Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Ivy
By the time rehearsals finish, I’m so strung out I can’t think straight.
Jennie’s pale face as she showed me the headline is still burning behind my eyes.
The moment I saw it—those awful words, the twisted fragments of truth laid out for the world—I knew I had to go to Dane.
I couldn’t sit with it another second. I couldn’t let him suffer alone, wondering, spiraling, believing the worst.
My pulse stays frantic and uneven for the entire cab ride, every stoplight dragging like punishment. All I can think about is him—how he must be suffering, how the news must have gutted him, how he must feel betrayed from every angle.
When I finally step inside the lobby of Black Capital, I’m not sure my legs will carry me far enough to reach the security desk, let alone him.
Two guards look up as I approach. One of them straightens slightly.
“Can we help you?”
“I’m here to see Dane—Mr. Black,” I correct, my voice tight. “Please. It’s urgent.”
They exchange a look, doubtful, even apologetic.
“Mr. Black doesn’t see anyone without an appointment.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But... please, could you just call?”
Something in my voice must land, because after a beat, one of them picks up the phone.
He speaks quietly, almost expecting to be told no.
Then he stops, blinking.
“...Yes, sir. I’ll send her up.”
When he hangs up, both guards look at me with surprise.
“He says you can go up,” one mutters. “Elevators are to your left.”
The elevator ride to the top floor seems endless. When the doors open, the reception area is too still, as if someone put the world on pause. Sloane is waiting near the glass wall, arms crossed, worry bright in her eyes.
“Ivy.” She steps toward me, voice low. “I just heard. He hasn’t left his office all day.”
Her hand squeezes my arm gently, but bracing. “Be prepared,” she murmurs. “He’s... not himself.”
I nod, though nothing feels steady beneath me.
I knock once on his door.
There’s no answer.
I push it open anyway.
He’s standing at the window, shoulders drawn tight, every line of him wound with a tension that makes the air seem too thick. New York sprawls in front of him in the cold winter light.
“Dane,” I manage, my voice thinner than I want.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t turn. “You saw it.”
I nod. “Yes.”
There is a long, suffocating silence where he just stares out of the window as if he is summoning his strength to look at me.
He exhales once, sharp and controlled.
“How long have you known?”
The question hits like a blow.
“Last night,” I stammer. “After the gala. I didn’t know before—I swear I didn’t. I had no idea Brody was tied to anything like that.”
“And when you found out,” he says, voice dropping to something low and lethal, “you didn’t think I had the right to know instantly?”
I take a step back, more instinct than choice.
“I was trying to handle it. Trying to determine if it was true, if it was safe to—”
He turns then, slowly, and the impact of his gaze knocks the rest of the words out of me.
Not cold. Not warm. Something steadier, worse—hurt fused with control, a storm held inside iron walls.
“Safe,” he repeats, a bitter twist pulling at his mouth. “You were thinking about ‘safe.’ Meanwhile, I spent my morning thinking you were honest. Thinking you trusted me. Thinking I understood the woman I—”
He cuts himself off abruptly, jaw clenching hard enough I hear his teeth click.
The silence that follows is brutal.
“Dane... please,” I whisper. “I was trying to do the right thing. I gave Brody twelve hours to go to the police. And I was going to go if he didn’t. I just—”
“Needed time,” he finishes quietly. “Time to decide how much of the truth I deserved. Time to curate the version that made you look better.”
“No,” I breathe. “I wasn’t thinking about myself; that’s the last person I was thinking of.”
He looks at me then—like he’s scraping out my insides and finding nothing good—and it shreds the last scraps of hope inside me.
There’s nothing soft in his eyes. No warmth or hunger. No trace of the man who reached for me like he couldn’t help himself.
Just cold, brutal certainty.
“The truth,” he says quietly, “should never have had to be dragged out of you. You should’ve told me the moment you found out.”
His voice doesn’t rise, not even close.
And that’s what terrifies me.
“I know,” I murmur. “But I panicked. I thought if I confronted him first, if I pushed him—”
“You made a decision,” he interrupts, soft but surgical, “and it wasn’t me.”
The words sink like a stone in my chest.
“I wasn’t choosing him,” I say, the words tumbling out raw. “I was scared, and I was trying to protect everyone, and ended up protecting no one. I should have told you—I know that. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t choose you.”
The moment hangs, stretched thin.
“You can go now, Ivy. There’s nothing else left to say.”
I step forward, desperation scratching through my ribs.
“What about us?”
His expression doesn’t change.
Not even a flicker.
“There is no us. There never was.”
I flinch. Something inside me splits clean in half.
“But I thought—”
“Well,” he says, each syllable deliberate, final, “you thought wrong.”
It feels like being carved out from the inside. The edges of the room close in, suffocating me with everything he refuses to feel.
My voice splinters. “So even after all this time... you’re still protecting her.”
His glare snaps to mine, cold and final. “Don’t.”
But the words keep spilling, helpless and shaking.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? I’m here trying to explain myself, and all you can see is the shadow of someone else.”
He breathes out once, slow, exhausted, utterly done.
“Ivy. Just leave.”
I nod, though the world feels distant and weightless. My feet don’t want to move; my lungs choke like they’ve forgotten how to work.
But I force my feet to move.
At the doorway, the last piece of me breaks.
And in the smallest, most fragile voice I’ve ever used, I ask, “Why did you let me fall in love with you if we meant nothing?”
All I get is more silence.
When he finally speaks, it’s quiet and merciless.
“Are we done here? I’m busy.”
I don’t remember opening the door.
I hardly register Sloane rising from her desk the second she sees my face.
“Oh, Ivy—”
I shake my head, pushing past her before the tears spill, but she follows, slipping into the elevator with me just as the doors close. The moment they do, everything inside me buckles.
Sloane catches my elbow, steadying me.
“You can’t keep wiping up Brody’s messes,” she says softly but firmly. “Or paying the price for what he did. You need to go to the police. You need to protect yourself.”
“I messed everything up,” I whisper. “I thought I was doing the right thing, and I just... I ruined everything.”
“No, you didn’t,” she says, voice gentle. “You did your best. You’re just trapped between a man who hurt you and a man who’s hurting too much to see straight. None of that is your fault.”
The elevator dings, and the doors open onto the marble lobby.
I step out, tears burning hot on my cheeks, the world blurring as I walk.
“Ivy,” Sloane murmurs, walking beside me, “it’s going to be okay.”
But I don’t believe her, not when every step feels like leaving pieces of myself behind.
Funny how things come full circle.
I walked into his office months ago wearing a mask.
I’m walking out now with him convinced I never took it off.