Chapter 13
Ivy
The days are bleeding together.
My phone buzzes continuously with condolences from people who couldn’t spell my name six months ago, and the news vans practically moved outside the gates.
The staff are back in the house, and they all look at me the same way — soft eyes, lowered voices, and the careful body language of people who think I might shatter.
I won’t shatter. I shattered years ago. What they’re looking at is someone who reassembled wrong and learned to hide the seams.
The household manager leads me to my father’s study because Reeves decided to come back this morning. She’s alone this time. No FBI buffer. Just her, a file, and the kind of silence that has teeth.
“I’ve been going over your statement, Miss Vane. Some things don’t add up.”
My stomach drops, but my face doesn’t move.
She opens the file. “The zip-ties we recovered have your DNA. Professional grade — military or law enforcement supply. Your father’s wounds show precision shooting.
The ransom was routed through offshore accounts with institutional-level encryption.
” She looks up. “This wasn’t a desperate criminal, Ivy.
This was a professional. A very good one. ”
I fold my hands in my lap and make them tremble. “I told you everything I remember. He had a gun and a mask. I never saw his face. Maybe military, I don’t know. The only thing I know is that he let me go.”
“Let you go after killing your father.” Her lips form a flat line. “The witness isn’t usually released, Miss Vane. Unless they were part of the plan.” Her eyes don’t blink. “Were you part of the plan, Ivy?”
I stand. The chair scrapes against marble and the sound is violent in the quiet room.
“Are you accusing me of being involved in my own kidnapping? In my father’s murder?
” The tears come fast — genuine fear dressed as grief.
“I watched him kill my father. And you’re sitting in this room — his room — suggesting I wanted it? ”
Reeves studies me, weighing every micro-expression, testing each one for authenticity. After a long moment she stands. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to find a highly skilled killer.” She places her card on the desk. “If you remember anything, call me.”
The click of her heels fades down the hallway, and I stand in my dead father’s study with my hands shaking. Not performing this time. She’s too smart. She can smell it.
I rush to my lab in desperate need of some kind of control. The pivot wall closes behind me, and the sterile air settles something inside my chest that hasn’t been settled since the park bench.
I sit at the table and open the physical version of the Ledger. Forty-three names. Alphabetized. The surgeon’s notes for operations I haven’t performed yet.
James Harlow. First on the list. My almost-husband.
Two million dollars embezzled from his own company.
Twelve buried sexual harassment complaints.
Type 2 diabetes managed with Metformin. Fatal shellfish allergy.
I could adjust his dosage at his Thursday club.
I could introduce shellfish extract into his food.
The options present with clinical precision, and I don’t feel anything about them.
They’re just procedures. Theoretical surgeries on a body that hasn’t arrived at the table yet.
Dr. Marcus Chen. Fifteenth on the list. My father’s personal physician. The man who covered up my mother’s suicide and called it an accidental drowning. Cocaine addiction. Late-night supply runs in the Iron District. One laced batch would end it.
I flip through the pages. Senator Cross.
The man who appraised my “value” at a dinner party when I was nineteen and squeezed my thigh under the table, while telling my father I had excellent bone structure.
Forty-three men who looked at me like merchandise and shook my father’s hand knowing exactly what he was.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. My heart rate is back to normal. I have so many things that need to be done in such a short period of time. I need to focus on them. I need to stop thinking about Reeves. I need to stop counting the days left.
I can do this. I have to do this.
I go downstairs, the estate lawyer, Ms. Rivera, already waiting for me in Malachi’s office. I sit in Malachi’s chair and try to focus on her words.
“Ivy, your father’s will is being read Tuesday. You’re the sole beneficiary. The mansion, the companies, the assets. Everything.”
I stare at her. I was so focused on getting free, on the money we stole, on the plan, that I forgot — when you kill a king, you inherit the kingdom.
The Vane empire. His name. His power. I could dismantle it, burn it to the ground, and salt the earth with it. Or I could use it as cover. A grieving daughter rebuilding her father’s legacy, attending galas, shaking hands with every name on her Ledger. Getting close enough to touch.
“I’ll attend the will reading. But after the funeral, I need time.”
“Of course. Take all the time you need.”
She walks me through whatever logistics I can’t bring myself to care about before she leaves.
I sit in my dead father’s chair and press my palms flat against his table and try to feel something — triumph, horror, power, grief — and find only the hollow hum of waiting.
Everything is waiting. Every minute of every day is just the space between now and Killian.
Ghost posted again. It’s a picture of his Ducati silhouetted against the Veridian Shore skyline at dusk. Freedom is a bike and an empty road. Everything else is just noise.
I comment before I can stop myself.
Some of us are still trapped in the noise.
Fifteen minutes later a notification makes me sit up straight. He replied — he never replies this fast.
Then find the exit. Or make one.
I open the DMs.
What if the exit is waiting for you, but you can’t reach it yet? What if you’re trapped by time, not walls?
Time is just another wall. Patience is the sledgehammer. What are you waiting for, Smoke?
A tightening warmth, something that feels dangerously close to how I felt when Killian’s thumb was on my lip, spreads through my chest.
And that’s when the guilt hits.
Because I’m thinking about one man’s hands and talking to another man’s words, and both of them make me feel like I exist, and I don’t know what that makes me.
I’ve known Ghost for months. He was there before Killian, before the balcony, before the warehouse.
He listened to me when I was invisible. He saw through the smoke and the glass when no one else even looked.
And now Killian. Five days. That’s all it took for a man with a scar and killer’s hands to take root somewhere I didn’t know had soil. Five days of dumplings and zip-ties and a forehead kiss that’s still fading on my skin.
I shouldn’t feel this for both of them. I shouldn’t be aching for Killian’s touch while my heart speeds up at Ghost’s words. But both feelings are real, and they sit side by side in my chest like two versions of the same wound, and I can’t explain why they hurt in the same place.
I’m waiting to feel like myself again.
You will. Give it time. The noise fades. And when the road opens… ride.
Do you ever feel like you’re living two lives? Like the person everyone sees isn’t who you really are?
Every day. But the real you? She’s the only one that matters.
I lock the phone and press it against my chest. His messages are the only thing that feels real in this glass tomb. But when I close my eyes it’s not Ghost’s words I see — it’s Killian’s face. The scar. The way he said I’ll find you like it was a law of physics, not a promise.
Two men holding me up. One through a screen. One through a memory. I don’t know if I’m allowed to want both, or if wanting both makes me the kind of broken that doesn’t fix.