Page 22 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Tristan

Birdie ignores protocol and dashes out of the cabin.

“Brandon, guard the place and stay alert!” I command as I grab a gun and dart after my client .

She’s bent in the driveway, her hands frantically rubbing her thighs, her eyes squeezed shut.

“You can’t just run off like that,” I say softly despite the need to reprimand her. I can sense her rage from here, crashing more violently than the waves against the cove behind. “How many times do I have to explain it to you?”

“I needed some air. I…” Her index finger jabs toward the cabin multiple times. “That fucking bastard can’t do this to me.”

“He won’t.”

She straightens and snaps her eyes open.

“Were you not in the same room with me? Did you not hear his message? All this time, I’ve been banking on,” she glances at the cabin and drops her voice, “Butterfly Man taking Blake out of the picture so I can break free from my violent, disturbing marriage. Now, I can’t.

” A laugh full of wrath bursts out of her.

“Not just that. Ironically, I must protect my abusive husband who has made my life a living hell for eight years and ensure he stays alive or he’ll spread to the whole world the lies he’s spun to destroy my life. ”

“No. I won’t let him hurt you, Birdie. I’ll find him, and I’ll deal with it.”

“Like you found my stalker? Like you stopped Butterfly Man from assaulting me in my bedroom? I mean, you told me you had eyes on Blake all the time. How the fuck did he get out of your sight? How did he go to Florida to see Shane in prison when you were supposed to monitor his every move?”

A sharp pang of guilt twists in my chest. She’s right. I failed her when she needed protection most. That night in her bedroom still haunts me, knowing I was too late to stop him, knowing what could have happened if...

“You’re right about my failures, and I’ll carry that responsibility.

” But I push the guilt away. Now is not the time to fall for classic Birdie manipulation, whether conscious or not.

I’ve taken my time learning her tells. I know when she uses a person’s weaknesses against them to deflect.

I know when she’s hiding something. “But right now, you gotta tell me the truth.”

“What truth?”

The one she wouldn’t tell her lawyer. The one she’s terrified of coming out. “Why is your husband talking to your ex in prison a threat that could ruin you? What does Blake Abel really have on you, Birdie?”

She whips around, her eyes blazing. “After everything I’ve shared with you?

You of all people? How dare you?” Her voice cracks, but the anger doesn’t waver.

She stalks toward me. “I told you when Blake beat me, when Shane… When he... I trusted you and told you everything, and now you’re standing here acting like I’m some kind of liar? ”

“I’m not calling you a liar.” I level my gaze with hers. “But you didn’t tell me everything. You told me how Shane and Blake hurt you, but that’s not all there is to the story.”

She stills, the kind of stillness that sends a chill down to my bones. “Some things should stay buried, Tristan.” Then something shifts in her eyes, a flicker of raw darkness, before fury crashes back in. “You of all people know that.”

“Oh, I do. But not if they’re putting you in danger. Not if your pieces of shit husbands can use them to hurt you.” She is hiding something. A secret so destructive even recalling it is a menace. I won’t stop until I find out what it is one way or another.

She shakes her head and wraps her arms around herself, her eyes darting back to the cabin walls. “Remember, you asked for this.” Then she sighs in defeat. “Walk with me.”

I don’t leave her side as we go deeper into the woods.

The waves from the cove grow distant, replaced by the whisper of wind through bare branches.

Dead leaves crunch beneath our feet, marking our path like breadcrumbs.

Part of me wants to stop her—we’re too exposed out here, too far from backup—but her confession won’t come within those cabin walls, not where Brandon or anyone else can hear.

When it comes to her darkness, I’m the only one allowed to listen. A privilege. A curse.

She walks ahead, arms still wrapped around herself, until the cabin disappears behind the treeline. Only then does she stop. “Do you know how long a man who beats his wife serves in prison?”

As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve looked it up a million times, hoping with each search for a better answer that can put me and my mom out of our misery. An answer that never came. “One year and a thousand-dollar fine.”

“Maximum.” She scoffs. “Unless the charges change to aggravated assault. That can put him away for a whole five.” She exaggerates the way she says the number, making a humorless face.

Pain squeezes around my soul. “You said Shane smashed your bones. He should be in for aggravated battery, which is up to fifteen.”

“He should, but you know as well as I do that never happens.”

I’ve spent my life watching monsters like my father, like her husbands, walk free because the system is rigged against the victims. Even when justice comes, it’s never enough to heal what’s broken.

“If Shane wasn’t charged with aggravated battery, and he’s still in prison after eight years…” A gust of wind whips through the trees. My pulse quickens as pieces click together. “What is Shane really in for? And for how long?”

Dead leaves crunch under her feet as she retreats a step. Her eyes dart between the trees as if checking for shadows that shouldn’t be there. And I see it, the weight of something much darker than she’s ever told me, something that’s kept Shane locked away all these years.

“Birdie.” My tone softens, but the urgency remains. “What did Abel frame Shane for?”

She goes dead still, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. When she finally meets my eyes, there’s an inferno of blue I’ve never seen before. I can hear the word before she speaks it. “Murder.”

The confession hangs in the frigid air between us.

Eight years makes perfect sense now. Shane is in for murder.

He’s got a life sentence to serve. He deserves the electric chair—a lethal cocktail ending his miserable life would be an act of mercy.

But I wasn’t lucky either way. They never pushed for the death penalty.

“Whose murder, Birdie?”

“Some woman who would have been another cold case. Blake planted evidence that linked Shane to her murder. I was Shane’s alibi, but I testified we weren’t together at the time of the murder.

Shane couldn’t afford a good lawyer, and with his history of violence and biker gang affiliation, it wasn’t hard to stick. ”

“And now Shane is in for life for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“It was the only way I could live knowing he couldn’t hurt me or another woman again.”

“You asked Blake to do this for you, and he did it because he loved you that much?”

“Because it earned him a detective shield.” She scoffs again. “It didn’t hurt that he got to be the hero for the weak and broken battered wife, the one he could marry later and manipulate into being anything that satisfied him, one he could abuse without consequence.”

Something Abel said the day he tried to attack Birdie echoes in my head. Everything I do is to protect you. Who has been protecting those secrets for you all these years? Who has been running to your rescue all this time like a damn dog?

Even then he was trying to guilt her, to manipulate her into believing he was her savior, when all he did was use her to build his career.

He made himself look like a hero while planting false leads, manipulating the system he was supposed to protect, all so he could swoop in and use Birdie even more, only to become the very monster he claimed to be fighting.

Will you tell your new savior? Do you think he’s gonna stay and protect you after he finds out what a monstrous little bitch like you is capable of?

“Pelotudo! He was threatening to expose you that day at the house. All this time, why haven’t you told me?”

“Tell my bodyguard on his first day on the job that I’d asked my sick husband to falsify evidence to put a man in prison for life for a crime he didn’t commit, and I gave false testimony to make it stick?”

Maybe she couldn’t trust me enough then. Maybe Blake’s questions got to her head. Maybe she didn’t know I’d have answered yes. Yes, I’d have stayed and protected her. I’d always stay and protect her.

“Maybe not then, but you had a hundred other chances to tell me the truth, Birdie.”

“I told you, Tristan. Some secrets should stay buried. I was never going to tell you or anyone else because I’ve never thought in a million years that Blake would lose it to the point that he’d risk serious jail time just to bring me down with him.”

“He wouldn’t. An ex-cop junkie in prison… He wouldn’t survive a day without being someone’s bitch. He’s bluffing.”

“Is he?”

The doubt in her voice stirs mine. We need facts, not speculations. “Birdie, you have to be very honest with me. Does Blake have any proof that you asked him to frame Shane or that you gave false testimony?”

Years of paranoia flash across her face. “No. Not that I know of. But eight years ago, I was young and vulnerable and naive. I trusted Blake so much back then. Now that I know the kind of monster he is, how can I be so sure he didn’t record our agreement or anything like that?”

I mentally catalog what we know about Blake, about his methods. “I don’t think he did. A person so ready to expose you would have shown your lawyer a hint of the receipts he kept, if he had any. But he only mentioned the prison visit to rattle you because that’s all he has.”

She shakes her head, unconvinced. “Perhaps, but I’m not taking any chances, Tristan.”

“You’re not. If he says anything, it’ll be your word against his. You have proof he’s a drug addict. You have proof of his violence. He has nothing. His lies will crumble down on him, not on you.”

The look she gives me is pure acid. “What an optimistic scenario with a glorious happy ending! Do you live in the same world I do? Because I don’t remember seeing unicorns farting rainbows in mine.” Her voice takes a harsh turn. “Have you forgotten about Aaron?”

Aaron. The skeleton in her closet that could bring everything crashing down. “No, but everyone related to him is dead. Blake has no proof for it either.”

“It’s a sexual assault scandal, Tristan. It doesn’t need proof. Guilty or innocent, one word out and I’m done. No coming back from that.”

The blood in my veins turns to ice. How did I not think of that? How did I not see things from her perspective?

“Now imagine a man who is spending the rest of his life in prison and another who is penniless, who suspects his days are numbered. Imagine these two coming together with this knowledge, with this power…” She paces between the trees, twigs breaking under her feet.

She’s terrified. And now I understand why.

“Blake and Shane are two men who, in their sick minds, think you ruined their lives. They’re angry, and they want revenge. But above all, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“Exactly. Shane would say anything, do anything, to get out of prison. Blake would do the same to save his life and take my money. What if Blake promised to get Shane out of prison if he lied for him?”

“Lied about what?”

She whirls to face me, eyes blazing with a desperation I’ve never seen before. “Everything. Aaron, the beating, the testimony. There’s a story in everything, Tristan, and it can be told in so many ways, where heroes and villains are one and the same.”

My pulse hammers against my throat. How far can those two scumbags twist the truth to destroy Birdie?

She moves again, faster now. “Here’s one where I’m the unredeemable villain.

Aaron is innocent, and I’m the predator.

Shane, my loving husband, finds out. He loses his mind and beats the crap out of me.

It’s the worst thing he’s ever done, and he can’t be sorry enough, but put yourself in his position.

The woman he loves so much not only does she cheat on him, but with her student whom she rapes. ”

Jesus Christ. My stomach turns as she wields their twisted version of events.

“But my monstrosities don’t stop there. Afraid Shane will tell on me or kill me, I report him for domestic violence. The one cop that empathizes with my case and tries to help me, I seduce. Then I ask him to abuse his power to put Shane away for life because I’m too afraid.”

I want to stop her, to shelter her in my arms and tell her none of this will happen, tell her that everything is gonna be okay. But I can’t. Because she’s right. This is exactly the kind of story they’d tell.

“Blake thinks he’s doing the right thing helping me get rid of the monster.

But then, he realizes it’s a mistake. His guilt is unbearable.

It leads him to substance abuse. He visits the man he’s wronged to apologize.

There, Shane tells him about Aaron, the parts Blake doesn’t know.

Blake is devastated. He wishes he knew the truth about the woman he’s lost everything for.

Now, it’s too late. All he can do is come clean and free an innocent man. ”

“Holy fuck.”

Her feet halt, and the bitterness on her face spreads to mine. “Do you still think I’m safe from Blake, Tristan?”