All Chapters of The Bodyguards boy : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Julian didn’t react immediately.That was what made it dangerous.He sat with the device in his hand long after the screen had gone dark, long after the last frame of Preston’s voice had stopped echoing in the silence. Most people would’ve responded quickly anger, denial, instinct.Julian did none of that.He watched.Replayed it in his head.Not the words.The tone.The certainty.“…we move forward.”Not hesitation.Not uncertainty.Forward.Without him.Julian leaned back slightly, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the edge of the device before he set it down.Carefully.Controlled.Because this wasn’t about the video.Not really.Videos could be manipulated.Voices could be cut.Moments could be rearranged.But intentionintention was harder to fake.And Prest

Julian didn’t wait this time.The call ended.The decision followed.No space between.He sat still for exactly three seconds after Preston’s voice disappeared from the line long enough to confirm what he already knew.This wasn’t suspicion anymore.This was war.Julian leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, eyes fixed on the floor like he could see the board laid out beneath it.“Then we stop testing,” he said quietly.A guard passed.Ignored.Another inmate spoke somewhere down the hall.Irrelevant.Julian reached for the device again.One call.No hesitation.It connected immediately.“I want it done properly this time,” Julian said.No greeting.No context.The voice on the other end didn’t ask for it.“Location?”“His office won’t work,”

Julian didn't sleep that night.He didn't need to.The wound above his ribs shallow, already closing throbbed with each breath, but pain was information too. It reminded him he was still here. Still moving. Still the one making decisions, not the one lying on a corridor floor with alarms screaming over him.The dead man they hadn't identified yet.Didn't matter who sent him.Only mattered who hadn't stopped him.Julian sat on the edge of his bunk, hands loose between his knees, replaying the last twelve hours the way he replayed everything stripped down to the parts that mattered.Preston's call. You're still standing.Then the corridor. The blast. The man with the wrong stance and the gun already up.Preston had said it himself, hadn't he I think it ends because you made a mistake.Julian's jaw tightened.No.It ended because Preston had tried to finish what the garage shooting started, and failed twice now.Third time wouldn't be a message.Third time would be permanent.He rea

The garden looked different at this hour.Rowan noticed it the moment he came through the gate the light flatter, grayer, none of the warmth it had the last two times he'd stood here. Like the place had already decided what kind of conversation this was going to be.He'd told himself a day was enough time to let Sloane's words settle before he came back for the rest of them. It hadn't been. Every hour since he'd left, the same sentence kept surfacing.Do not let it change what you're doing.She'd said that once already, in this same garden, months ago. And now she was about to say something that would test exactly how true that promise could stay.He arrived alone this time, the way she'd asked. Lennox stayed behind at the office with Taryn, working through what remained of Preston's overlap with Julian numbers, fronts, movement patterns that still didn't add up to a clean answer. Rowan had left them to it, half-listening to Lennox rattle off shell company names as he walked out the

Cassian hadn't planned on going back.That was the truth of it, the part he'd have to admit to himself eventually even if he never said it to Adrian. He'd told himself the drive past his mother's street was reconnaissance. Confirmation that the extra security was holding. Nothing more.But he'd been sitting in the car for forty minutes now, engine off, watching a house he wasn't supposed to care about anymore.His phone buzzed.Adrian.You're not where you're supposed to be.Cassian's jaw tightened. He hadn't told Adrian where he was. Which meant Adrian was tracking him  still, after everything, after the pact, after every conversation that was supposed to mean they were equals in this instead of handler and asset.I needed to see she was safe, Cassian typed back.The reply came fast, the way it always did when Adrian was more rattled than he wanted to sound.Seeing isn't the same as protecting