2. Sean
SEAN
Mornings at Orion start with black coffee, black uniforms, and black humor.
We don’t do bright lights or cheerful greetings. We don’t do icebreakers or inspirational wall art. We do operational reports, encrypted client logs, workstations with colored lights, and live drills in the back lot. There’s a reason we don’t take walk-ins.
“Already?” I check the clock.
“They made the appointment last night. Used the burner line. Said it had to be you, Wesley, and Huck—all three.”
The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. “All three founders?”
“They asked me not to say their name in the halls. No paper trail. No audio. No cameras.”
“A paranoid client, or someone looking to settle a score?”
Chief raises one brow. “Someone with a reason to be scared.”
That shuts me up.
I lean back in my chair, the leather creaking. The wall behind me is all matte black with a white vinyl constellation of Orion spanning across it. It’s clean. Intentional. Like everything else I built in here.
“Celebrity?” I ask.
She shrugs, but there’s a flicker in her eyes. “Could be.”
LA’s full of them. Actors, musicians, influencers, billionaires with more money than judgment. We’ve protected all kinds—some good, some unbearable. I’ve got a soft spot for the quiet ones. The ones who don’t act like they’re hiring muscle to stroke their ego.
Someone asking for that kind of anonymity is pompous as fuck. I don’t like it. But Chief says they’re legit, and her instincts are probably better than mine. Not that I’d ever tell her that. She already knows.
“Fine. Send them in.”
“They’re in the conference room,” Chief says. “Didn’t want to be seen going through reception.”
“Of course not.”
She hesitates. “You should probably hurry. They’re nervous.”
That gets my attention. “Why?”
Chief doesn’t answer. Just turns on her heel and walks away.
Wesley’s waiting by the glass door when I reach the main corridor. He’s already in uniform—black button-down rolled to the elbows, sleeves tight around his forearms, midnight-black topknot in place like he’s starring in an action movie no one has the budget to shoot.
Huck lumbers in from the far end of the hallway, silent and broad as the side of a barn. His red faux-hawk is spiked high today, bright against the severe black of his tactical shirt. He nods at me once. That’s all the greeting I get.
Together, we step into the conference room. And I forget how to breathe.
She’s standing at the window, back to us. Snug blue dress. Gold heels. Her hands are clasped in front of her, and the curve of her waist hits me like a goddamn sucker punch.
She turns, and the years fall away. Bailey Beausoleil.
Same chocolate waves. Same blue eyes. Same impossible mix of elegance and fuck-you fire. She looks like she was carved from old Hollywood and dipped in danger. “Hey, Sean.”
My name doesn’t sound right coming from her mouth. It’s been too long. None of this computes, and it takes me a moment to rasp out her name. “Bailey.”
I’m not supposed to feel like this. Not after all this time. Not when I’ve spent years building a company that keeps people like her alive. I’m the guy who plans for worst-case scenarios. Who layers backup plans on top of backup plans. I’m not the guy who gets blindsided. Ever.
But here she is. The girl who used to lie next to me on a tar rooftop in the middle of summer, whispering dreams between planes and sirens. The one who said she wanted to be a star, even when we could barely see the constellations through LA smog.
She made it happen. And now she’s back. In my office.
Bailey offers a faint smile, like she’s not sure if she’s welcome or not.
She is. God, she is.
“Thanks for seeing me, guys,” she says, eyes flicking from me to Wes, then to Huck, and back again. “I know this is…weird.”
Wes breaks first. “Dude,” he says, grinning as he rounds the table, “you disappear for a decade and show up in a dress like that, and you think it’s weird? You have no idea what you just did to Sean’s blood pressure.”
“Wesley,” I warn, voice low.
Bailey laughs. It’s real, and a little surprised, like she hasn’t laughed in a while. “Missed you, Wes.”
He pulls her into a quick hug. “Missed you, Bailey.”
Huck steps up next, towering beside her like a boulder come to life. He doesn’t say much—he never does—but he holds out a hand. Bailey takes it. His booming voice is low. “Good to see you.”
“You too, Huck.” Bailey swallows, then turns to me. “Sean?”
I nod toward a chair. “Have a seat. Tell us what’s going on.”
She walks with a practiced grace, but I catch it—that slight hesitation in her left leg. Like her heel might be hurting.
I fold my hands on the table and take a breath. “Chief said you didn’t want your name spoken out loud in the building.”
“She’s right.” Bailey straightens her spine, her voice shifting into something more formal. Actress mode. “I need discretion. Total discretion. Not just from the press—though that too—but from everyone. Even your staff.”
“That’s standard,” I say. “But you knew that, coming to us. That’s why you’re here. You know our reputation?—”
“I know you . That’s why I’m here.”
I don’t correct her. She doesn’t know who we are these days. What we’ve done. She doesn’t need to know.
“You’re aware of what it means to hire a team like us. We’ll lock this case down tighter than Fort Knox if you tell us what we’re dealing with. But why us?”
She exhales through her nose, glancing away. “You three are the last people I knew before I became…what I am. It’s been a long time, but of all the security teams I could hire, I trust you three the most…” She pauses. Her hands are folded in her lap, fingers twisting a silver ring.
I fight the urge to fill the silence. It’s hard. She’s obviously upset, and I want to ask every question that comes to mind. What’s going on? Are you okay? Who do I have to kill to keep you safe? But she’s also on the edge of a knife. If I push, she’ll run.
“It’s my ex-husband,” she says.
The temperature in the room drops. Wes’s smile fades. Huck’s jaw flexes.
I keep my voice level. “Go on.”
“He’s…he’s not just a problem. He’s a threat.” She meets my eyes, and for the first time, I see it. Not just fear. Not just exhaustion. Pure rage. Controlled. Sharpened. Buried under years of silence.
I want to hunt him for sport, and I’m not much of a hunter. But I’d happily make an exception in this case. “Go on.”
“He abused me,” she says. “Not in the way the press would recognize. Not in a way that leaves obvious evidence. Not much, anyway…” She huffs under her breath.
“To explain, I have to be specific, and I’ve run these lines in my head over and over on the drive here, but there’s no gentle way to say it?—”
“Don’t be gentle,” Wesley says. “Gentle is wasted on us.”
She nods once. “David—he used my kinks as a weapon. He ignored my safewords. He hurt me in ways I didn’t even know how to name back then.”
My hands clench under the table.
She keeps going. “I stayed longer than I should’ve because…well, because I wanted to protect my kids. And because when he was good, he was very good. Sweet. Attentive. Affectionate in front of the cameras, with the kids, at the school. But in private…”
She trails off. Takes a breath. Glances away, like she can’t meet our eyes anymore.
I don’t want to ask my question. “He’s still in the picture?”
Bailey nods. “We share custody, thanks to a judge’s decisions. I get Maeve and Eli during the week. He has every other weekend. We haven’t had any legal issues—yet—but he’s started showing up unannounced. Sending me texts. Making little comments during drop-off that make my skin crawl.”
“What kind of comments?” Huck asks, his voice darkening.
“That I shouldn’t be out at night. That he’s watching the tabloids. That changing the kids’ last names to my own was a ‘provocation.’”
Wesley curses under his breath. “Jesus.”
I glance at Huck. He’s gone still, like a storm cloud ready to rupture.
Bailey lifts her chin. “He cornered me at a charity event last night. I didn’t know he’d be there. He asked me to dance, said if I did, he’d leave me alone. I danced with him. And he threatened me in the middle of it.”
“What exactly did he say?” I ask.
“That a name change won’t keep me safe from him.”
Silence.
Bailey swallows. “I know it’s vague. He’s good at vague. That’s the whole point. He says just enough to rattle me, but never enough to bring to court. I’ve got texts that sound passive-aggressive, not violent. No judge would care.”
“You don’t need a judge,” I say flatly. “You need protection. And you came to the right place.”
Wes nods. “Damn right.”
Bailey looks at me then, really looks at me. “I trust you, Sean. That’s why I’m here.”
That should feel good, but it doesn’t. The girl I remember—the one who wanted to be a star, who sang into hairbrushes and named constellations with me—she shouldn’t have had to become someone who needs us. Someone who learned how to hide bruises and silence her own screams.
I force myself to stop imagining the horrors she’s experienced. It’s damn near impossible. I lean forward, elbows on the table. “He’s not going to touch you again. Not you. Not your kids. Not your fucking shadow.”
Bailey doesn’t blink. “Then I need it all. Whatever you offer. Home security, school escort, work travel detail—everything. I want him to know he can’t touch me.”
“You got it,” I promise.
Wes adds, “And if he so much as looks at you sideways, we’ll bury him under a restraining order so thick he’ll have to dig through it to breathe.”
Huck rumbles, “Or we’ll just bury him.” From Huck, that’s not hyperbole.
Bailey exhales. Her shoulders drop an inch and a half. For the first time since she walked in, she lets herself lean back in the chair. “I knew coming here was the right call.”