Page 16 of Billionaire Bodyguard Summer

My lunge is punished with a lead pipe to the ribs, same side as before. I see it coming, this time, and I tense my abs to deflect the blow as best I can, despite the fire that spreads across my midsection.

It’s not enough.

There’s a loud crunch that contracts my whole body in on itself, as if it’s trying to close up shop, and it forces a dry heave out of me. I’m unable to pull in a breath, not anymore, and thedim light recedes from my good eye as I strain against the zip ties cutting into my wrists, panting my mouth dry.

I can’t get free, and I can’t keep my eye open.

I pray to God they haven’t killed her, my Mia.

I wake up to the sound of the ocean, and I imagine her next to me, her fingers playing in my hair the way she’d do when she was really tired and fighting sleep for no reason.

There’s a warm spot under my cheek. I raise my head as much as I can, and I don’t get far. It’s a small puddle of my own blood.

I force my eyes open and it steps hard on my memory, again, that only one eye opens now. I struggle to stand, but my arms are tied behind me where I lay on the concrete floor, and the middle of my body can’t move at all, anymore.

“Do it,” A voice says. Harvey.

There’s a loud and unmistakable click above me.

The door explodes open, the crash tearing through the warehouse in a loud and drawn out echo. Heavy footsteps stream through the smoke.

“Freeze! FBI!”

Now I know the whole thing is a hallucination, a dying man’s dream. Because it looks like Mia, the figure in the lead, yes.

Oh God, I’d know that face anywhere.

But she’s wearing an FBI uniform in my vision, gun drawn, fierce and fiery in her eyes, focused on the men I can’t quite see anymore.

Two shots rip through the air.

twelve

. . .

Agent Munro

“Eighteen-United-States-code-fifteen-twelve, everfuckinghear of it?”

The FBI shipped me north to visit a guy from General Counsel just so he could yell in my face for a few hours.

“Enlighten me,” I say. He talks for another hour. They’ve got me alone in an interrogation room in DC HQ, like I’m the criminal. I don’t hear most of what he says. It’s an alphabet soup with a few numbers and words thrown in. I’ve been getting yelled at for weeks now.

Harvey’s horde of lawyers discovered our connection, probably way before I shot him in the shoulder.

Retaliation, they’re calling it. Abuse of federal power, a witch hunt, fabricated evidence, tampering with the witness.

I’ve been shown dozens of pictures of myself with both Harvey and Armin by now. I’ve got my clothes on in most of them. When it comes to the former, I did what I had to do to take him down, to avenge Nicole’s death.

The latter? Well, it’s complicated.

My mind’s at the hospital back in Sunbreak Harbor, a hospital I’m forbidden to visit. A man I can’t see.

Legally.

Because that would be influencing the testimony of a person in an official proceeding.

“...you’ll be forced to resign.”