Maddox looks up from his own desk a few feet away, his expression shifting from curiosity to concern the moment he sees what I'm holding. "Why do you still have that?"
The phone stops ringing before I can answer, and I stare down at it, my stomach twisting with a familiar combination of anger and protectiveness. The lock screen shows forty-three missed calls. Forty-three. All from the same blocked number that we both know belongs to Vincent.
"I just wanted to see if Vincent was going to say anything else," I admit, my voice lower now. "Anything we could use."
I unlock the phone, scrolling through the messages that have accumulated since the last time I checked. There are hundreds of them, a relentless barrage of texts that have been coming in for weeks. Each one is worse than the last, escalating from pleading to demanding to threatening. The most recent ones make my blood run cold.
You think you can hide from me?
I know where you are
You're MINE
No one else will want you after I'm done
Answer me you fucking bitch
I'm coming to get what's mine
Hunter's presence beside my desk draws my attention. He's reading over my shoulder, his expression growing progressively darker with each message he sees. I should probably stop him, should put the phone away and handle this myself. But part ofme wants him to see it, wants him to understand exactly what kind of monster we're dealing with.
"That's Amelia's old phone?" Hunter's voice is carefully controlled, but I can hear the fury simmering underneath.
I look up at him, grimacing. I know what the Kane Alphas are to my sister now, even if nobody's said it out loud yet. I've seen the way they look at her at dinner, the way she smiles when she talks about them, the way she's been coming home later and later with that soft, almost fragile happiness written all over her face.
I hadn't expected it to happen this fast. Thought maybe they'd circle each other for months, everyone too scared and broken to make a move. But Amelia has this way about her, this sunshine quality that draws people in despite her best efforts to hide it. And the Kanes needed that light more than they probably even realized.
I'm happy about it. Really, genuinely happy that my sister is finding joy again, that she's being taken care of by good men who actually deserve her. But it also means they need to understand what they're dealing with. What kind of threat is still out there, circling, waiting for an opening.
I nod slowly, still staring at the phone. "Yeah. It's her old number. I kept it active, thought maybe we could use the messages as evidence if it came to that. Build a case for stalking, harassment, whatever would stick."
The phone rings again in my hand, Vincent's blocked number lighting up the screen. My jaw clenches, anger flooding through me hot and immediate. Maddox is shaking his head from his desk, making a cutting motion across his throat, but I'm done letting this piece of shit terrorize my sister even indirectly.
I swipe to answer, bringing the phone to my ear. "Hello?"
"Finally!" Vincent's voice explodes through the speaker, loud enough that Hunter can probably hear it. "Jesus Christ, Amelia,I've been trying to reach you for weeks. What the fuck is your problem? You think you can just ignore me? You think you can just leave and I'll let you go?"
The hatred in his voice makes my skin crawl. I force myself to stay calm, to keep my voice level even though every instinct is screaming at me to reach through the phone and strangle this man.
"I'm not sure who you're speaking to," I say coolly. "But this isn't Amelia."
There's a beat of silence, and then Vincent's voice comes back even angrier. "Who the fuck is this? Where is she? Put her on the phone right now."
"Nowhere you'll ever get to her," I say, my voice dropping into something dangerous. "And this isn't her number anymore. Stop calling it. Stop texting it. Move on with your miserable life and leave my sister alone."
I hang up before he can respond, my hand shaking with the force of my anger. The phone immediately starts ringing again, but I silence it, setting it face down on my desk.
"You really think answering was a good idea?" Maddox asks, his voice carrying across the space between our desks. His expression is worried, the kind of concern that comes from knowing me too well.
"No," I admit, dragging a hand through my hair. "But if I wasn't going to kill him before, I am now. How dare he treat my sister like that and just expect her to come back? Like she's property he misplaced instead of a person. He's dead. Deader than dead."
Hunter reaches over and slips the phone from my hand before I can stop him. He starts scrolling through the messages, his thumb moving steadily down the screen. With each swipe, his expression becomes darker, the muscle in his jaw jumping as heclenches his teeth. His hazel eyes are cold, calculating, the look of someone cataloging evidence and planning retribution.
"This is a real piece of shit," Hunter finally says, his voice flat and deadly serious. "I had no fucking clue it was this bad."
"No one did," I say quietly. "She keeps it all bottled inside until it explodes. Even when we were kids, after our parents died, she'd hold everything in. Smile, pretend she was fine, act like the world wasn't crushing her. Then she'd lock herself in her room and cry for hours where she thought I couldn't hear her."
I pause, remembering those awful years after we lost Mom and Dad. How I was barely an adult myself, trying to figure out how to raise a grieving fifteen-year-old while dealing with my own loss. How Amelia would put on a brave face every single day and then fall apart in private, like she thought showing her pain would be a burden to me.
