“Airport,” I tell the driver, and my voice sounds fine, which makes me want to laugh.
My phone buzzes again. Unknown number.
I don’t look.
I pull up my boarding pass instead and let the brightness of the screen steady my eyes.
I’m leaving without telling Ethan.
I’m leaving without knowing if Sabrina is lying.
I’m leaving because the only thing I can be sure of is this.
Someone is hunting me, and I’m done offering my life as the map.
The car merges into traffic, and my building disappears in the rear window.
I press my palm to my stomach, then keep it there this time, because I need one honest moment in the middle of all thismovement. “Okay,” I whisper, not to the little rumble in my stomach, not to the universe, just to myself. “We’re going.”
17
ETHAN
Tonight the office is quiet, and I’m the only idiot still here, staring at my phone as if it owes me an apology. Lila’s thread is full of unsent drafts.
I’m sorry I followed you. I wanted you safe. I won’t do it again.
I delete it.
I won’t push. One word, Lila, so I know you’re okay.
I delete that too because it reads as a demand dressed up as concern, and she’s had enough of men using softness as a crowbar.
I set my phone face down and rub my thumb along the edge of my desk until the wood warms under my skin.
Control isn’t only for other people. It’s for me, especially when I want to do the thing that feels good and makes everything worse.
I do one more thing before I leave the office, and it’s not noble, but it’s contained.
I open the old file with my name and Victoria’s in it, the one the internet still treats as a hobby. Years ago, the city got a story: CEO is abusive, girlfriend flees, company buries it. The truth was uglier and smaller. Victoria cheated, I found out, we detonated, and lawyers turned our mess into a product. I never put my hands on her, but I did lose my temper in ways I’m not proud of, and I paid to make the noise stop.
If Lila searched me, she found headlines, comments, and strangers calling it proof. I can’t unpublish that, and I can’t talk her out of protecting herself.
I hang up and go home, but the penthouse doesn’t help. It’s clean and controlled and empty, and I can still hear her voice when she snapped at me outside the deli.
That’s not okay.
So I do the one thing that lets my brain settle. I look for information that Lila already left in the world.
Her social profiles are cautious. No location tags. No office selfies. No open friend list. The kind of restraint you learn after someone proves they’ll use your life as a map.
I scroll back anyway, slow, and I find an old comment thread under a photo that’s years out of date. A name appears more than once—Gavin Hale, and he’s the guy from the deli. His profile pops up fast, public and loud. Gym shots, car shots, captions about grind and loyalty, the usual performance. I scroll until I find his work tag.
Lane Strategies. So the man isn’t just a scumbag. He’s also working at Victoria’s firm.
I sit down hard and run my hand over my scalp, fingers spreading as if I can hold my thoughts in place.
I click through Lane’s page and pull up the team photos, and there he is, leaning in with his arm draped over the back of a chair. Victoria is front row, smiling for the camera. Sabrina Hayes is off to the side, angled toward Victoria the way people angle toward money.
