Chapter 4 #2
Jake’s jaw worked. “Bubba, really? You think sitting on your hands will do anything? She’s trying to ruin us. She’s trying to make us look like monsters.”
“She already thinks that we are,” I said. “You think burning her house down isn’t going to make us monsters? You think that’s not going to be the story? You think a baseball bat and a bonfire don’t come with cameras and court dates and detectives and prison talk?”
“So what—lawyer up?” Jake barked a laugh that was half desperation. “Let her walk all over us? Let her picnic on our ashes?”
“Not picnic,” I said. “Contain. Defend. Control the narrative. Fight without playing her at her own level.”
Archie’s eyes narrowed at the phrase control the narrative, probably because he loved language like that. It was battlefield geometry to him. He rubbed his thumb across the edge of the folder as if mapping the next move.
Jake’s grip on the bat loosened a fraction. “Control the narrative? What does that mean, Bubba? Spin? Leak something? We’ve got the stuff—”
“No.” I stood then, in spite of the sweat, in spite of the heat.
I squared up and put my hand on Jake’s forearm, a quiet, physical plea.
“Not that. Not revenge porn, not arson. Not anything that ends with us in handcuffs or at the bottom of a headline that won’t let us breathe.
We do that and Sharon wins forever because she’ll have everyone hating us for it. ”
“So we just sit?” Jake pulled back a little, breathing hard. He hated the logic as much as he hated me for delivering it. “Let her blackmail us?”
“We don’t sit,” I said. “We do what doesn’t bury us. We call lawyers. We hire someone to scrub what we can. We control the leaks—release something that frames this the way we need it framed without stooping to her level. We play it smarter, not meaner.”
Archie’s expression didn’t soften, but it shifted—measured now, like an officer recalculating odds. “You think papering over this will work?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I’d rather fight a dozen lawsuits than torch a house and pray we’re faster than the cameras.” It wasn’t totally a joke, but absolutely not serious either. No matter how pissed they were.
Jake tightened his jaw, the bat a silent, dangerous thing at his side. He looked at Archie like he was waiting for permission, for the old secret handshake that turned men into actors in a plan they’d sworn not to question.
Chin lifted, Archie didn’t say yes or no, immediately. So, I reached for one nugget that burned in the back of my brain since Sharon dropped this bomb.
“Whatever we do, we need to make sure that we can still look Frankie in the eye. That folder—burning her house down—revenge of any kind? That’s not just going to shut Sharon up. It’ll alienate Frankie, and she’s already fed up with us.” Not that I could blame her.
Mouth tightening, Archie’s whole expression turned to stone. For a second I thought he’d give Jake the nod, that we’d all go marching into something that would take us down the same as her. Then he blew out a long breath.
“We do it your way—for now,” he said finally, and the words fell like a truce.
“We buy representation. We contain. But if she escalates, if she crosses a line, we respond. Not with arson.” The last he said with a hard look at Jake.
Yeah, our resident hot head needed to forget that whole idea and forget it now.
“We’ll respond with something that ends the game for her without ending us. ”
Jake watched him, then looked at me, half disbelief, half relief. The bat hung there, useless for a heartbeat.
“You sure?” Jake asked, voice smaller.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m sure I don’t want us to be the ones who fan the flames.”
With a huff, Jake let the bat drop, just enough to show he hadn’t surrendered his fury—only his immediate action. He shoved a hand through his hair and glared at the folder, at the neat scrap of Sharon’s handwriting I could still see in my mind.
Archie opened the folder again, carefully this time. “I’m going to make the call,” he said. “We start with counsel. We plan. We move fast.”
“Should we wait for Coop?” The heat stung my head. Somewhere in the distance a lawn sprinkler kicked on, the tiny percussion of water on a hot stone.
“He hasn’t bothered to answer any of us,” Archie said, his phone already out and pressed to his ear. “We’re all in favor of legal recourse?”
I nodded once, and Jake followed suit but slower.
“Then we outnumber him three to one, no matter what he wants to do.”
As Archie waited for his call to be answered, I studied Jake and saw in him every terrible thing this could become if we let hatred lead.
“This is Archie Standish,” Archie said and I transferred my attention back to him. I could see the map of an attack already sketched in his brain. Then I looked at the folder and felt the gravity of what we were standing on—too many crossroads and only one of them ending without ashes.
“You think Frankie will ever talk to us again after this?” Jake asked in a quiet voice, misery replacing his anger as Archie continued to brief his attorney. I didn’t answer Jake because I didn’t have one.
Right now, if I were Frankie? I’d probably cut us all off and run in the other direction.