Her Wicked Bodyguard

My father is a man whose name I am not allowed to say, and I am a violinist, which is the only part of me he never managed to make useful. When the charges came down in Moscow, the family moved me to Boston under a new name with a bodyguard who was under strict orders not to speak to me. Sasha did not speak for two months. He walked me to the practice hall and back and stood outside the door while I played. Then a man put his hand on my arm in the snow and Sasha put him on the ground, and we ran, and somewhere in the three weeks that followed, he told me the truth about the family I came from. I am supposed to go home now. Home is a man who would use my hands as collateral. I am supposed to take a name, an inheritance, and a place in an organization that has already killed both of my brothers. I will not. And the man they sent to keep me alive has already told them so.