Seeing him like this scares me more than the necklace did.
My security team is inside the room now, doing whatever it is security teams do when they've already failed. Checking cameras that won't show anything useful. Making calls to people whowon't have answers. Going through the motions of competence while we all pretend this isn't completely fucked up.
This has been building for weeks. Messages that got too personal — not threats, just... observations. Things I'd said in interviews, places I'd been, details about my routine that weren't public. Information that shouldn't be accessible showing up in anonymous DMs like little gifts.I know what you ordered at that café in Denver. I know you couldn't sleep last Tuesday. I know you cried in the green room after the Phoenix show.
Then the actual gifts started. Delivered to venues, always just before I arrived. A candle in the exact scent I use at home, the one I've never mentioned in any interview. A bottle of my perfume — the obscure French brand I've worn since I was nineteen, the one nobody knows about. Flowers — not roses, not the obvious thing, but peonies. My favourite. Something only people close to me would know.
Not threats. That's what made them so unsettling. They wereofferings. Little tokens that saidI know you. I see you. I've been paying attention to every detail for years, and no one will ever know you the way I do.
Like love letters from someone I never knew was in love with me.
Creepy. Unsettling. But manageable, my team kept saying. We'll handle it, they said. We've seen this before.
And now someone's been in my room. Touched my things. Refolded my underwear, for fuck's sake. Left me a message without words.
I can get to you whenever I want. And there's nothing you can do to stop me.
"I don't care what time it is," Nate is saying into his phone. "I need you here. Tonight." A pause. "Arizona. I'll text you the address."
He hangs up and turns to me, and something in his face makes me sit up straighter.
"Who was that?"
"My brother."
I blink. "You have a brother?"
"Yeah." Nate shoves his phone in his pocket and runs a hand through his hair. He looks exhausted. Worn down in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. "He's... he handles things. Things like this."
"What does that mean?"
"It means he's going to fix this."
I've known Nate for two years. He's the best manager I've ever had — smart, protective, actually gives a shit about me as a person and not just a revenue stream. In an industry full of people who see me as a product to be optimized, Nate sees me as someone worth protecting. That's rare. That's why I trust him.
But in all that time, he's never mentioned a brother. Not once. Not at holidays, not in casual conversation, not when I've asked about his family. It's like this brother didn't exist until right now, when Nate needed him to.
"Nate. What aren't you telling me?"
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he sighs.
"His name is Ghost. He's... not like me. Not industry." Nate sits down on the luggage cart next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch. "He was Special Forces. Did a lot of years in places he doesn't talk about. Now he's... something else. But he's also the guy you call when normal solutions stop working."
"Something else?"
"It's... complicated." He's quiet for a second. "I've never had to bring him into my world before. Never needed to. But that—" he nods toward my room, "—that's not an amateur. Whoever did this knows how security works. Knows the blind spots. Knowshow to move through a hotel without being seen. Your current team isn't going to catch him because he's better than they are."
"And your brother is better thanhim?"
Nate doesn't hesitate. "There's no one better. If Ghost can't handle this, no one can."
Ghost arrives at 2 AM.
I'm in Nate's room by then, curled up on the couch with a cup of tea I haven't touched, running on adrenaline and spite. Sleep isn't happening. Every time I close my eyes, I see that necklace on the pillow. The careful way it was placed. The patience it implied.
The knock is quiet. Two sharp raps, then nothing.
Nate opens the door, and the man who walks in makes the room feel smaller just by existing.
