Page 101 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
Not speeds—slows. The old reflex kicks in like a switch. I let gravity take my weight into the wall, absorb the tremor in my legs, count a long four in, hold, four out. The world narrows to the shape of a black muzzle and the faint tremble of fabric where his sleeve lifts with his breath.
The barrel is pointed at Bailey.
I don’t move. I don’t dare. If I break cover, if I crash through the window or kick in the door, David’s finger might twitch. A twitch is all it takes to end her.
So I hold.
Bailey stands in the middle of it, rigid, face pale but chin high, hands clenched hard enough to blanch her knuckles. She looks like something cut from marble and heated from the inside.
Friedburg stumbles back, cane clattering. Shock scrapes his features clean of charm. An old man suddenly very small in his own house. His mouth works but he doesn’t speak.
David is a statue, locked from jaw to hip. He’s trying to look calm, but I see the live wires under his skin, the vindictive heat inside his eyes. The gun in his hand doesn’t look separate from him. It looks like the truest thing he’s ever held.
Bailey stands tall, brave. But brave won’t stop a bullet.
Movement ghosts along the far windows. At first I chalk it up to flames playing tricks, but then I catch the profiles. Broad shoulders. Precise feet. No wasted motion.
Huck. Wesley.
David’s trigger finger rides the curve like he’s never done more than pose with a prop. Pad on the metal, not the crease. I watch that finger like it’s the only thing in the world.
I measure my options and then discard them one at a time. Door is loud. Glass is louder. Any crash starts him. Startle equals squeeze. Squeeze equals Bailey on the floor with me a second too late to matter.
So I wait, and I hate it.
Bailey takes a breath you can’t see unless you know her. A tiny lift under her collarbone. She doesn’t know we’re here. She thinks she’s alone. And she still refuses to cower.
God, I love her.
David licks his lips. “You never appreciated me, Bailey. Not once. I gave you everything. And what did you give me back? Complaints. Whining. Always acting like you were owed more than what you got. You were the worst submissive I’ve ever had. Always testing. Always pulling away. Always crying your safewords when things got a little messy.”
The word “safewords” lands like a bruise. A deliberate swing. He’s dragging consent language into a place it doesn’t belong, trying to frame cruelty as kink and her survival as performance. My stomach turns.
David takes a step, the muzzle coming with him. “Do you know how humiliating it is? To have a wife who can’t handle what’s expected of her? Who plays the victim when she’s the problem? I carried you. I gave you a home, a name, a career. You owe me.”
He glances sideways to pull Friedburg in. “You know me. You’ve known me for years. You’ve seen what I’ve built. Is this what I get? After everything I’ve done for her? For you?”
Friedburg swallows, voice papery. “David…a gun?—”
“I wouldn’t need a gun,” David snaps without looking away from Bailey, “if she told the truth for once.”
Bailey’s chin angles up. “The only thing I owe you is the truth.”
David’s smile is a small, cruel thing. “Truth? You don’t know what that word means.”
She takes a single step. My chest tightens. The gun tracks her like a needle finding center. But she doesn’t break. “The truth is, the only reason you ever got mad at me was because you were terrible at everything you do.”
The air goes thin. Even the fire quiets.
She doesn’t stop. “You were a lousy husband, a worse partner, and an even worse businessman. The only thing you’ve ever had going for you is a family name attached to a fortune you didn’t earn.”
I want to get my hand over her mouth and drag the last part back down her throat before it comes out. Not because it’s wrong. Because it’s a lit match.
“And do you want the real truth, David?”
As much as I admire the tenacity, now is not the time.
She leans forward. “You never once made me come.”
