Page 36 of The Bodyguard

“I take it you handled it?”

He started the engine. “He’ll wake up zip-tied next to a trash can and wondering why the fuck his head hurts so bad and about all the bad life choices that landed him where he is.”

“Mitch…”

“Don’t,” he snapped. “You don’t get to speak first.”

She snapped her mouth shut. He drove in silence for a full minute. Just long enough to take the next turn, hit the bypass, and make sure no one was tailing them. Then he finally looked at her.

“You left the loft without backup. You turned off your tracker. You used an unsecured burner to respond to a message from an unverified source.”

Her chin lifted. “It was a whistleblower. Someone from inside my campaign.”

“You don’t verify intel by walking into a kill box.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she shot back. “Don’t you think I knew what I was doing?”

“No,” Mitch said, voice sharp. “I don’t think you had the first goddamn clue what you were doing. You thought you could control the danger by getting ahead of it. You thought if you handled it, you’d be safe. You thought if you asked for help, it would make you weak.”

She went quiet again. He kept going. Because the words weren’t just for her.

“They used you as bait, Andi. Not because they want you out of the way today. But because they want you scared. Isolated. Afraid to move without second-guessing yourself. And you walked right into it.”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“If you’re going to do stupid things like this, you should have.Otherwise you leave it to professionals and while we’re on the subject of professionals… do you have any idea what it would have done to Coop if something bad had happened to you?” His knuckles flexed around the steering wheel. “I’ve never been assigned to protect a smarter woman than you. But when it comes to this—when it comes to letting someone protect you—you’re too damn proud to see clearly.”

He stopped at a light and turned to look at her fully.

“You don’t get to do this again,” he said. “Not while I’m your protector. Not while I’m still breathing.”

She didn’t answer right away. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than before. “You think I’m too proud?”

“I think you’re scared to let go. And I think that scares you more than being shot at.”

Andi laughed once, bitter and breathless. “You’re not wrong.”

“I rarely am.”

She turned her head to look at him. “That’s the problem.”

He didn’t respond.

Not until she said, “You ever make a mistake like that? Put your trust in someone who didn’t earn it?”

And Mitch… saw her. The fear behind the sarcasm. The edge behind the steel. Rick Wexler was her London.

The memory hit him so fast it nearly knocked the air from his lungs. The way the woman had looked that night in Geneva. Kneeling on the hotel carpet, eyes wide and wet, voice begging for things she never wanted. Because she didn’t want submission—she wanted leverage.

She’d told him she loved him. Then leaked half the classified comms schedule to her contact in Johannesburg. Said she only did it because Mitch didn’t ‘love her back.’

He swore that day he’d never confuse submission with trust again—never let sex cloud his operational clarity. He knew Andi was different, but that didn’t change the danger.

His silence must’ve said more than he realized.

8

ANDI

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