I let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, but you don’t set yourself on fire in the process. That’s not strategy. That’s a goddamn death wish.”
Archie leaned forward now, both elbows on the table. “Then what? What do you suggest? We just take it? Let her bleed us out drip by drip?”
I didn’t answer. Because I didn’t know.
But I knew what Iwouldn’tdo.
“I’m not using this,” I said quietly, pushing the folder back toward him. “Not like this. Notherlike this.”
“She's not the same girl you started dating after that dumb fundraiser, Bubba.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s worse. But that doesn’t mean we have to be.”
The silence that settled between us was thick and hot and full of everything neither of us could say out loud. Like how much we’d all wanted her. Needed her. Feared her. And now hated her—because she had the nerve to not just walk away, but to pull the pin on her way out.
Archie stared at the folder a long time before finally pulling it back toward him and closing it.
“What if you aren’t right?” he asked quietly. “Because I think you’re dreaming.”
“Right or wrong, I can’t make decisions for her and what she’ll do—but I can decide what I am willing to do.” A little shrug. I really didn’t want to have this argument with him.
Archie was decisive, sharp, and dangerous with how he could wield his intelligence. That he already had a plan and that it was mutually assured destruction didn’t surprise me. The worst part about it, he was right. This would probably shut her up.
But this was a step too far. If we did this, we couldn’t walk it back.
From the gravel path came the sound of heavy steps and then Jake cutting around the side of the house, eyes red underneath the brim of his cap. He looked like a man who’d been sleeping with one eye open for weeks and living his waking time on the edge. In his right hand he slung a baseball bat over his shoulder, the leather grip slick with sweat.
“Jesus,” Archie said under his breath.
Jake didn’t bother to slow as he reached us. He planted both feet, stared down at the folder on the table like it was a detonator, then looked from me to Archie and back again. There was an animal tilt to him, like someone who had run out of options and found anger the only currency left.
“What are we going to do?” he barked. His voice was flat, coiled tight. “You think that’s enough? You think printing pictures is enough? We should go over there. Burn the place. Make sure she never?—”
He lifted the bat and gave it an idle spin. The motion was casual, practiced. The bat whispered through the air.
I felt something in me go cold and hard, a quick, ugly stone of memory: my father’s face when he said “Fix it. Quietly.” The weight of that order sat on my chest like a live coal. My mouth tasted of metal.
Archie started to answer, the words already forming—lean, precise, inciting—but I cut him off before he could hand Jake the green light.
“No,” I said. The single syllable landed heavier than I expected. Jake’s eyes flicked to me, surprised to find opposition.
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 makeusmonsters? 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 phrasecontrol 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 haveeveryonehating 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.”
