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ANDI

T he following day they headed to the campaign office—Mitch ensuring there was no one there that shouldn’t be. Andi waited until Mitch turned his back. Thirty seconds. That was all she needed.

Maya had just stepped into the supply alcove at the edge of the campaign office, pulling her phone out like she needed a breather. Andi didn’t blame her. The atmosphere had been thick all morning. Half the staff tiptoed around like they were afraid to breathe too loud, and the other half looked like they expected Mitch to jump out from behind a filing cabinet and start waterboarding interns.

Which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely beyond the realm of possibilities. Andi cut across the room under the guise of grabbing her notepad, brushing past the door to the alcove. She slipped in, quiet and fast.

Maya looked up, brows raised. “Trouble?”

Andi kept her voice low. “You need to check access logs again. Every sign-in. Every open file. Look for off-hour entry to the comms folder—campaign routes, talking points, anything we’ve sent out in the last week.”

Maya frowned. “You think it’s one of ours?”

“I think someone got inside without tripping a single alarm. That takes intel. Internal intel. Just… don’t run it through the mainframe.”

“Andi…”

“I need you to do this quietly.”

Maya hesitated, then gave a sharp nod. “I’ll start pulling names.”

Andi turned to go, and found herself face-to-face with Mitch’s chest. He was standing there. Silent. Blocking the doorway, arms crossed, eyes unreadable.

Andi felt that stare as her stomach dropped.

“Maya,” Mitch said evenly, not taking his eyes off Andi, “give us the room.”

Maya bolted.

Andi brushed past him and stepped into the hall like nothing had happened. “We’re in the middle of a walkthrough…”

“No. We’re done here.” His voice was low. Controlled. But she recognized the steel in it. He wasn’t making a suggestion. He was issuing a command.

She clenched her jaw. “I’m not finished.”

“You are now.”

They didn’t speak on the walk to the SUV. The silence stretched so tight it made her teeth hurt. When he opened the passenger door, she paused, looking him square in the eye.

“You’re pissed.”

“I’m furious,” he said calmly.

She climbed in. As soon as he rounded the front of the SUV, closed the doors and the vehicle pulled away from the curb, the explosion came.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Mitch growled, turning toward her in the seat. “You staged a covert meeting with your chief of staff inside a building I’ve already flagged for internal compromise.”

“I staged nothing. I had a conversation.”

He scoffed. “You waited until my back was turned, hid behind a corner wall, and whispered instructions as if you were passing classified intelligence. That was deliberate concealment.”

“Because you won’t let me breathe unless you’re watching it happen.”

“I’m watching because someone is trying to put a bullet through your skull, Andi.”

Her temper flared, sharp and fast. “No one has taken a shot at me…”

“Yet.”

Andi sighed. “So now I don’t get to talk to my own team?”

“Not when your team might include the leak.”

“I know these people.”

“You think you do,” he snapped, “but someone among them has eyes on your bedroom, your balcony, and your private calendar. You know nothing anymore.”

“You think that justifies total control over my life?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “I think when someone’s marked you as a target and proven they have real-time access to your locations, your team, your fucking bedroom window, control stops being optional.”

She looked away, arms folded tight across her chest.

“You think I enjoy this?” she asked.

Mitch didn’t answer.

She turned back. “You think I enjoy being followed, managed, caged in my own home, treated like a glass doll who has to ask permission to move?”

“No,” he said. “I think you’re terrified to admit how much easier it is when you’re not the one in charge.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not true.”

“You didn’t flinch when I took over logistics. You didn’t push back when I pulled you from the Alder Club. You obeyed in that alley like it was instinct.”

“That wasn’t obedience. That was survival.”

“And this isn’t?” he shot back. “You’re trying to carve out loopholes in a situation where loopholes will get you killed.” His voice dropped lower. Controlled fury. “You’re smart, Andi. But you’re not trained for this. Stop pretending you know how to navigate threats you can’t even see.”

“And what—you’re the only one allowed to know?” she snapped. “You decide where I go, who I see, what I say to my staff? You want me silent and compliant?”

“I want you alive.”

She pressed a hand to her forehead, biting back a scream. “You think this is easy for me? Mitch, I’ve fought for every inch of credibility I’ve got. Every donor, every speech, every damn headline. I have spent my entire life clawing my way out of the stereotype. If I show weakness…”

“You think trusting someone is weak?”

She faltered. “I think giving up control is dangerous.”

“No,” Mitch said. “Control is what you use to survive. But trust? That’s what keeps you sane.”

Andi swallowed hard, throat tight. Her voice dropped. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“Yes, you do,” he said quietly. “You just don’t want to admit that you already have.”

Their eyes met. He wasn’t gloating. He wasn’t angry anymore. He was right, and that terrified her more than anything else.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the ride.

Back at the loft, she rode up in the elevator with him in silence and went straight to the master bathroom. She didn’t slam the door. She didn’t need to… the lock clicked softly into place.

She turned on the shower and leaned back against the wall, staring at her reflection in the vanity mirror. Her skin looked pale. Her eyes were too wide. Her posture was too straight. She looked like someone clinging to the edge of a cliff with nothing left but pride.

The water steamed the mirror, obscuring the worst of it. She stripped out of her clothes slowly, letting each layer fall to the tile floor. She stepped under the spray and tilted her head back until the water flooded her ears and shut the world out.

She didn’t cry, but she almost did.

This wasn’t about politics anymore. It hadn’t been for a while. It was about survival. And trust. And how much of herself she could give up without losing everything she’d built.

When she finally emerged, hair wet, robe tied tight around her waist, she opened the bathroom door and froze.

Mitch was there. Seated on the floor outside the door, back against the wall, one leg stretched out, the other bent. In his hands was a white mug—her favorite one—the ceramic warm from the tea inside.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t speak. He just held the mug up for her. Andi reached for it, her fingers brushing his.

The warmth of the mug seeped into her palm like permission. Or forgiveness. Or maybe just a reminder that not every choice had to be hers alone.

She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to, because he didn’t need her words—just her trust. And, maybe, eventually, her surrender.

* * *

Folding chairs filled the roundtable from edge to edge, and people spilled out of the conference room at the South Side Community Development Initiative. Local organizers, housing advocates, small business owners with weathered hands and furrowed brows. Every single one of them had a stake in what she was proposing. Every single one deserved answers.

And Andi gave them exactly that.

She stood at the front of the room in an unstructured burgundy jacket, silk tank top and black slacks, a sharp contrast to the fraying jeans and rolled-up sleeves around her. But she didn’t posture. She didn’t preach. She spoke like she always had—clear, steady, and with the kind of conviction you couldn’t fake. Her campaign plan was bold. Her tax reform outline was even bolder. But this crowd? Promises did not dazzle them.

“Yes, I’m aware my housing proposal will step on a few high-dollar developer toes,” she said. “And that’s exactly why I wrote it the way I did. No more sweetheart deals that push families out of the neighborhoods they built.”

Applause rippled through the room, but Andi barely acknowledged it. She stayed focused on the woman in the front row, who hadn’t looked away once. A retired schoolteacher. South Side, born and bred. The rising cost of housing had forced the woman’s granddaughter out of her apartment last month.

“I’m not here to maintain power structures that were designed to keep us compliant. I’m here to change them,” Andi said, voice calm but cutting. “If that makes the suits downtown uncomfortable, good. Maybe they’ll finally start listening.”

Another wave of applause, louder this time. She kept her posture relaxed, her expression steady. She answered every follow-up question without hesitation, redirected interruptions with grace, and pushed back when one of the business reps tried to reframe her language into something more palatable.

This wasn’t her first fight; it wouldn’t be her last.

And yet... she felt it. Even standing tall in front of this room, fire in her voice, her body felt like it was running on fumes. The hours were catching up with her. The threats. The constant presence of danger. And then there was Mitch—silent, ever-present Mitch—positioned like a dark pillar near the rear exit, arms folded, gaze fixed not on the crowd but on every door, every shadow, every shifting movement around her.

He didn’t watch her with admiration or pride. He watched her like she was a target.

Andi glanced at him once. Just once. Long enough to catch the way his jaw flexed when a man in the back leaned forward a little too far. Long enough to register the brief, cold assessment in his eyes before he dismissed the man and resumed scanning the room.

She swallowed and turned back to the group.

The meeting wrapped thirty minutes later. The applause at the end was genuine. People lingered, a few stepping forward to shake her hand, share a story, ask about her platform. She gave them everything she had left—smiles, nods, promises. And then, when Maya gave the signal, she stepped out the side door and into the waiting SUV.

Mitch was already there, holding the passenger door open without a word. She didn’t meet his eyes when she climbed in and he closed it behind her.

They rode in silence.

Her phone buzzed on her lap with new messages—donors, staff updates, a fresh article that had already picked up her quote about making “the suits uncomfortable.” She should have felt a spark of pride. It was the kind of line that played well in headlines.

Instead, she just felt tired. By the time they got back to the loft, the sky was dusky, the city humming below them like it didn’t care who lived or died in the towers above.

Andi kicked off her heels the second the door shut behind them. Her feet ached, but not as much as the knot at the base of her skull. The kind that came from too much smiling, too much talking, too much pretending to be fine when she was anything but.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. Mitch locked the door, disarmed and reset the alarm, then walked the perimeter with quiet efficiency. It should have annoyed her—the way he checked every corner, like she might be hiding a sniper in her laundry hamper—but it didn’t. Not anymore.

She crossed to the kitchen, opened a cabinet out of habit, then shut it again. Her stomach twisted at the thought of food. What she needed wasn’t something she could find on a shelf.

“Speech went well,” Mitch said from behind her, voice low, steady. Observational.

Andi leaned her elbows on the counter. “Yeah. It usually does when I fake my way through it.”

“You faked nothing. You led.”

“Sure,” she muttered. “Led a room full of donors who care more about where I’m polling than whether I make it to the next debate alive.”

“They’d care if they knew. They don’t. We’ve kept the actual threats and the one attempt off the front page.”

She let out a quiet laugh. The first real one in hours. “You’re not funny, Langdon.”

“Didn’t say I was.”

A silence settled between them. Comfortable, if a little taut. She heard him pour water into the kettle, the soft click of the burner. Of course, he knew where she kept it. Of course, he knew her tea preferences. He’d probably logged it on some encrypted Cerberus profile with a list of her stress tells and how often she blinked when lying.

She turned and leaned her hip against the island. “Were you watching me the whole time today?”

His eyes met hers across the loft. “Yep.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Only when you try to give me the slip.”

She had the good grace to wince. “I wasn’t trying to slip you. I was trying to breathe.”

He didn’t blink. “Next time, breathe in my line of sight.”

There was no anger behind the words. Just command. Solid and simple, like a wall she couldn’t move—and maybe didn’t want to.

“You ever tire of being right?” she asked.

“Nope.”

Andi’s lips twitched, but the expression didn’t last. Her gaze dropped to the floor, then drifted toward the windows. The night pressed in behind the glass, thick and heavy. Somewhere in the dark, someone knew where she lived. What she looked like asleep. Someone had stood close enough to take pictures and walk away without making a sound.

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her chest, trying to dislodge the dread that had taken root there. It wouldn’t move.

“I can’t do this forever,” she said softly.

“No one’s asking you to.”

“I mean this.” She gestured vaguely—to the loft, to him, to the silence between them full of things she didn’t know how to say. “The hiding. The second-guessing. The fact that every time I speak, I wonder if it’s the last thing I’ll ever say.”

Mitch didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. His stillness said everything. She hated that it calmed her.

She moved away from the counter and walked barefoot across the living room, tugging her jacket off as she went. Her tank top was sticking to her back from nerves, or stress, or just the weight of being her.

“You’re unraveling,” she said aloud before she could stop herself.

Mitch tilted his head. “You or me?”

“Me.”

She reached the doorway to the bathroom and stopped, hand on the frame.

“I need another shower.”

His voice followed her. “Leave the door unlocked.”

It wasn’t a question; she didn’t argue.

Andi stepped inside, twisted the faucet, and let the water run while she peeled off the rest of her clothes. The mirror fogged. Her reflection vanished. She liked it better that way.

Inside the shower, she stood under the water until it went hot enough to sting. The ache in her shoulders didn't ease. Her knees felt hollow. Her chest, too. Like everything inside her was fraying—starting at the edges and working its way in.

She didn’t cry, but God, she wanted to.

The moment passed, but just barely. When she stepped out, she dried off in silence, wrapped herself in the robe, and rubbed her hands over her arms as if that might warm the places the steam couldn’t reach.

She opened the bathroom door and stopped. There he was again, a mug of hot tea in hand. He held it out without a word. She stared at him for a moment. Took it with both hands. Chamomile. Her favorite.

Her throat tightened again, but she didn’t let the tears come. She just stood there, robe tied too tight around her waist, the man who’d invaded her life now somehow anchoring it, and she realized he didn’t just protect her body. He protected the space around her pain.

No judgment. No questions. Just presence.

“Thanks,” she said softly, voice thick.

He gave a small nod. “You don’t have to hold it together all the time,” he said, not looking at her.

“I do.”

“You really don’t.”

She sipped the tea and closed her eyes for a second. “You always this stubborn?”

“Only when it counts.”

She opened her eyes. “This counts?”

His eyes finally met hers.

“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

Andi didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just held the tea in her hands like it was the only thing keeping her upright. And Mitch… Mitch walked away, his boots silent against the hardwood, giving her space.

But the warmth of him stayed behind, and that scared her more than anything else. Because it wasn’t just the comfort she craved now. It was him—his voice in her brain, his hands on her skin, his rules pressed into her bones like protection and promise.

And the worst part? She was wondering how much of herself she’d give up just to keep him close.