16. Huck
HUCK
Sean’s still gritting his jaw when he turns to me. “Leave him breathing.”
I raise a brow. “Seriously?”
Sean sighs. “We can’t afford a corpse tonight. Not with Friedburg here.”
I glance at David, still face down, drool streaked across the tile beneath him.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m not sending him down pretty.”
Sean doesn’t argue. Wesley’s already guiding Bailey toward the rooftop door. She’s barefoot now, her heels dangling from one hand, and there’s a glaze in her eyes that says the adrenaline’s worn off, the high has passed, and now her body just wants a dark car and eventually, a soft bed.
She doesn’t say anything as they lead her away. Just leans into Sean like she’s exhausted, like she can’t hold herself upright anymore. Wesley brushes a hand down her spine, whispering something I can’t hear.
They get their moment of Zen with her. I get mine with him.
I wait until the elevator doors close. Then I turn back to David. He’s still out cold, half-curled in the fetal position like the little shit he is. His lip’s split. But he’s breathing.
Unfortunately.
I squat beside him and pat his cheek—not gentle, not hard. Just enough to make sure he’ll look even worse in a few hours.
“Could’ve thrown you off the edge or stomped your skull in,” I mutter. “Would’ve been easy.”
He groans a half-muffled “No.”
Makes me laugh. I wonder how much of us he saw a minute ago. I pop him in the eye, just hard enough to feel that telltale crack of his cheekbone. He lets out another groan, wordless this time. Just sound coming out of an unconscious man.
“You got lucky, Davy. Sean’s a softy. Well, except when he’s railing Bailey.” I pull my phone from my pocket and fire off a quick message to the team’s secure thread: Elevator prank incoming. Cameras already spoofed. Don’t worry, I’m being gentle.
Wesley responds instantly: If he ends up pantsless, I’m buying you a steak.
Sean: Pants or not, he’d better still be breathing. Sean’s one of my best friends, but he’s a broken record when it comes to his rules.
I tuck the phone away and grab David by the lapels. He’s heavier than he looks, but I’ve carried worse. I drag him across the rooftop, prop him up in the corner of the elevator, and fish a menu I snagged from the party out of my jacket pocket.
I scrawl the note quickly. One sentence. Big letters. “Should’ve picked on someone your own size.”
No, wait. I flip it over and write, “Shouldn’t have messed with the wrong woman.”
Makes it look like Bailey did it herself—makes him look weak in front of all the Hollywood elite, because that’s what they’ll think it is. Weakness to be taken down by a woman.
They don’t know the women I know. Chief could take anyone here. Hell, she almost took me down once, and we were just sparring.
I pin the note to his lapel using his tiny gold tie bar, then I hit the button for the lobby and let the doors close with him slumped in the corner like a discarded piece of trash.
Fitting.
The last thing I see is his head lolling to the side, mouth open, suit stained with sweat and blood, and that beautiful little note fluttering in the breeze of the elevator fan.
I walk away smiling, take the service stairs down twenty flights.
The SUV is parked in the valet loop out front, blacked out, engine humming, windows tinted like a presidential motorcade.
Wesley’s in the passenger seat, tapping away on his phone.
Sean’s in the back, one arm draped around Bailey, who’s curled up across the third-row bench like a spent storm.
She’s out cold. Hair mussed. Lips parted. Cheek pressed to the seat belt. She looks relaxed. Finally.
I slide into the second row behind the driver and close the door quietly.
Sean doesn’t even look at me. “He breathing?”
I nod once. “You and your rules…”
Wesley lets out a low whistle and turns his phone toward me. “Guess who made the news already?”
I lean in. There it is. That was quick.
A grainy photo taken by someone in the hotel lobby—David Oswalt slumped against the elevator wall, suit disheveled, one eye nearly swollen shut, with the note still pinned to his chest.
SHOULDN’T HAVE MESSED WITH THE WRONG WOMAN.
The tweet’s already viral.
“Five thousand retweets in fifteen minutes,” Wesley says, grinning. “My favorite so far? ‘Who did she hire and are they taking clients?’”
Sean sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Wesley teases, “Come on, man. It’s good press.”
“It’s reckless ,” Sean mutters. “When he wakes up, he’s going to make her life hell.”
“He already was,” I say.
Sean looks at me.
I hold his stare.
“You said he threatened to throw her off the building,” I remind him. “He took her up there to scare her or worse. She doesn’t want to press charges. That ties our hands. So this?” I gesture vaguely to the phone. “This is all we’ve got.”
“It won’t stop him.”
“No,” I say. “But it knocks him off-balance. It embarrasses him. It tells him she’s not alone anymore.”
Sean exhales again, slower this time. He doesn’t argue. Because he knows I’m right.
Wesley leans back in his seat. “We’ll monitor socials, intercept anything from his PR team before it takes off. I’ve already got a bot watching Reddit threads. It’s going to play like a prank of some kind unless he opens his mouth.”
“He will,” Sean says.
“Let him,” I reply. “Let him try to explain how the woman he used to bully laid him out cold.”
That gets me a faint smirk.
Bailey stirs in the back. All three of us fall silent. Her fingers twitch. Then her breath evens out again. She’s still asleep. Still tucked safely into the dark, rolling city.
I rest my arm against the window and look out at the skyline, neon blinking against the clouds like a dare.
Let David come. I’m not scared of the next move. I want this to escalate. Let him give me a fucking excuse to ignore the rules.
The SUV’s quiet. The kind of quiet you only get in the aftermath of something violent and necessary.
Bailey doesn’t stir. She’s breathing slow, face turned toward the tinted window, one bare foot tucked beneath her thigh.
She’s beautiful like this. Not done up for a red carpet.
Not dressed to kill. Just raw. Bone-deep exhausted. But safe.
Wesley closes his phone and stretches. “Damage control’s in motion. His PR team hasn’t made a peep.”
I grunt at that. “They won’t. Not tonight. He’s too embarrassed.”
Sean glances at me in the rearview mirror. “That was the goal, wasn’t it?”
I shrug. “I don’t do paperwork. I do consequences.”
That gets a real laugh from Wesley. “That should be on your business card.”
“Only if yours says ‘cyber vigilante with dimples.’”
He winks. “Jealous?”
Sean clears his throat. “Focus.” But he’s smiling.
We ride like that for a few more blocks. Just…existing. Letting the city blur past us while Bailey sleeps and the adrenaline bleeds out of our systems.
I’m not relaxed, though. I’m never really relaxed. Wouldn’t know how. I’m always waiting for the next hit. The next threat. The next moment I have to crack my knuckles and do what polite society won’t. And I’d do it a thousand times over for her.
Truth is, I don’t care if she never chooses me the way she might choose Sean or Wes. I don’t care if she only needs me when the world gets ugly. Because if my job is to be the part of life that gets bloody, then that’s what I’ll be.
I’ll be her warrior, and she can be my princess. Anything else doesn’t count.
Sean’s voice breaks through the quiet. “He’s going to retaliate. You know that, right?”
“You mentioned that.”
“You know he doesn’t play fair.”
“No,” I agree. “But neither do we.”
Wesley glances back at me. “You’re not worried?”
“I’m not worried. I’m ready. ”
They both fall silent. We’ve drawn a line now. One David can’t step over without getting scorched. And I’m the fire.
She shifts in her sleep. Not much. Just the smallest twitch of her fingers, the softest furrow in her brow like even unconscious, she’s still fighting off shadows.
I want to kiss the crease from her forehead and take away her worries. I want to be the one who rubs her feet at the end of the day and makes her tea so she can sleep easier, knowing I’m there for her. And if she wants to, I want to make big, beautiful babies with her.
Even if she doesn’t pick me.
This woman has stood in front of cameras when she wanted to disappear. Sat across from producers who called her difficult to her face. Given press interviews while her chest was still tight from crying in a locked bathroom stall twenty minutes earlier. She’s been used, controlled, diminished.
And tonight? She took herself back. Right there on the rooftop, with her ex’s body on the floor and her breath still shaking in her lungs, she chose something different. Chose us . Chose herself . Said yes to the fire instead of the fear.
And when she said she didn’t want to press charges? That wasn’t weakness. That was strategy.
She doesn’t want to be a headline. Doesn’t want to be reduced to a sound bite. She wants to keep working, keep raising her kids, keep moving forward without having to rehash the worst parts of her life in front of strangers.
So if she says she doesn’t want court? Then we burn his pride to the ground. We gut him socially. We take his power piece by piece, quietly, so by the time he realizes how bad it’s gotten, it’s already too late.
There will be more to come. I’m not naive enough to think this will stop him forever. “I know we’re not done,” I say quietly.
Sean nods. “Not by a long shot.”
“But we’re ahead.”
“For now.”
I glance back at Bailey. Her hand curls around the edge of the seat belt like she’s holding on. “She deserves a win.”
“She is the win,” Wesley murmurs, not even looking up from his phone.
He’s not wrong.
She is. She’s the whole damn game. And whatever move David thinks he has left? He better make it fast.
Next time, I’m not stopping at a note.