I had seen JD Northport plenty of times around the club, mostly with Skye, sometimes with his son, always looking too polished for a man wearing a cut. He wasn’t like Edge or Tarak. He had money in his posture. Boardrooms in his voice. The kind of calm that made people underestimate him right up until he owned the room.
Tonight, he looked at me like a man who had come to tell the truth even if everyone hated him for it.
That scared me more than Edge’s rage.
“How bad?” I asked before he spoke.
JD glanced at Edge.
Edge nodded once.
JD came to the foot of the bed.
“Bad,” he said.
Regan’s hand closed around mine.
JD continued, “Not hopeless.”
That helped by half an inch.
Maybe less.
“There’s no burying this clean,” he said. “Not with the number of kids there, the phones, the fire damage, and who those kids belong to. We are going to fight this with law, leverage, money, and the truth where the truth helps us.”
I swallowed. “The truth is I did it.”
“The truth,” JD said, “is that you are a seventeen-year-old girl who endured years of targeted harassment, was publicly humiliated, possibly drugged, and had a breakdown at a party full of intoxicated minors who were filming instead of helping.”
My throat tightened.
“That sounds like an excuse.”
“It’s context.”
“I still did it.”
“Yes.”
No one rushed to soften that.
Somehow I appreciated it.
JD looked at me carefully. “If they push criminal charges, your age matters. You are still seventeen for another week. That may be the difference between juvenile consequences and adult prison exposure. My goal is to keep you away from adult court completely. Maybe away from criminal court if we get enough leverage. But I won’t lie to you. There will be consequences.”
My eyes burned.
“What kind?”
“Restitution if we can settle. Community service. Counseling. Possibly probation. A formal diversion program if we can get the right people to agree. Civil claims are almost guaranteed unless we make them more afraid of discovery than they are angry about the cars.”
“Discovery?”
JD’s mouth curved faintly, but there was no humor in it. “That means their children’s phones, messages, drug use, harassment, party setup, alcohol sources, who supplied what,who filmed what, and which parents knew about the annual private-school bonfire and pretended not to.”
Regan’s eyes went sharp.
Edge looked like he approved of that part.
