Pick up. Please, pick up.
"Hello?"
The voice was tiny. Shattered.
"Illyana," I said. My voice was steady, the manager mask sliding into place even though my hands were shaking. "Don't say my name. Just listen."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. "They said you were a terrorist. They said you worked for the anti-designation league. They showed me emails..."
"They're lying," I said firmly. "They're building a narrative to scare you. Listen to me closely. Did you sign the termination agreement?"
A pause. A sob, choked back.
"I had to," she whispered. "He said he’d sue my mum. He said he’d freeze the house assets. He said... he said if I didn't sign, he’d release the medical files from the tour last year. The ones from the clinic in Zurich."
I closed my eyes.Medical blackmail.
"Okay," I said, forcing my voice to remain calm, soothing. "You did the right thing. You protected yourself."
"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't... I saw your manifesto. I wanted to help, but I can't. If I say anything, they take everything."
"You don't have to say anything," I told her. "Not yet. I just needed to know you were safe."
"I'm not safe," she whispered. "I'm erased. He told me I'd never work again. He called producers while I was sitting there, Ro—" She cut off before saying my whole name. "He put them onspeaker. He told them I was 'unstable' and 'a liability.' They all agreed to blacklist me."
I looked at Stephen. His face was a mask of cold fury, his grey eyes tracking the recording waveform on the laptop.
"Illyana," I said, pitching my voice low and urgent. "You are not erased. You are in a holding pattern. Do you understand me? You take the money. You go home to Manchester. You sit in your garden and you wait."
"Wait for what?"
"For the signal," I said. "I am going to burn his house down, Illyana. Not with fire. With paper. And when the smoke clears, that NDA won't be worth the ink it's printed on because the entity that enforced it won't exist."
"Rowan..."
"Trust the mix," I said, using our old shorthand from the studio. "I'm fixing the everything. Just stay quiet. Stay safe."
"They're watching me," she whispered. "There's a car outside."
"I know," I said. "Don't look at it. Let them watch. It costs them a thousand pounds a day to keep a detail on you. Let them bleed."
"Okay," she breathed. She sounded younger than she was. "Okay."
"Hang up," I ordered. "Delete this call log."
The line rushed with static, then clicked dead.
I lowered the phone. My hand was cramping from gripping it so hard.
The silence in the safehouse was absolute.
"He threatened her family," Mateo rumbled from the corner. It wasn't a question. It was a threat assessment. "And he used medical records as leverage."
"Privacy laws don't apply to private designation clinics especially when you cross borders to get to them," Stephennoted, his voice devoid of emotion but terrifyingly sharp. "He knew that. He paid for the clinic, so he owns the data. It's monstrous, but..."
"It works," I finished.
I turned back to the screen, to the endless list of names in the spreadsheet.
