Ever since Ivy filed for divorce, she’d stopped hiding any part of herself from him, resilient, sharp, unshakable, and willing to bleed rather than break down in front of anyone.
Framed by Desmond.
Dropped by Barrow Group.
Buried under company gossip.
Threatened by Nathaniel himself.
Through all of it, she’d stayed composed and methodical, won Sebastian back over, and handed Desmond a very public defeat in the process.
Betrayed by her own mentor, dragged through the mud by an office full of people defending Chloe, she’d drawn a hard line between what was business and what was personal, and made sure every debt got settled.
Even injured, bleeding through gauze, she’d still gone out of her way to put a boot into Gregory on her way out the door.
Something about that ferocity, honestly, was almost charming.
The only two times he’d ever seen her genuinely break frightened, defenseless, stripped of every ounce of composure had both been because of him.
That night at the estate.
And now this.
Looking at the raw panic behind her eyes, the helplessness she couldn’t quite mask, Nathaniel wanted to comfort her.
Wanted to explain that he’d never actually believed those photos for a second.
But the woman standing in front of him was Ivy.
Not Wren.
Neither he nor Wren had ever once bothered to apologize, to try to salvage anything between them.
Even after she’d betrayed him and disappeared overseas, his response had simply been to accept a replacement and let his anger run its course elsewhere.
So why did some part of him want to bow his head and explain himself to Ivy, specifically, right now?
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
The silence broke when hotel staff knocked with the first-aid kit.
“Sit.
Let’s redo the bandage.” Nathaniel pulled her down onto the couch, setting aside whatever tangled thoughts had been circling.
All he could focus on was the blood soaking through the gauze, a genuinely ugly sight.
“Do you even care about keeping this face anymore?
Injured like this, and you still insisted on this trip.
Do you have any idea what kind of place Ironbridge actually is?”
Ivy misread the concern in his voice entirely, certain it was only ever about the face, Wren’s face and couldn’t help the bitter laugh that slipped out.
“If this face got ruined, would you actually let me go without a fight?”
“Do you have to twist everything I say into something uglier?” Nathaniel had genuinely been trying to keep this calm, to talk to her without either of them drawing blood for once; it had been a long time since they’d managed a conversation that didn’t end in tension.
But he was clearly underestimating exactly how good she’d gotten at provoking him.
The more compliant she used to be, the sharper her defiance had become now.
In her anger, she pulled against his grip hard enough to nearly tear the stitches loose.
Fresh blood beaded up along the wound, and she gasped at the pain.
He’s doing this on purpose.
Punishing me.
Petty.
Vindictive.
Unbelievable.
“You get to be angry however you want, whenever you want.
How exactly is someone like me a stand-in supposed to have any effect on your mood at all?” Something in Ivy simply gave out under the weight of it.
“Three years as your substitute.
Three years of doing everything you asked without complaint.
Isn’t that enough?
Nathaniel, I was never Wren, and I never wanted to be her.
Even people working off a debt get a release date eventually.
Our agreement ended because of what you did.
You already got your revenge out of your system.
Why are you still coming after me?”
“Coming after you?” Nathaniel nearly drove the antiseptic swab straight into the wound, forcing himself to soften his grip so he didn’t do actual damage to a woman he had, apparently, no idea how to stop being furious at.
Faced with the question directly, he genuinely couldn’t articulate what he was even doing here.
He hadn’t understood, either, why he’d flown back in the middle of the night, only that the thought of her walking into one of Desmond’s traps had gnawed at him the entire flight, and then he’d landed and immediately made a mess of the reunion anyway.
All he knew for certain was that letting go of her, cleanly, wasn’t something he seemed capable of whether that was habit, or something else entirely, he wasn’t examining closely enough to say.
He was just following whatever instinct kept pulling him back toward her.
“Since we’re discussing the agreement we’re not officially divorced yet.
That contract isn’t fully closed.” Nathaniel never gave ground in a negotiation, and this wasn’t an exception.
“I agreed to a separation.
Nothing more.
And you’ve been running wild ever since, defying me at every turn.
I told you to stay at the estate you moved out behind my back.
I told you to actually rest and recover, you disappeared on a business trip without a word.”
Ivy’s eyes went wide.
“You’re being completely unreasonable.
I moved some of my things closer to my mother.
Production had a genuine crisis, and it’s my name on that contract.
What exactly was I supposed to do, ignore it?”
“You’re wrong for not listening to me at all!
I told you to keep your distance from other men, and instead you’re with Desmond one week, chasing down Sebastian Barrow at Elysium the next, and now some old classmate’s inviting you to move in with him.
Is this really what dedication looks like to you?” Nathaniel’s voice climbed with every word.
“You are doing this on purpose.
You’re trying to drive me out of my mind.”
Ivy genuinely wanted to throw this unreasonable man out of the room but the fury seemed to shake loose the nausea she’d only just managed to suppress.
Her expression shifted fast.
She shoved him aside and bolted for the bathroom.
“Ivy!” Nathaniel watched her stumble away, frail and hurried, and felt something unfamiliar settle over his regret, though he couldn’t quite name why facing her always undid him this completely.
He moved to follow, only to find the door locked from the inside, the sound of her being violently sick coming through the wall.
“What’s wrong?
Why are you throwing up like that?” Genuine worry crept into his voice.
“It’s nothing.
Just my stomach.” Ivy, terrified he’d read too far into it, rushed to explain, desperate to get him out of the room.
“Nathaniel, I’m exhausted.
Can you please just leave?”
Something dark settled over Nathaniel’s expression.
Caught between worry and anger, he forced himself to stop pushing the conversation further, half afraid of what he might say if this woman kept unraveling him at this rate.
He reached for the phone to call down for stomach medicine and something light to eat but the call dropped for no reason, and a knock came at the door instead.
Hazel’s voice carried through, anxious.
“Boss?
Are you okay, in there?”
Nathaniel crossed to the door.
The second his hand closed around the knob, something in the air shifted, some instinct fired, and he stepped back fast, shouting, “Get back!”
Hazel, seeing the door already cracked open and assuming Ivy was the one opening it, panicked at the thought that something might be wrong and shoved forward to get inside.
The door swung halfway open, and an entire basin of animal blood came crashing down from above, drenching the hallway in a stench thick enough to gag on.
Hazel froze completely, staring at Nathaniel standing there in the doorway, too stunned to process any of it.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What did I do to deserve this?
Nathaniel stared coldly at his assistant, drenched head to toe and barely recognizable, his frown deepening.
“Call the police.”
“Mr.
Wolfe?” Hazel snapped back into focus.
“Where’s the boss?
Is she okay?
I only went downstairs to grab her something to eat someone flagged me down and led me off track”
She tried to step further inside to check, but the blood coating her clothes made movement nearly impossible.
Her foot caught on something.
She bent down, picked it up, and went stiff.
A small doll, crude and unsettling, needles jammed through both eyes.
Carved into its stomach: Mind your own business, or die a horrible death.
A wave of pure dread crawled up her spine, straight out of some low-budget horror film.
Hazel shrieked and flung the doll across the hallway.
Nathaniel’s frown deepened, and he reached down to dispose of the thing himself but a hand closed around it before he could.