Chapter 21 JACE
JACE
I hear the front door of the penthouse close behind her.
Gone.
I walk to the windows and look down at the street below. Forty-one floors down, the black sedan waits at the curb with the engine running, Sully behind the wheel. He called up thirty minutes ago to confirm he was downstairs. Her apartment isn’t an option anymore, and Sully knows that.
A few seconds later, Wren steps out of the building.
She looks composed. Untouched. Like she didn’t go to her knees for me an hour ago.
She never looks up at the penthouse.
Sully gets out, opens the back door for her, and she slides into the backseat without hesitation. A second later the sedan pulls away from the curb and disappears into early morning Manhattan traffic.
I stay at the window longer than I should, staring after it like that somehow fixes what happened in my bedroom.
Then I pull out my phone.
Me : Do not let her out until you have eyes on Davis. Confirm visual.
Sully : Copy.
I set the phone down on the counter and drag a hand over my jaw.
I couldn’t stop her from going to her knees. Couldn’t look at her afterward. But I can make sure she gets somewhere safe.
The sedan disappears around the corner.
I leave.
* * *
Ryker catches me in the hallway on my way in.
One look at my face and his expression shifts.
“Everything quiet this morning?”
I keep walking.
“So far.”
He falls into step beside me but doesn’t say anything else after that. By the time we reach my office, he’s already pulling his phone out.
“Cameras are live at her apartment and the shop,” he says as he closes the door behind us. “Park is on her block. Davis rotates in at noon. Tyler’s file is in your inbox.”
I sit down hard enough that the chair rolls back a few inches.
“Thank you.”
He nods once and turns toward the door, stopping with his hand on it.
“Whatever’s going on in your head right now, don’t stay there too long.”
Then he leaves.
I stare at the closed door for a long moment before I can get my hands to move.
* * *
Tyler Vaughn’s file is open on my first monitor.
I’ve read it enough times to have most of it memorized, but I go through it again anyway.
Patchy employment history. No current job.
Parents still in Queens. Younger brother on the West Coast. A restraining order filed by an ex three years ago that never made it to court because she dropped it before it was served.
Two misdemeanor assault charges—one plea, one dismissed.
A shell LLC in New Jersey that doesn’t look like much but still bothers me.
Then there’s the Venmo history.
Gas stations. Bars. Takeout places. A movement pattern that puts him around Wren’s block more often than Garrett ever caught and earlier than I realized.
Earlier than I caught.
My lawyer has been working since six this morning on an emergency order of protection. Wren doesn’t know yet. The rose left in her shop. Him showing up at her door last night. The surveillance pattern. It’s enough. The paperwork will be in front of a judge before the day is over.
It doesn’t make me feel better.
All I can think about is everything that should’ve happened sooner.
The cameras should have gone up five weeks ago. Park should’ve been primary detail five weeks ago. I should’ve had this file in front of me five weeks ago.
Instead, I put a good man on her, fired him when he got too attached, took the detail over myself, and still almost didn’t get there in time last night.
I close the file.
I get up and walk to the window, looking out over the city I own a piece of and feeling like none of it belongs to me this morning.
The camera feed for the shop is pinned to my second monitor. I don’t sit down right away. If I sit down, I’ll look at it.
Eventually, I sit anyway.
Wild Tide is open. Sasha’s at the counter with a customer, the flower buckets outside full already. In the back, near the cooler, Wren moves through the frame in jeans and a white shirt, hair up, stripping thorns from a bundle of roses like nothing happened last night.
Like she didn’t leave my penthouse without looking back.
She looks fine.
I watch her for one minute.
Then another.
Then I kill the feed.
Do not do that again, Carrington.
* * *
At two-seventeen I pick up my phone.
I already know what I should do.
Call her. Tell her this morning didn’t mean nothing. Tell her it meant too much. Tell her I don’t know how to want her this badly and still keep her safe at the same time.
Instead, I type:
Me : Davis has the shop covered. Park will be outside your building overnight. Any issues, call directly.
Then I hit send.
I set the phone down and stare at the message.
Professional. Tactical. The kind of text I’d send a client.
The three dots never appear.
She read it. Understood exactly what it was. And Wren Ashford has never wasted time pretending not to see me clearly.
Not when she walked into my building in that yellow dress.
Not last night in my kitchen.
And not this morning when she left without looking back.
I stay at the office late before finally closing my laptop.
Sully has confirmed she got home safe. Park is on her block.
The new lobby man is downstairs at her building.
Cameras are green. Tyler has not been on her street today.
His file is on my desk and I have read every page of it and I know more about Tyler Vaughn tonight than I did this morning, and it does not help me, because the thing I am worried about is not Tyler.
I go home.
I’ve lived in this penthouse for four years. Tonight it feels like a place that had Wren Ashford in it for twenty-four hours, and I could walk through this place blind and still know she’s gone.
The guest room door is open when I pass it.
I go in.
Her scent is still in here—faint, soft, something green underneath. The bed is made. The duffel is gone. The room is exactly as I would have told housekeeping to leave it, and somehow that makes it worse.
I sit on the edge of the bed, drag a hand down my face, and exhale.
“Fuck.”
Out loud. To nobody.
Back in my suite, I get hit with a flash of her on her knees in front of me. I could have stopped her. I didn’t. I let it happen because some part of me wanted it too badly to think clearly.
I’m hard before I’m even in the shower.
I turn the water cold and stay under it until I can think straight again. Then I get out, dry off, and go to bed.
In the dark I pick up my phone and open the thread with Dawson.
His last message came a week ago—a photo of him and two guys in desert camo leaning against the side of a vehicle. No location tag. Just a short caption.
Still alive. Keep an eye on my sister.
The words sit there until my eyes start to burn.
I don’t type anything back. I set the phone face-down on the nightstand and stare into the dark for a long time.
Tomorrow I do this again. And the next day. And the next. Every day she doesn’t come for me is a day I hold.
Down the hall, my guest room is empty.
But she isn’t gone.