Page 18

17

MITCH

T he 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.

He ran the scan through Cerberus’s image tracker. The result came back fast.

NAME: Victor Ames

KNOWN ASSOCIATION: Paragon Equity

TITLE: Director of Field Acquisitions

CURRENT EMPLOYER: Private Real Estate Holdings (major contributor to Wexler’s campaign)

PAST AFFILIATION: Blackwell Security (disbanded)

Specialty: Surveillance and asset removal

Asset removal—a nice term for making someone disappear—from a scenario, a place or this life.

Mitch stared at the screen and didn’t move for a long beat. His pulse didn’t spike. His breathing didn’t change. But something settled in his gut like a weight made of gunmetal and violence.

This wasn’t just about discrediting Andi. Wasn’t just about squeezing her out of the campaign. They’d begun trying to make her disappear before the race even began. That crash hadn’t been bad luck. It had been a rehearsal.

He clicked over to the Cerberus command channel. “Coop. I need confirmation—has Ames been sighted recently?”

“Negative,” came the reply. “Last tagged in New York. Three weeks ago. But that could be a smokescreen. The guy’s good.”

“Not good enough,” Mitch muttered. “Flag him. Track every property connected to Paragon within a 50-mile radius. I want motion detectors hot. GPS sweeps every six hours. If he so much as blinks near Andi again…”

“You want me to call it in?” Coop asked.

Mitch’s voice dropped an octave, low and lethal. “No. Not yet. I need you to get someone over here to Andi’s loft. I need to go out; I have a message to deliver.”

He shut down the feed, encrypted the files, and grabbed his jacket. The weight of his Glock at the small of his back was familiar now—like slipping into a second skin.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Nick had shown up, and Mitch had left him to watch over Andi. Wexler’s security detail ran light. Predictable. Arrogant. Two plainclothes PIs, one overpaid tech specialist, and a rotating shift of off-duty cops. Mitch didn’t need more than twenty minutes to find one of them lingering outside the Wexler Foundation’s downtown address.

He approached slowly. Didn’t draw. Didn’t posture. Just stood three feet from the man—mid-forties, heavyset, probably ex-vice squad, still wearing his badge chain under a department windbreaker—and spoke in a voice too calm for the streetlights to feel safe.

“You tell your client this for me,” Mitch said, eyes unreadable. “If she dies—he does too.”

The man blinked. Shifted his weight. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Mitch leaned in slightly. “I don’t care how many lawyers Wexler pays or how long his donor list is. If one more drop of blood is spilled with his name within six degrees of separation, I will make sure he feels every inch of it. I’ll rip his reputation out at the roots and salt the earth behind it. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll put him in the ground myself.”

Mitch stepped back.

“Make sure your boy gets the message.”

The security guy said nothing. Didn’t move. Just stood there frozen, like maybe the words hadn’t landed yet.

But Mitch knew they had.

They always did when you said them slow. Quiet. With no theatrics. The most dangerous threats were the ones you didn’t have to yell.

He adjusted his jacket, the weight of the Glock tucked neatly back into the holster at his spine, and turned without another word. There were no sirens, no witnesses. Just a chill wind trailing him down the sidewalk and the slow, certain sound of war shifting into high gear.

Because the threats weren’t shadows anymore. They had names. And now? Mitch had targets.

Across the street, just past the flickering neon of the late-night taco stand and the shadow line cast by a delivery truck, Andi stood.

She was half in profile, framed by the red-orange blur of a traffic light that had been stuck on cycle for five minutes. She wore one of his jackets—black canvas, the kind meant to take a hit—and her arms were crossed. She wasn’t hiding. Wasn’t even pretending to be invisible. She was watching.

Mitch stopped on the far corner and didn’t speak. Didn’t move closer. He didn’t need to. Her gaze was already locked on his, and whatever she saw on his face, she didn’t flinch.

He didn’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough, apparently.

“You followed me,” he said.

Andi gave a small shrug. “I waited two minutes after you left and managed to slip past Nick. Once I was outside the loft, I followed you.”

He almost smiled. She’d been able to tail him because he hadn’t been expecting one. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Fishing it out, he answered with, “She’s here with me. Don’t worry about it Nick, she can be sneaky when she tries.”

Andi grinned—of course she did—he could tell she was proud of herself; she should be. Nick was no rookie, and getting past him had taken some doing.

He inclined his head back toward Wexler’s man. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said.

“Too bad,” she replied. “I did. What did you tell him?”

“That if anything happened to you, I’d end him.”

She stepped forward, boots echoing soft against the sidewalk. Her face wasn’t angry. Not afraid. Not even surprised. But there was something else there: awareness.

She reached him, stopped barely a foot away. Tipped her head up. “You meant it.”

He didn’t lie. “Yeah. I did.”

“If I die—Wexler dies.”

“Not just Wexler. Wexler, whoever actually did the deed, and the puppet master behind all of them. That’s the deal.”

A long breath passed between them, heavy with more than just threat and consequence.

Mitch didn’t touch her. He wanted to. But he knew better than to force something into comfort when the air still crackled with the echo of violence. Andi searched his face like she was trying to find something beneath the surface—something she hadn’t let herself name before.

“I’ve seen you angry,” she said. “I’ve seen you controlled. But tonight? That was different.”

“It had to be.”

“No,” she said, softer now. “It didn’t. You chose it.”

Mitch held her gaze. “If they take you out, Andi, they win. Not just politically. They win because they silence someone who won’t be bought. And I don’t let people like that win.”

She looked down. Then up. This time, her voice cracked just a little. “You’d kill for me.”

He didn’t blink. “Yeah. I would.”

The silence stretched again—but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was raw. Honest. Andi wasn’t na?ve. She knew what that meant, and now she knew what he meant.

She stepped in, close enough that the front of his jacket brushed her chest. Her fingers closed lightly around the fabric near his collarbone. She didn’t pull him in. She didn’t need to.

“You scare me,” she said. “Not because of what you’d do to them. But because you’d do it for me. Without hesitation. That’s a big responsibility you’ve laid on my shoulders.”

Mitch exhaled slowly. “You can handle it.”

He’d heard fear before. In a hundred languages. From hostages. From targets. From soldiers on their knees. But not like this. This wasn’t fear of him. This was fear of what it meant to be seen. To be protected with no limits. To be chosen in a way that burned the playbook.

And she needed to say it. So he let her.

“I don’t want you to lose yourself to this,” she added, her voice low. “Not because of me.”

“I have lost nothing,” Mitch said. “Not yet. But if they keep coming for you, I won’t hesitate. I never will. That’s not a threat, Andi. That’s a promise.”

She nodded once. A sharp, tight movement. Then she stepped back and wiped at her face, even though he hadn’t seen a tear fall.

“You’ll brief me in the morning?” she asked, voice steadier now.

“First thing,” he said.

Andi turned to go, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “You weren’t wrong, by the way. He felt it.”

“Who?”

“The guy you warned. I saw it. I saw it hit him like a bullet he couldn’t dodge.”

Mitch nodded once. “Good. That’s the point.”

Andi looked at him for one beat longer, then disappeared into the shadowed edge of the block, her steps silent. He turned his face up to the cold and let the wind cut through the fire still burning in his veins and followed her.

They returned to the loft; Nick, having apologized excessively, had left, and Andi was asleep. By the time the Cerberus ping hit his phone, Mitch was in the chair by the window—barefoot, shirtless, a cup of cold coffee sitting untouched on the table beside him. The loft was quiet. Just the hum of the security system and the faint sound of traffic five stories below.

He'd sent her to bed. No pretense. No argument. He’d left her sleeping, curled on her side, wearing his shirt and nothing else, her breathing slow and even. Mitch hadn’t joined her. He hadn’t wanted to risk pulling her closer and waking her up when she’d finally let go.

She’d needed the rest. And he needed the edge.

He stared out the window, watched the ripple of headlights across the steel and glass of the city.

His phone buzzed again. He tapped it open, scanning the secured feed from Cerberus. Three red flags. One yellow. No delay stamp.

Nick’s voice came in low over the encrypted channel. “Langdon. We’ve got chatter about the Lincoln Square rally.”

“When?” Mitch asked.

“Thirty-two hours from now. Nothing definitive yet, but a burner tied to Wexler’s network just lit up. Message threads reference crowd exposure, venue angle, and a ‘phase two escalation.’”

Mitch’s blood chilled. “Explosive or ballistic?”

“Unknown,” Nick said. “But the phrasing’s aggressive. Too precise to be a bluff.”

Mitch stood, his spine straightening with a practiced economy. He moved to the desk, switched to the encrypted terminal, and pulled the feed local.

Another Cerberus op chimed in. Coop’s voice this time. Calm. Unshakable. “We crosschecked the device metadata. IP pings match a burner previously connected to a dummy real estate consultancy. Shell company. Owned by a Paragon subsidiary.”

“Wexler’s pipeline.”

“Confirmed,” Coop said.

Mitch didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask permission. Didn’t need to.

“We go dark,” he said, his voice flat and final. “Total blackout. Pull all schedule feeds off the grid. Wipe rally data from the internal calendar. Pull the plug on the campaign cloud.”

“Roger that,” Coop replied. “Contingency Alpha?”

“Alpha and Bravo. I want fallback routes, a decoy motorcade, and thermal drone coverage. And inform Maya quietly. I’ll take care of telling Andi.”

There was a pause—half a second—but Coop didn’t argue. “Understood. We’re on it.”

The line went dead. Mitch stood still, the air in the loft suddenly too quiet. Too fragile.

He turned toward the bedroom, toward the curve of her shoulder under the blanket.

She didn’t stir. But something in him did. This was no longer about safeguarding a public figure—they were long past that. This wasn’t even about protecting a woman he wanted. This was about defending what was his, because that’s what Andi was now. Not property. Not a job. But his in the most elemental sense—like a storm that had chosen him, carved him out, rebuilt him molecule by molecule.

Loyalty wasn’t the word for what bound them now. Neither was trust nor ownership. This was fire—the kind that left an indelible brand.

Andi had walked into the war like it was hers to win. And maybe it was. But if anyone took a shot at her now, they’d have to go through him first—and they’d bleed for the privilege.

Mitch set the phone down. Walked to the edge of the bed and sat on the mattress beside her.

She stirred, murmuring his name, before her eyes fluttered open. “What is it?” she asked, voice groggy.

“Nothing,” he lied. “Go back to sleep.”

But her hand found his. Fingers lacing through his in the dark. “Liar,” she said without rancor. She didn’t ask him again. She just held on.

And Mitch knew—he wasn’t going anywhere. But the next man who came for her would… feet first.