Page 68 of The Bodyguard

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Mitch didn’t go straight back to the loft. After dumping the data clone from Crane’s phone into Cerberus’s deep server net, he spent two hours cross-referencing every financial thread, location ping, and ghost route tied to the leak. By the time it was done, the map of betrayal was so precise it could’ve been sketched in blood.

The truth was brutal. Andi hadn’t just been targeted—she’d been packaged. Sold. Prepped like a damn product, with itinerary updates and exposure windows wrapped into premium bids. Not just surveillance. Coordination.Someone had built her campaign like a funnel for extraction—her locations, movements, public statements—all tracked, timed, and monetized through third-party buyers.

And the buyers weren’t random. Developers. Lobbyists. Real estate firms who wanted zoning easements. PAC puppets who couldn’t touch her publicly but could pay someone else to do it quietly. She wasn’t just the opponent. She was a pivotal piece in their game—a high-value, disruptive force that needed to be an asset, contained or deleted.

Mitch now had proof of the transactions, the routes, the exact windows of exposure. He had payment confirmations. Names. Dates. Intent. It was everything they needed to burn Wexler down, and it still wasn’t enough because Wexler wasn’t smart enough to build a network this precisely. He was just the face. The mouth. The conduit.

The real threat was the one behind the curtain. The one paying Wexler’s bills. The one orchestrating the hits. And until Mitch had that name, he couldn’t exhale. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t let his hand drift from his weapon or Andi’s back for more than a second.

So he drove the long way back to Andi’s loft, letting the cold bite through the open moonroof. He let the city blur past in streaks of neon and shadow until the rage inside him finally settled into focus.

By the time he entered the loft and briefed Coop, Andi was waiting.

She stood barefoot near the windows, her arms wrapped tight around her ribcage, the long hem of his black T-shirt brushing the tops of her thighs. Her hair was a mess. No makeup. No mask. Just Andi, stripped down and raw, and still somehow the most powerful thing he’d ever seen.

She turned when he stepped inside, her eyes catching his. “You found something.”

Mitch nodded once. “Yeah. We did.”

He set the duffel down, stripped off his jacket, and crossed the space to her in slow, deliberate steps. His hand brushed hers as he passed, grounding her. Himself.

“You will not like this,” he said.

She didn’t blink. “Say it anyway.”

He exhaled. “You weren’t just targeted. You were for sale.”

A beat. Just long enough for the words to sink in. Andi’s throat worked, her expression unreadable. “Explain.”

“Your routes. Your events. Security gaps. Speech drafts. Everything that passed through campaign servers got leaked to Crane. He was coordinating with Lennox and a buyer’s list pulled from Wexler’s network. PAC donors. Developers. A few foreign LLCs pretending to be local holding firms. They paid for access. Then they paid for exposure. Then they paid for someone to make you disappear.”

Her face didn’t fall. Not exactly. It just… shifted. Hardened.

“Why am I not surprised?” she whispered. “This whole damn system runs on who can be bought and who can’t. I just didn’t realize I was sitting on a shelf waiting for the highest bidder.”

“You weren’t,” Mitch said. “You were resisting. That’s what made you valuable. You wouldn’t bend. So they tried to break you.”

A long silence passed between them. Then she turned, walked to the kitchen with slow, measured steps, and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge. She didn’t drink it. Just stared out the window, like the silence might explain the unthinkable if she held still long enough.

Mitch followed, closing the gap between them. “This doesn’t end with Wexler,” he said quietly. “It ends with the man who hired him.”

Her voice was hoarse. “Do you know who?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not yet. But we will. We’ve got threads, and they lead somewhere deeper. The money’s moving through a hedge fund shell out of D.C. It’s designed to loop itself in six jurisdictions before hitting the final account. That kind of protection isn’t built overnight. It’s not political. It’s strategic. Whoever they are, they’ve been planning this for a while.”

Andi finally looked at him. “What do they want, Mitch? My resignation? My silence? My body in a morgue?”

He met her gaze, jaw locked tight. “Control. And when they couldn’t buy it—they tried to eliminate the variable.”

Her hand clenched around the bottle. “So I’m not a person. I’m a liability.”

“No,” he said, stepping closer. “You’re a threat. And someone powerful enough to bankroll a hit list wants you neutralized.It’s a compliment in a warped kind of way.”

She laughed—sharp, bitter. “Warped is right. Guess it means I must be doing something right.”

He reached out, pulled the bottle from her hand, and set it down. Then he slid his fingers under her chin and tipped her face up to his.

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