Chapter 60
IVY
THE NEXT DAY
I’m working away, moving between apps on my phone so I can preschedule some of my clients’ posts, when I notice it.
An icon—an app—that I don’t recognize. It has a blue background with a charcoal logo.
I tap it, curiosity burning. Unfamiliar. I'd meant to investigate when he first pressed this phone into my palm, his fingers lingering. There were a few features I didn’t recognize, which I put down to it being a newer model. But my gut clenches. I have a weird feeling about this.
The screen transforms into a dashboard. Sleek. Professional. Harmless at first glance. But as I scroll, my heart stutters—there's my location history, mapped in red pins like drops of blood. My messages. My calls. Every digital breath I've taken, captured and catalogued.
Similar to what I saw back in his office, but there seems to be even more.
Then I find it—a folder that shouldn't exist. A thread. A message. My fingers tremble as I open it. The original leak. The post that destroyed everything. And there, unmistakable—his digital fingerprint. His username. His words. His betrayal.
My mind fractures, rejecting what my eyes see. No. No. NO. But the evidence screams at me from the screen, impossible to deny.
The truth crashes down.
I look up. He's there. Watching. Waiting. His eyes know. His posture knows. The phone has already betrayed me to him.
Our gazes lock. No questions needed. Just the raw, exposed wound of my discovery against the calculated stillness of his expectation.
“You got me canceled?” My voice is shrill. “Everything I worked so hard for? You’re the one who destroyed it?”
He shrugs. “I mean, I did it with your best interests in mind, Ivy.”
Blood rushes to my temples. “That wasn’t your decision to make, Soren!”
He looks down.
“And to pretend to be there for me? To support me through something that you fucking caused?” Rage courses through me. My hands are shaking, which only serves to make me more furious. As if he’s taken away just another semblance of my own agency. “That’s the biggest betrayal of all!”
He sighs. “Listen, Ivy. You have to trust me. Besides, didn’t things work out for the better?”
I let out a primal scream. I don’t give a flying fuck if this apartment is soundproof or not. I hope someone hears. I hope everyone hears.
Cart my ass off to jail for making too much noise, because I’d rather be anywhere than here. With this man. This betrayer. This ruiner of my fucking life and all I worked so hard for.
“I can’t believe the audacity. You think it’s okay to—what—manipulate me into thinking that these things are happening naturally?
That you’re not a sick puppet master behind the scenes?
” My stomach drops. “Next thing you’re going to tell me that my client doesn’t actually exist!
That they’re fake. An AI-generated voice on the other end of the phone! ”
He lets out a soft laugh, shaking his head. “No, Ivy. She’s not AI. She’s very real.”
My stomach twinges, and my eyes narrow. “How do you know her? Is she in on this? Are you paying her to be my client? To take pity on me?!”
He shakes his head again, his eyes locking with mine.
“She had a fling with my mentor many years ago,” he says.
“Luckily for her, she got out of that arrangement, but she was always kind to me. We stayed in touch. She trusts me—the closest thing I have to a mother figure, actually. And when I recommended you, she treated that as a solid reference. She’s legit, I promise. ”
My eyes narrow further, to the point I almost can’t see.
Trying to block him out as his words roll around in my mind.
“What else are you keeping from me, Soren? What else are you making seem like something it isn’t?
Do you actually even care about me, or is this some cruel joke—some sick experiment—to you? ”
He looks down again, frowning deeply. “Ivy. I’d never do anything to hurt you, and everything I do is for you—for us.
You’re all I care about. I just thought this was the right move to make sure you could really let your nervous system settle.
To work through your trauma in a sustainable way. Those clients weren’t good for you.”
I roar. “Are you telling me to heal?!” He’s hit a nerve, the same one that Adrian used to poke, poke, poke with his little scalpel-like words. It’s a trigger, and I am a volcano, erupting with no way to shove it all back in. “How dare you?”
“No, no,” he puts his hands up in defense, palms facing me. “Ivy, it’s not like that. I just wanted you to be supported and in an environment conducive to—.”
“Healing?!”
“No! To getting back to being yourself.”
I fight the urge to spit on him. “Semantics,” I huff.
He’s right, in a perverse way. I have felt more calm since those clients fired me. Just having one, who is a reasonable person, has allowed me focus I haven’t felt since starting the business.
I’m more productive, more certain of my strategy. I’m producing a better product as the result.
But that’s not the point!
He lied to me. Got me canceled on the internet. Made me a laughing stock amongst my peers.
Sure, coverage of the situation was short-lived, but the internet has a long memory.
He altered my life, from behind the scenes, and was the one who was there to pick up the pieces when he caused the damn thing in the first place.
Rage, like nothing I’ve ever felt before, takes over my body. My skin burns as blood roars through my temples, blurring my vision and making my body tingle with energy.
I glance down at the phone in my hand—now a symbol for everything wrong—and hurl it at the wall. It hits with a crack, the screen splintering, and with a thud, lands face-down on the floor like something dead.
Soren glances at me, then back at the phone. He’s silent, his mouth slightly open.
I stand there, breathing hard, just staring at it.
My voice drops, dull. “How could I possibly ever trust you again? After this? You’ve taken everything from me.”
“Because when have I ever done anything that wasn’t ultimately right for you in the end, Ivy?”
And then a certain realization takes hold. Because even in the wreckage of what I just found, my brain won't stop doing the math—responding to his logical sensibility. His infinite ability to justify absolutely any action he takes, no matter how absurd—how utterly wrong and fucked up.
I think back for a moment, recalling every time it’s ever felt like something was off with him, and scrunch up my face. Because he’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I hate the things he does to get to the place we end up at. I hate the way he casually manipulates me into doing exactly what he wants.
It reminds me of my abuser, of the person that gaslit me constantly about the tiniest things. Moving things subtly around the house so I thought I was losing my mind. Recalling conversations in a way that never happened to make me feel like I was going insane.
Yet those actions were about him getting the upper hand over me, of weakening me and making me bend to his will. To diminish me and make himself superior. To make my life smaller, systematically dismantling it until it was a husk of what it previously was.
But with Soren, it’s different. I can’t deny that every single decision he’s cajoled me into making—every little adjustment he’s made to my life—it’s all been for the better.
I take an inventory:
My living arrangements: drastically improved.
My job: less stressful, more lucrative, more enjoyable.
My sex life: exponentially better.
My nervous system: a hell of a lot calmer than I can recall it being in… maybe ever.
How he got here, I hate it. More than anything. Except for maybe my psycho ex.
But the results? Undeniable.
More money, more sex, more fun, more joy. More, more, more. When everyone else—always—was trying to make me less. Make me shrink. Make me disappear.
Yet, in consuming me, he’s making me disappear in his own way.
“Aaaaagh!” I scream. I’m usually more articulate. But my brain is short-circuiting as it tries to do the mental gymnastics necessary to wrap my mind around all of this. It’s not rational. And in this moment, I just don’t fucking care.
I give up.
My body unclenches and the tears start flowing. Wracking sobs that make my shoulders jerk.
I collapse onto the floor, tucking my knees in and hugging them to me.
He comes to me and sits down beside me in silence. He puts his arm around me, his grip firm, and I’m too tired to resist.
I just want it all to go away. To be easier. To not be so fucking confusing.
Finally, my sobs abate and I look up at him.
“This isn’t over,” I say. “But right now, I need rest.”