Summary: [Modern!AU] After the CEO of Wang Technologies receives numerous death threats, he hires a bodyguard with unconventional methods to bring his difficult daughter safely home. Bringing the spoiled heiress home is not as simple as Neji first thought; the path to Paris is paved with lies, betrayals and bodies. And the one pulling the strings could very well be his employer. NejiTen, French!Tenten

Not so long ago we were talking about doing NejiTen beach reads on the NejiTen discord server. We made a list of fluffy themes that one would read on the beach. Bodyguard!AU came up. And what I read on the beach? Mystery books. So here: inspired by all the books I have read which stated in their summary that "nothing is as it seems".

Tenten is French in this because I say so.

Enjoy! :)

-X-

Neji Hyuuga

Paris, France

The mansion was hollow, haunted, erected on marble pillars and impenetrable emptiness.

Framed in carved gold and painted pin, generations of the Wang family surveyed the hallway with austere expressions. The Wang family had immigrated to France in the late nineteenth century and established an empire that contributed to the electrification of big French cities like Paris. A century later, the family's legacy included corporations that specialized in microchips and drones, and still sought the engineering of the future.

'But they live in the past,' Neji couldn't help thinking as the maid led him through narrowed hallways illuminated by crystal chandeliers, his steps muffled by Turkish carpets.

Soft light painted tall blobs of intrusive shadows, when they finally reached the living room. If the room was still elegant, its atmosphere was faded, worn to its last threads, drawn curtains before heavy sunlight.

Neji bowed stiffly before the middle-aged man sitting on the leather sofa. Head rolling back slightly, Mr Wang gestured toward the sofa facing him with a bony hand.

"Please, sit, Mr Hyuuga," his cracked lips closed again over his thin voice, and Neji obeyed.

Shifting uneasily on the sofa, Neji's gaze glided over the chimney, the adorned marble carving it, and the nail on the wall where a portrait had been.

Deserted, abandoned.

The back of his neck prickled.

"My daughter is difficult," Mr Wang said carefully after a while, and he glanced behind him at his bodyguards.

Neji scrutinized him with pale eyes, calculating and detached. Mr Wang was tensed and reluctant, shifting in his seat as a maid poured tea in a porcelain cup in front of him. He was a tall nervous man who fumbled with his glasses, and paused between each word, as if weighing them carefully.

Neji's gaze, then, trailed on the two men guarding the door of the living room. He could barely make out three weapons on each of them, and they rotated between door and windows seamlessly. Professionals, army-trained. Like him.

Mr Wang thanked the maid under his breath, and he added sugar to his tea, his spoon clicking unpleasantly against the porcelain. Neji looked at his own fuming cup and didn't move.

"I've asked her to come home... Begged her, even, considering the situation," Mr Wang took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, before shaking his head slowly and pushing his glasses up his nose once more. "She was in vacations in Italy with friends, you see? She refused to come home. Children rarely realize how parents worry, don't you think so, Mr Hyuuga?"

"Yes," Neji replied and Mr Wang nodded stiffly to himself.

Neji always told his clients what they wanted to hear as a rule. He found they were more willing to forgo his unconventional methods that way. He glanced at the letters scattered across the coffee table, and pointed at them.

"May I?"

"Oh, yes, of course, I apologize. I keep... worrying. The first threat, I dismissed, but now there are ten of them," Mr Wang designated the pile vaguely before leaning back in the sofa, his frail body half-broken against the brown leather.

Neji leafed through the letters carefully. The words were typed, the A4 paper, commercial, cold. Yet, the content bled with something personal and vicious, describing habits, little details, of Mr Wang and Miss Wang's lives that made the threats tangible. His jaw clenching, Neji looked up at Mr Wang, but he was turned toward the draped windows, the fingers of his right hand nervously pulling at the seams of the armrest.

"I need you to bring her back, where she can be safe," he said with an extinct voice and his lips barely moved. "You've read it, they know she's in Italy."

Neji replaced the pile of letters on the table. There was nothing else he could learn from them.

"I'm trained to take care of difficult clients, sir," Neji said and linked his hands in front of him. "I always keep them safe. I'll bring your daughter safely home."

"Yes, yes, I've heard your reputation, Mr Hyuuga," Mr Wang said and waved him off impatiently. "However, you're not the first to try... Many bodyguards have met their match in my daughter. She's smart, too smart for her own good, and she doesn't want to come home. The girl thinks the threats are bogus."

"I assure you if I give me a detailed report of everything she has done to escape her past bodyguards, I'll bring your daughter back to you in one piece minus a few inconvenience on her part," Neji said smoothly, and he reached for the cup in front of him.

He tasted the tea, following out the corner of his eyes the other two bodyguards' movements. A muscle in his jaw twitched, goosebumps spreading uneasily across his arms. He lowered his cup again, ignoring Mr Wang's blanching face.

"What kind of inconvenience?" He stuttered, and his French accent pierced through the words, more pronounced.

"Slight discomfort," Neji replied, and he stood up, buttoning his suit once more.

Mr Wang blinked rapidly and stood up too, in spite of himself. Neji knew he was now in charge.

"Nothing too drastic?"

Neji gave him a closed mouth smile, before bowing deeply and walking out of the living room.

When he walked toward his car across the entrance, gravel screeched and rolled under his shoes. Feeling he was being watched, Neji looked back toward the mansion at the top of the hill. The curtains of the window of the living room quivered, released once more, and the shadow of a man faded in the folds of the fabric. Like a ghost.

Shaking his head, Neji climbed in his car and drove away without a glance back, but he couldn't help but feel something, someone was still watching him, something harassing and dark. Cruel. As if he now carried some of the house emptiness inside him.

-X-

Trieste, Italy, 2 days later

The hot air suffocated him, stagnant, merciless, as he stepped out of the taxi.

In his linen clothes, and sunglasses, Neji blended in with the other tourists. He calmly walked down the street, paying attention to roofs and hidden alleys, gleaming steel under the blazing sun. He crossed the streets, shadowing a couple that spoke animatedly in Italian. Then, he turned sharply, away from the flaking dust of the road, and followed other tourists into a pedestrian street.

Neji almost groaned. He was now certain that she was hiding from her father's reach.

She had chosen a city without an airport, in the middle of the mountains, near the border of Slovenia. The street was any bodyguard's worst nightmare; busy, sinuous, narrowed alleys cutting through the main road at odd angles. The stones of the buildings gleamed under the sun, golden, too bright for contrasts.

Neji wiped at his glistening face, turning on himself, as if in awe in front of the carved stones, and eroded statues. His hair stuck to his temples, his neck, sweat pouring down his back, and the sky was bright blue, devoid of clouds, at once luminous and scorching. He glanced down at the tourist guide he opened as he watched out of the corner of his eyes the large windows of the café where she was supposed to be.

He couldn't see her.

Neji waited.

He folded his guide back in his bag, glancing at his watch with the same movement before turning to look at the faded fresco painted on the side of a building. Cameras flashed around him. Tourists spoke a variety of languages around him. They swarmed the street heading toward the Piazza Unità d'Italia, and he tried to follow their movements, waiting for a chance to enter the café undetected.

Finally, a group of young adults brushed by him, and Neji stepped in the café with them, half-hidden. He almost hissed at the harsh cool air of the A/C. There were screens over the bar displaying a soccer match, and the sounds of dishes shrilled, swallowed by the cries of those watching the match at the bar. Neji walked deeper into the big room, and brushed carefully by full tables, the odour of coffee strong and acrid around him.

At the farthest corner, there was a brunette, alone, reading a thick French book. Carelessly, her hand toyed with her half-empty cup, her rings clicking against the porcelain. She turned the page, and she looked up at the same time, startling him, her eyes smoky grey and piercing.

"What do you want, you creep?" she growled in English, her accent less pronounced than her father's.

He cursed inwardly. He had thought he would watch her for a while before approaching her.

"Are you Miss Wang?" He cleared his throat.

"Nope, but she told me to give you this."

She handed him an envelope with an impatient movement and her bracelets clinked, while her other hand still holding her book open. Neji sighed and took the envelope, twisting it, turning it between his fingers. He didn't move. His gaze never left her, her forced languor as she ignored him and pretended to read on.

She was good, but he was unconventional.

"Where did she go?"

He took a deliberate step between her and the exit, close and far enough from her to maneuver easily if she was difficult.

She glanced up at him, her expression darkening, as she propped her chin on her palm, openly scrutinizing him.

"How would I know? Maybe it says something in that envelope," she answered sweetly.

"Hn. Do you have the time?"

She turned her wrist to glance at her wristband, and he grabbed it. She gasped, cursing loudly in French, when his grip pulled her out of her chair. Swiftly, he slapped handcuffs on her, pushing her torso on the table. Her coffee cup quivered in the saucer and the spoon fell off the table, a metallic crash that brought silence and startled sounds in the café.

"HEY!"

"It's alright, I'm a cop," he snapped in Italian flashing a badge at the room. The owner of the café sat back down at the bar, his eyes narrowed, but his hands held up in an appeasing gesture.

"If you're a cop, I'm Santa Claus," Tenten Wang yelled, her cheek still pressed against the table.

Neji forced her to rise to her feet, undeterred, and bent down to retrieve her handbag and her book.

"Spoken like the thief you are."

"I'm not a thief," Tenten huffed, scandalized, and she turned toward the crowd, but they avoided her gaze.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..." Neji droned on, and he forced her to walk ahead of him, his hand gripping her arm with measured force.

"HEY! HE'S KIDNAPPING ME!" she yelled, and still no one moved.

He could see how a tight knot formed inside her, icy fingers pressing and pressing, choking her. They wouldn't help her, was her first, her widened eyes told him. Her cheeks flushed red, and she grew rigid, her eyes shining and her mouth disappearing into a thin line.

Neji pushed her in front of him, disturbed by the change in her, as if she had been waiting for it, dreading it. But she wasn't resigned, breaking apart, she was holding on the seams of her with voracious grip. Calculating. Waiting.

"She owes me 5 euro for the café," the owner said before they could exit the café, half-barring the door.

Tenten rolled her eyes and mumbled in French that the owner was the thief.

Neji withdrew a bill from his pocket and put it on one of the tables before pushing Tenten on the street. The sun burned hotter, smouldering the stones of the streets, and the breeze from the sea stilled. He walked close to her, and her head shifted in all direction, searching, and she pulled at the cuffs.

"I could pay you-"

"No," Neji interrupted coldly.

"You haven't even heard my offer."

With a quickening pace, they exited the pedestrian street, and turned on an empty street. Tenten tried to slow down, but his grip tightened around her arm. They walked uphill, Neji's gaze shifting across the rooftops for a lone shooter. An untraceable car with a diplomatic vignette was parked at the top of the street behind a small church.

"Whatever they are paying you..."

"Nothing at all," Neji interrupted calmly. "I have looked into your finances. There's nothing to your name, Miss Wang,"

"Do you really speak like that? "Nothing to you name"," Tenten mocked his voice, baritone and masculine, and he pinched his lips, his right eyebrow twitching. "I bet you also say: "I'm with child" or "preposterous"."

"No."

Neji made her lean on the bumper of the black car, one hand on the handcuffs, as he fumbled in his pockets for the car keys. She scratched at her leg, and then look at him smugly.

Behind her, the car beeped and the doors unlocked.

"This thief story... it's bogus. We can at least just be honest with each other since we're using handcuffs and all," she smiled, closed-mouth, staring at him with interest. "So, how did you find me?"

"You look a lot like the picture I was given, Miss Wang."

"Oh, fun, you speak like one sentence every hour."

Her elbows shook.

"The handcuffs won't open with that trick," Neji looked at her placidly, and her fingers trembled around the hair tie, her mouth contorted, her eyes gleaming.

Her elbows shook again and again, her movements turning desperate, until her skin was raw, stinging. She panted.

"Merde! Who are you?"

"Neji Hyuuga, your bodyguard," he answered matter-of-factly and reached past her to open the car door for her. "Now get in the car, Miss Wang, or I get you in rather unpleasantly."

Tenten glared at him, and he stared back, each of them calculating their next move, sizing the other up.

"Fine," Tenten snarled finally, and bent down to sit on the backseat, her eyes still angrily flickering across his face.

Her upper body twisted, and Tenten struggled, cursing under her breath as she shifted to find a comfortable position. The warm metal of the cuffs dug into her wrists however she sat. Impatiently, Neji moved her legs inside, setting her bag and book on her laps before slamming the door shut. She watched as the door locked itself with the shadow of a smile.

He climbed in the driver's seat, and started adjusting the rearview mirrors.

"You could be more gentle, y'know? Or, am I your first?"

"I assure you, Miss Wang, I came in your father's employ under the upmost recommendations."

"My father?" Tenten repeated, and her tone faltered, high-pitched.

"Yes."

She blanched.

"Oh."

Slowly, Neji turned back toward her, his eyebrows furrowed.

"What did you do, Miss Wang?" he asked with the calmest voice he could muster, and his knuckles whitened from his grip on the passenger seat's headrest.

"I scratched my leg."

"Yes?" he snapped.

"While I did that I may have nuked your tire with a hair stick. They get everywhere, lose them, find them, stuck them somewhere... Buy more of them," she shrugged, her head nodding in his direction as if she was pointing at his hair. "Amirite?"

His glaze intensified, cutting, but Tenten merely shrugged again, smiling to herself like a broken doll, fake and propped up by an invisible hand. She turned back toward the window, craning her neck to look at the deflating tire. The way she held herself was controlled, a little too brisk and frigid, and when he caught a glance of her expression on the window, he was reminded of her house; haunted by desolation, inhabited only by ghosts.

Tenten babbled on about hair accessories and Italy, and he kept watching her, frozen, his heart hammering steadily as it used to before battle. He would always recognize that expression as a soldier; it penetrated his memories, it shadowed him, tiny, then booming and persistent in his nightmares.

Terror.

Underneath her smile was sheer terror.

-X-

Reviews are love. Thanks for your support! :D

Next chapter is in Tenten's POV.