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My chest tightens as I scroll because I know now what Ivy never said. And I understand the silence she wears like armor. She is still protecting him.

Or more likely, she is protecting me.

But I am done letting her carry this weight alone. I am not some boy she used to flirt with when life was easy. I am a man with teeth, with reach, with the kind of focus that has kept people alive on operating tables even when the odds said otherwise.

If she will not tell me what she is running from, I will find out myself.

I set the phone down and cross the room, grabbing my laptop off the shelf and opening it with more force than necessary. The clock in the corner tells me it is just after midnight. That does not matter. Not to the person I’m about to call.

I scroll through my contact list until I land on a name I have not used in over a year. Mason Garrick. Ex-cop. Now works freelance in the cracks between legality and necessity. The hospital used him once for a protection case involving a patient’s stalker. The man is quiet, competent, and terrifyingly efficient. Exactly what I need.

I type out the message.

Need a background run. Discreet. Call me tonight if possible.

I send it without preamble and toss the phone onto the bed. I pace while I wait. The apartment is too clean, too still, filled with the residue of a night that was supposed to be something else. She should be here. Not because I want to possess her but because for the first time in years, I let someone inside the walls I built, and she fit like she had always known the blueprint.

The silence stretches. I check the phone again. Still nothing.

I move to the kitchen and pour a glass of water, then dump it in the sink without drinking. I have sutured arteries with steadier hands than I have right now. My pulse hammers low in mythroat, not fear, not doubt, just an endless current of frustration and determination braided so tightly I cannot separate one from the other.

Finally, the phone vibrates.

Unknown caller. I answer on the first ring.

“Mason.”

“Long time,” he says, voice gravel over steel. “What are we looking at?”

I glance out the window, city lights blinking back at me in fractured amber patterns. “A woman. Ivy Dawson. I need to know everything. Fast.”

“Runaway? Witness? Threatened?”

“She’s not a criminal. She’s scared. There’s a man—Daniel Holt. Old money. Valleria circles. She dated him once. I think he’s trying to pull her back under.”

There’s a short silence on the other end. “You think or you know?”

“I know enough,” I answer, the words harder than I mean them to be. “And if I’m wrong, I’ll owe you a bottle of something expensive. But if I’m right, she’s in real trouble.”

“Send me what you’ve got. Full name, last known address, timeline if you have one. I’ll dig.”

I’m already forwarding the information before he finishes speaking. “I want every tie he has. Legal or otherwise. Anything on Ivy too. She won’t talk, but I need to know what happened to her.”

“Give me an hour,” Mason says. “Maybe less.”

The call ends. I drop the phone on the table and lean back in the chair, staring at the ceiling like it might give me answers the world refuses to offer. I think of Ivy’s face that morning in the cabin, all soft lines and sleepy heat, the way her hand curled around the swell of her belly like she was learning how to be two people at once. That kind of tenderness doesn’t come from nowhere. That kind of resilience means she has already survived more than I can guess.

I close my eyes, just for a moment.

When the phone rings again, I answer before the first vibration finishes. Mason sounds winded, like he’s been moving quickly.

“You might want to see this in person.”

I sit up straight, the tone in his voice slicing through the calm I was trying to reclaim. “What is it?”

“I’m sending a file to your secure line, but this is not the kind of thing I want to explain over the phone. If I’m right, your girl’s got a serious problem. One that’s not just emotional.”

My jaw clenches. “Where are you?”