His jaw flexed.
I felt it like cold pressure at my spine—possession stripped of tenderness, discipline wrapped tight around violence. Not the steady familiar gravity Flint offered, but something harsher. Territorial. Contained. A predator forced to watch his target walk deliberately into the open.
Good.
If he was struggling, it meant he understood what this was.
Two men. Two kinds of control.
And me, standing between them, already committed to the only thing neither of them could interrupt or override.
The truth.
Flint lifted his eyes to mine in the mirror. “You ready?”
I met his gaze. Saw the unspoken offer there—not to shield me, not to stop me, but to stand exactly where I needed him.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said.
The red light would come on soon.
And when it did, I wouldn’t just be speaking for Colin.
I’d be reclaiming the narrative from everyone who thought grief would make me careless.
We went back to the script without missing a beat. “We don’t open with Colin,” Flint said, already rewriting it in his head.
“No,” I said, agreeing around the lump that kept trying to form in my throat. “We want to start with how this actually happens,” I replied.
“Then bring him in as consequence, not catalyst.” Rough sympathy underscored the words, but he didn’t project it into our conversation.
I nodded. “And I don’t canonize him.”
“No,” Flint said, holding my gaze for a long beat as I got my breathing back under control. “You humanize him.”
“Friend,” I said quietly. “Not symbol.”
He added another mark to the screen, then nodded before he glanced at me again. “Precisely.” That mattered. That he didn’t flinch from it. That he wasn’t trying to protect me from the truth of my own grief or weaponize it for effect.
I adjusted the neckline of the dress, smoothed the fabric flat over my ribs. My hands were steady. That was how I knew I was ready.
Behind us, Brewster lingered near the door. While he wasn’t pretending to not watch, he did seem to think his watching didn’t matter.
Phone pressed to his ear, voice low and clipped—he was shutting things down. I recognized the cadence. Washington. Legal. Someone attempting to apply brakes after the vehicle had already cleared the cliff.
It wasn’t going to work.
Flint didn’t look at him. Not once. That felt deliberate.
“Keep the line about fraud not being a capital crime,” Flint said.
“Agreed,” I replied. “Because someone needs to say it out loud.”
“Exactly,” Flint said. “You deliver it like it shouldn’t be controversial.”
I lifted my eyes to meet his in the mirror, holding the look a beat longer than necessary before turning back to my reflection. I didn’t correct the pallor under my eyes or the faint flush still clinging to my cheekbones. The makeup team would try to smooth it later. I wanted them to have to work around it.
Grief wasn’t something to be concealed. Not today.
