Page 51 of The Bodyguard

“I’m not scared,” he said evenly. “I’m calculating.”

“Bullshit.”

“No,” he said, lowering his voice, but not the command in it. “You want to talk about trust? Then hear this—trust doesn’t keep you alive. Intelligence does. Action does. The second I stop treating everyone like a threat is the second someone gets a bullet between the eyes. I won’t let that be you.”

She opened her mouth, fury in her eyes, but he cut her off.

“You think I crossed a line?” he asked. “You’re damn right I did. And I’ll keep crossing them. Because trust won’t matter if you’re dead.”

Her mouth snapped shut.

He stepped in closer, lowering his voice further. “I get it. You’re angry. You think I betrayed something sacred between us. But Andi, this isn’t a love story. This is a goddamn war. And if I have to burn bridges to keep you breathing, I will. You don’t have to like it. You just have to stay alive long enough to understand why I did it.”

Her breath hitched—just for a second. Her eyes flicked to his mouth, then back to his eyes.

“I trusted you,” she said, but it came out softer this time. Less like a sword. More like a plea.

“I know.”

“And you went behind my back.”

“I went in front of your coffin,” he said. “Pick which one you prefer.”

That landed. She backed up a step, arms wrapping tight around her middle, like she was trying to hold something in. He didn’t move. Let her sit with it. She paced once. Then again. Then stopped and looked at him with eyes clearer than they’d been a moment ago.

“Just… promise me,” she said, voice quieter now, “if you find something on them—on Maya—don’t go silent again. Don’t shut me out.”

His answer was immediate. “Only if you promise not to protect people who might be trying to kill you.”

Silence stretched again. Not sharp this time—just fragile.

Finally, she nodded.

He nodded back.

“Good,” he said. “Because we’re out of time for internal politics.”

She stared out the window to the streetlight flickering below. “You think they’ll try again?”

“I know they will.”

And he would be ready. Because this wasn’t just about defending anymore. That one shot had been the opening salvo to declare hunting season.

* * *

Mitch kept himself busy for the next hour. Tactical busy. Calculated busy. The kind of busy that masked the mess building inside him.

He stripped down the weapons cache, cleaned the slide on the Glock he’d pulled from the drawer after the shot, recalibrated the trigger tension on her panic ring just to double-check the response window. He reviewed the latest Cerberus logs, scanned the GPS perimeter again, then moved to her computer—not to spy, but to check the firewall. He discovered that a third-party sync had weakened the firewall. Not unusual, except the sync came from a campaign staff device. Specifically, a tablet logged to one of her fundraising consultants. Brian Lennox. Mid-level, well-liked. Quiet. Clean file on paper.

But when Cerberus dug into the backend through their forensic net, the cracks began to show.

Mitch read the data feed twice to be sure. Lennox had personal bank transfers totaling just under fifty thousand, spread out over three months. From a holding company connected to an urban redevelopment—a shell company. On the surface, it looked like consulting payments. But the LLC tied back to a familiar name.

Paragon Equity—a known backer of Rick Wexler. One of the outfits that had tried to sue Andi into oblivion during the zoning committee vote last spring.

Mitch leaned forward and rested both forearms on the table, the corner of his mouth twitching once before it disappeared. Not a surprise. Not anymore. Just confirmation that the walls were thinner than anyone had realized.

He could feel the tug at his spine—his body calling out for movement. For violence. His instincts told him to go dark, pull Lennox out of circulation, break him down until the bastard either confessed or bled information.

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