor at the door. He wasn't dead, yet. She took the gun lying beside him, the one he must have been trying to grab before she knocked him out, and pressed it to his head. After pulling the trigger, she left the house, leaving the key in the right place for the team to find.

"Ricordi, il tuo compito è portare a termine il lavoro, qualunque cosa accada?"

The words echoed in her ear as she gripped the steering wheel, unable to move. Her job had always been to get whatever job she was given done. That was exactly what she was doing.

She looked down at the knife inside her as she released her grip on her steering wheel. Calida needed to get back to the safe house and the woman she was meant to protect.