Twenty-Six #3
Sets it on the edge of the stage. Flat. No ceremony. Like she’s been carrying it a long time, and she’s tired of the weight.
I watch her hands. The restraint of the gesture lands harder than anything she’s said.
“The morning after, a man I’d never met explained my options. Sign, or the story gets worse. He had a number written on a cheque. I was seventeen. I signed.” Her voice doesn’t waver. “Braxton’s father was the man in that room. He helped fund this place too.”
My eyes go to the VIP section before the cameras do. Westfield steered me past every major donor tonight. I remember this one—he’d given me a nod, not a handshake like the other investors. I find his face in under a second, the shade a mottled purple.
Ivy’s chin tilts toward him. “Hi, Gerald.”
The room erupts.
Cameras pivot. Flashes burst in Gerald’s face. He raises a hand to shield his eyes, suddenly looking terrified and old.
A gap opens in the VIP section. Gerald turns to the man beside him—says something low, two words at most—and both of them move toward the side door with the unhurried calm of men who have left rooms before things got official.
Ivy turns.
Westfield is three feet away, still on the stage, and she looks at him the way you look at something small that has somehow taken up a great deal of your time.
“You rigged the game then. You’re rigging it now. The bylaw officer who signed my compliance order is even here, drinking champagne by your ice sculpture.”
Westfield’s hand closes around my arm.
The room noise drops away. His voice comes in low, the register he uses for closed-door conversations—the one that always meant this is between us.
“Walk this back right now and I’ll make the contract problem disappear. The captaincy. Everything we talked about. It doesn’t have to end tonight.”
He’s still offering me the future. Even now. The version of it I’ve been performing toward since I was fifteen years old.
I look at his hand on my arm. The watch. The grip that used to feel like the only solid thing in the room. The shape of everything I built myself around wanting.
He was in that photo. Westfield. Grinning in the middle of it, cheque in hand, the Hicks money flowing straight into the team that was building me. He didn’t protect me because he believed in me. He protected the asset. I was never the point.
He looks up at me. Whites of his eyes showing.
The pity is cold and brief and real.
I lean into Ivy’s mic. “I’m done lying for you, Marty.”
His hand drops.
A woman near the front whispers, loud enough to catch on the mic: “Wait, is she talking about corruption?”
The word lands. Spreads.
“Security!” Westfield bellows, his voice cracking without amplification. “Where the hell is the RCMP, damn it!”
The two guards blocked by Holt try to push past. Holt shoves back—hard. The standoff breaks. Chaos ripples through the room.
Westfield’s mouth opens again, but he gets cut off by movement—investors flooding him on the stage, voices sharp, words like “municipal,” “liability,” “exposure,” thrown like punches.
A guy in a gray suit grabs Westfield’s sleeve. “What the hell is she talking about? Martin, answer me.”
A woman points at the screen behind us.
“Is that your media director? Is that your employee?”
Westfield’s shoulders hunch as he tries to speak over them. His hands lift, palms out. “This is a misunderstanding—” He stops. Starts again. “This is a narrative. Every allegation will be addressed through the appropriate—”
The word “allegation” lands in the room like a second detonation. Someone near the back actually laughs.
A tray tips near the bar. Champagne flutes hit tile and explode into a shattering cacophony. People yelp. A server swears.
Braxton shoves through a cluster of influencers, pushing a phone away, knocking someone’s elbow. His voice rises, shrill. “Get off me— I didn’t— you can’t prove—”
Phones swarm him. Ring lights swing. Someone calls out, “Say it again, Brax!” like it’s a joke.
Braxton’s hand shoots out and grabs at a phone. The owner yanks it back. Another person steps into his path and Braxton stumbles, catching himself on the bar with both hands.
Then—
BOOM.
Ceiling cannons fire.
Gold streamers and black balloons detonate into the air and rain down over the wreckage. Confetti flutters into spilled champagne.
The DJ, clueless or committed, slams a remix of “Auld Lang Syne” into the speakers. Upbeat. Thumping. A party soundtrack over a riot.
It’s absurd.
I look at Ivy. Gold confetti tangles in her dark red hair. She’s breathing hard, chest rising and falling against the silk of her dress.
She looks up at me.
The chaos of the room fades into white noise. The shouting investors, the popping balloons, the ruin of my career—it all blurs out until there’s only her.
Her eyes search mine. There’s no fear there anymore. Just the wild, electric recognition of what we just did. What we just broke.
Security is still moving, but now they’re splitting—one group edging toward us, another toward the investors crowding Westfield, another toward Braxton getting eaten alive by phones.
I don’t think. I move. “Come on. This way.”
I reach for her hand, her fingers hooking around mine.
We cut off the stage and race down the back wall, turning at the AV booth.
Delilah shoves something into Ivy’s arms as we pass.
I tug Ivy’s hand, pushing through a door that swings on a spring hinge into a narrow service corridor. My shoulder clips a server tray.
“Hey—what the fuck!”
I don’t look back.
“Keep moving.”
The music muffles behind us, bass thumping through drywall like a heartbeat. Shouts echo. Someone bangs on the stage door.
Ivy’s heels click fast on the concrete. Her grip tightens on my hand. Her breath comes sharp.
We reach the emergency exit; I shoulder-check it open. Cold air slams into us.
The back alley sits quiet, a stark shift from the Sin Bin chaos. Snow spins under a security light. Kitchen vents hum overhead. The bass thumps faint through the brick, distant now, like the building is holding its own breath.
Somewhere out front, a siren cuts the air. One long wail, rising, then another layering under it. Closer than I’d like.
I step in front of Ivy, blocking the door with my body. My overcoat takes the wind. My skin prickles where sweat cools at the back of my neck.
I wait for the door to shove open.
It doesn’t.
For a beat, it’s just us and the snow.
Ivy lets out a breath. It turns into a laugh—short, sharp, disbelieving. She reaches up and plucks a strip of gold streamer off her shoulder like it offends her.
She’s still in the dress, streamer in her hair, lipstick intact, and I am stupidly, overwhelmingly glad she’s standing in an alley with me.
I don’t say that. I just watch her shake the cold off, and something in my chest aches with how much I want to keep watching her do exactly that for a very long time.
She shakes out the bundle Delilah shoved at her—her coat—and pulls it on, zipping it to her neck.
“We started a riot,” she says.
“Technically, you started a riot.” My voice comes out rough. “I just passed you the mic.”
I look at her properly now. The adrenaline makes her eyes brighter, almost feral. Her hair’s a mess in a way that looks earned. She shivers.
“You regret it?” The words scrape out of me.
“Ask me tomorrow.”
Another siren wails, closer now, sweeping the front of the building.
Ivy takes a step, then winces, sinking into two inches of fresh powder at the mouth of the alley.
I look down at her feet. “You’re not walking in those.”
“I’m fine. I can—”
Before she can finish, I step in and slide an arm behind her knees, the other around her waist, and lift.
She gasps and grabs my lapels, fingers fisting the fabric. Her face ends up inches from mine, breath hitting my mouth in a warm burst. Her eyes flash up, ready to fight me on principle.
I hold her higher, tighter. Non-negotiable.
“Where to?”
Her gaze shifts past my shoulder, out toward the street. Past the glow spilling from the Sin Bin’s windows. Past the falling snow and the quiet village lights.
Toward a dark storefront two blocks away.
“Take me to my bar.”