Page 102 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
Silence falls like a dropped curtain.
For a beat, no one breathes.
Then David’s face fractures. Not much. Just enough to show what’s underneath. His mouth twitches, his eyes flash something animal and male and stupid. The hand on the gun jerks a half inch before he clamps down harder. His knuckles go the color of old bone.
“Careful,” I whisper to the glass, to her, to anyone who’ll listen in my head. Pride swells hot in my chest, and fear spikes colder and sharper.
David’s stance is trash. He’s got his weight stacked wrong and his elbows locked, which means recoil will throw him off if he fires. But at six feet? He can still land the shot.
Friedburg tries to step forward, an old reflex toward mediation. He’s about to say something performative—Let’s all calm down—and I want to reach through the glass and choke it back into him. This is not his stage. He made the stage possible, yes. But he is not in this play anymore.
“Stay back,” David snaps, flicking the muzzle at him without looking. “This is between husband and wife.”
The wordhusbandtears something in me I thought scar tissue had fixed. I taste dirt and cordite and a thousand bad rooms. I see a woman in another country behind another pane of glass. Different decade, same posture. Same barrel.
Bailey doesn’t flinch. “You gave me bruises,” she says, and for a beat her voice shakes, a hairline crack you’d miss if you didn’t know where to look. “And you gave my daughter the kind of memory that wakes her up at night. My son…he’s in pain. Not because of his arm. Because he knows who you are. You don’t get to call that love.”
Friedburg’s eyes slice to David. You can see the math finally doing itself in his head, ugly numbers resolving to an answer he doesn’t want. “David…she’s saying things I cannot ignore.”
“You’ll ignore them because I paid you,” David shoots back, too fast, too loud, the polish flaking. “Because everything I’ve done has been for my family. For her. For this industry. She’s rewriting history because she likes the attention she gets when she cries.”
“Stop calling me a liar,” Bailey says. “I’m done living in your version of the world.”
I have a list of things I will do to this man the second the barrel points anywhere else. It’s a long list and most of it will leave marks.
Wesley shifts a millimeter to open his hips. He’s making himself a hinge, a pivot, so if I go, he can go on an echo and we don’t crash into each other. Huck loosens his hands. It looks like nerves. It isn’t. It’s to make sure he doesn’t break the bones he’s going to catch.
“Here’s your problem, David,” Bailey says quietly. “You built your whole life on people not telling the truth to your face. Tonight isn’t going to be like those other nights. Tonight, you will not win. Do what you want. Shoot me. Be done with it. You’ll never get away with any of it. Greg’s gate logs everyone who comes here. His staff know you’re here too. You lost everything the moment you walked in that door with a gun in your pocket.” She levels her shoulders, glaring dead into his eyes. “You needed a gun to scare a woman and an old man. You’re pathetic. You’ve always been pathetic. That’s why you hit your wife. That’s why you broke my son’s arm. Because you’re weak, and you know it.”
I feel the line hit his bones.
His jaw quivers. The gun dips a fraction, then whips back—panic glued onto rage. He draws breath like he’s going to spit a word he can’t take back. His hand twitches. “You ungrateful?—”
35
WESLEY
“—bitch.”
“See? Pathetic,” Bailey taunts him. “You can’t even come up with a new insult.”
I swipe through menus on my phone faster than most people can blink. Friedburg is old money, old ego—but his staff keeps the toys current. Smart locks. Smart lighting. Central control hub with just enough encryption to keep out curious neighbors but not me. I’ve been ghosting through back doors since we hit the grounds. Now I slip into the core like a knife.
One command. One tap. The house goes black.
The sudden silence of power dying is almost louder than the hum that preceded it. Windows cut dark. Chandeliers blink out. The fire in the lounge throws the only light, an orange pulse against stucco walls.
I shove my night vision down over my eyes. The world bleeds green and sharp. The house that looked warm and golden is now a skeleton in shades of emerald. We move.
David’s voice cracks out, sharp, furious. “What the hell?—”
He doesn’t finish. Huck barrels in.
The big man moves like a storm, straight across the lounge, hands out. He doesn’t even look at David. He goes for Bailey, scooping her like she’s nothing but weight he can bear. She gasps but doesn’t fight him. He turns his body, putting himself between her and the muzzle.
A shot rings out.
The gunshot is white lightning in my goggles. The sound deafens. Huck jerks, stumbles, but still carries her behind him, still shields her. Blood sprays across the rug, dark in NV, hot in the air.
