This was my 11th year working for Westley Grimshaw. Eleven years as his private bodyguard. His shadow. His weapon. And tonight… I decided I was done.
I walked into a tiny secret pharmacy on the south side of the city. The kind of place people only visited when they didn’t want questions. The neon light flickered and the whole place smelled like cheap antiseptic. I dropped a thick roll of cash on the counter.
The old pharmacist looked at it, then at me. “What do you need?”
“Something that’ll make people think I’m dead.”
He stared like he was waiting for me to laugh.
I didn’t.
After a moment he sighed and shuffled to the back. When he came out, he slid a small glass vial across the counter.
“Fake death pill,” he said. “Pulse slows down little by little. Breathing fades. By the fourtenth day you’ll look completely dead.”
My fingers tightened around the vial. “And after that?”
“You’ll wake up in two days later,” he said. “If nobody buries you first.”
A small laugh slipped out of me. “Yeah. That’d be awkward.”
He studied my face again. “Girl… whatever you’re trying to escape from must be hell.”
The snow outside hit my face like knives. I pulled my coat tighter and started walking back toward Westley’s mansion.
Eleven years.
My mind drifted back to that winter eleven years ago. I was twelve and the country was starving. People were selling everything just to survive. Some sold their homes. Some sold their kids, but me?
I sold myself.
One thousand dollars. That was what a slave broker paid for me. Why? Because my little sister was starving and I thought maybe if I disappeared she’d live longer.
Stupid kid.
The broker never made it to the city. The gang attacked the convoy in the mountains. Kids were screaming and horses were crashing through the snow. When it was over everyone was dead.
Everyone except me.
I crawled through the snow with broken ribs and frozen hands. I remember thinking… so this is how I die.
Cold. Alone.
Then headlights cut through the storm. A black Rolls Royce stopped in front of me. The door opened and a boy stepped out.
Westley Grimshaw.
Fifteen years old and already the most feared heir in the New York mafia world. He looked down at me lying in the snow like I was just another stray animal.
“You still breathing?” he asked casually.
I forced my eyes open.
He crouched beside me and tilted his head slightly. “You wanna live?”
I nodded so hard my vision spun. “P-please… I don’t wanna die.”
He watched me for a second, then stood. “Put her in the car,” he told his driver. Then he looked down at me again. “But listen carefully…From today on, your life belongs to me. Understand?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “Okay.”
That night he gave me hot porridge. A thick winter coat. And a knife.
“You’ll need it,” he told me.
From that day on, he trained me himself. Guns, knives, surveillance, killing without leaving evidence. By the time I was grown, people in the underworld called me Westley Grimshaw’s ghost. But somewhere along the way something inside me broke.
When did I start loving him?
Maybe the time I nearly died during a mission and he stayed at my hospital bed for three days straight.
Maybe when he taught me how to write properly and leaned over my shoulder, his breath warmed against my ear.
Or maybe that stupid charity gala last year when someone drugged him. And he dragged me into his office that night and pushed me against the wall.
“Don’t move,” he muttered hoarsely.
“B-boss… you’re not thinking straight.”
“Stop calling me that tonight,” he said, gripping my waist.
His eyes were dark. Dangerous. Then he kissed me hard. Like he’d been holding it back for years.
After that night we never talked about it. Not once.
But every few days he came to my room. Sometimes it was gentle, sometimes it's rough like he needed to burn something out of his system.
He never promised me anything. And I never asked. Because who was I? Just the girl he picked up from the snow. Just his bodyguard. Just his secret.
Westley Grimshaw never loved anyone.
Until the day he carried a girl into the mansion.
I was standing in the hallway when he walked in with her in his arms. At first I didn’t care. Westley saved people sometimes. But then the girl lifted her face.
My blood froze.
No.
That couldn’t be…
It was her! My little sister. Natalia. The sister I thought died years ago.
Westley set her down gently and she looked around the mansion. Then her eyes landed on me.
She froze.
“Amelia…?”
Before I could even breathe she ran straight at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Sister!” she cried, shaking. “Oh my God, it’s really you! I thought you died!”
My hands trembled as I hugged her back. “Natalia… you’re alive?”
“I missed you so much,” she sobbed. “I looked everywhere for you.”
I pulled back slightly. “What happened? How did you survive?”
She wiped her tears. “After you disappeared I lived on the streets for a while. Then a rich family adopted me. They raised me like their daughter.” Her voice cracked. “But a few days ago a gang attacked their house. Everyone died… except me.”
She glanced toward Westley.
“He saved me.”
For a moment my chest filled with something warm. Maybe God finally decided to stop punishing me. But then I looked at Westley.
And I noticed the way he was looking at Natalia.
Soft.
Interested.
Different.
My stomach twisted. Why was he looking at her like that? No… Amelia, you’re imagining things.
Right?
…Right?
Westley never trained Natalia the way he trained me. He never handed her a gun or a knife and told her to learn how to survive. Instead he hired private tutors. Piano, art, chess, languages. Expensive teachers from New York and Europe came in and out of the mansion like she was some princess.
Natalia hated the dark, so he had the staff install warm lights all around her backyard and hallway. She once mentioned she liked pear blossoms and a month later the gardeners planted an entire row of imported pear trees outside her windows.
I watched all of it quietly.
Funny, right? I had spent 11 years bleeding for him and the girl only had to smile.
Then Natalia got poisoned.
A rival mafia heir named George Vale was behind it. People called him the 3rd Prince of the underworld because his family controlled half the criminal networks on the East Coast. Everyone also knew something else about him.
He was sick in the head.
George called Westley personally. I was standing in the room when the call came.
“Your little princess got poisoned,” George said through the speaker, sounding amused. “But don’t worry. I’ve got the antidote.”
Westley’s voice was calm. “What do you want?”
George laughed. “Send me Amelia. Your famous bodyguard. I’ll keep her for a month. When the month ends you get the antidote.”
The room went silent.
