New Round, You’re Out

The bodyguard was not what he looked like. He was silent, apparently unable to deal with people at all, and that was read in the household as something that needed protecting. The woman who took him on was one of two sisters. Two orphan brothers had been brought into the family by its mistress and set to guarding them, the elder one carrying a quiet interest in her sister. She paid for the younger one's treatment, kept him at her side, and stood between him and anything that might have gone hard on him. The small boat they were on turned over. He pulled the one life vest away from her and handed it to her sister, and she understood then that his condition had been an act for as long as she had known him. She went under, and opened her eyes on the day the household picked its bodyguards, with the choice still ahead of her, and this time she did not pick him.