Page 72 of The Bodyguard

She didn’t pull away. Just laid her head against his chest. “Not because I don’t trust you,” she whispered. “But because I do. Because there’s a version of this where I lose you. And that terrifies me more than anything.”

He pulled her tighter, his voice low against her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.

They lay like that for a long time—enveloped in the silence, the aftermath, and everything left unsaid.

But she felt it now. This wasn’t about fear. Or sex. Or power. It was aboutbelonging—the kind that didn’t come with chains, only choices.

17

MITCH

The loft was quiet. Not the calm kind—this silence felt like the held breath before a breach. The kind of quiet that came after sweat-soaked sheets and whispered truths. The kind that lingered when the fire burned low, but the heat hadn’t left.

Mitch sat at the edge of the couch, half-dressed, a glass of water untouched on the coffee table beside his sidearm. The lights were off, save for the soft glow of the monitor in front of him and the soft trace of moonlight from the windows.

Andi was asleep in the bedroom. It had been difficult to leave her there, but he knew she needed rest and wouldn’t get it if he had remained by her side. His need for her was growing exponentially, and right now, he needed to focus on keeping her safe. He’d risen from the bed and stepped back before he could talk himself into staying. Not because he didn’t want to but because he had work to do—work had to come first when threats still surrounded her.

The encrypted drive Coop had delivered earlier sat open now, its decrypted contents sprawling across two screens—lines of emails, flagged meeting logs, a full calendar dump from Wexler’s campaign server Cerberus had hacked in under six hours. It had taken Mitch another two to cross-reference the timestamps against Andi’s schedule, her press ambush, and—most tellingly—the leak surrounding her arrest.

At 1:17 a.m., the last puzzle piece fell into place.

“Coop,” Mitch said, pressing a finger to the comm unit in his ear.

“Yeah.”

“You were right. We’ve got him.”

He highlighted the email chain and dropped it into the shared Cerberus feed. A series of digital breadcrumbs lit up on the screen.

Wexler had known about the raid and Andi’s arrest before it happened. Not just known—he’d orchestrated the whole thing, including the press presence outside the precinct. Emails showed a flurry of activity from his PAC’s communications director the night before Andi was arrested. Subject lines read like a checklist of sabotage:

DONATO ARREST: FINAL HEADS-UP

STRINGERS CONFIRMED

CAMERA CREW IN PLACE

The time stamp? Exactly thirty-six minutes after a sealed warrant had been issued for a zoning corruption inquiry that Andi had already proven clean on.

Wexler wasn’t just playing dirty politics, he’d laid the trap.

Mitch leaned forward, knuckles braced on the desk. His jaw flexed once, hard enough to ache.

“This wasn’t a leak,” he said into the mic. “It was a setup. Wexler had internal access to the warrant and deployed media before the city even confirmed the arrest. This wasn’t opportunistic. It was engineered.”

Coop’s voice came back clipped. “Same MO as the gala shooter. Orchestrated optics. Not meant to kill—meant to scare.”

“Or control.” Mitch’s eyes narrowed. “Either way, it means the donor network’s more involved than we thought. Wexler’s just the front.”

Mitch’s eyes flicked to the second monitor—Cerberus’s newly restored loop from a traffic cam positioned across from Andi’s building. The footage had been flagged automatically by facial recognition two hours earlier. It wasn’t perfect—grainy, low-res—but the timestamp stopped him cold.

Exactly seven nights before the crash.

1:44 a.m.—a figure lingered across the street from her loft, half in shadow, pacing slow and deliberate near a parked black SUV. No phone. No smoke. No reason to be there at that hour.

He stepped forward once. Turned slightly toward the camera. And that’s when Mitch saw it: the profile, the jaw, and the small identifying scar on the side of the neck.

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