"Show me the messages," Julian said.
Ivy pulled out her phone, scrolled to the text from the night before, and held it out. He read it twice, his face going harder each time, then handed it back like it had left a residue on his fingers.
"Unknown number," he said. "Untraceable, probably a burner. Whoever sent this knew you'd be having dinner with my brother last night, knew what he'd likely bring up, and got ahead of it by hours." He shook his head slowly. "That's not luck. That's someone with real access to this house's rhythm."
"Could it be Selene?"
"Selene wouldn't tell you to ask about the fire. If anything, she'd want you trusting me more, not less… I'm the one person in that house who might actually help her." He drummed his fingers against the wheel, thinking. "Regina, maybe. She's been with the family longer than anyone. Or someone on staff who reports to Damian for money, feeding you just enough truth to make you paranoid of everyone at once."
"Why would Damian want me to be paranoid of you? He already told me his version of the fire story himself, straight to my face."
"Because his version painted himself as the reluctant messenger, sad and honest, while the anonymous version makes it look like the truth is being hidden from you deliberately." Julian's jaw tightened. "Two different angles, same target. Make you trust him more, and me less, without either message looking like it came from the same place."
Ivy sat with that, the shape of it uncomfortable and cold. "You think your own brother is behind both."
"I think I don't know anymore, and that scares me more than almost anything else in this whole mess." He pulled the truck back onto the road, slower now, more careful. "I want to show you something. Not far from here. It might explain more than either of us talking in circles ever will."
They drove another twenty minutes, the estate long gone behind them, farmland giving way to a small town Ivy didn't recognize… a main street with a hardware store, a diner, a church with a peeling steeple. Julian parked outside a modest brick building with a sign reading *Ashford & Cole, Attorneys at Law.*
"This is Renee's lawyer's old office," he said, cutting the engine. "Retired now. But he kept records going back decades. I've been building a relationship with him for months, trying to understand the money trail before I ever met you."
Inside, an older man with reading glasses perched on his nose greeted Julian like an old friend and barely glanced at Ivy before waving them both into a cluttered back office stacked with file boxes. He pulled one down without being asked, set it on the desk, and left them alone with it.
Julian flipped through folders fast, methodical, until he found what he was looking for… a thin file, edges worn soft, Renee Ashford's name typed across the tab.
"Renee filed for divorce three years before that night on the porch," Julian said, sliding the papers toward Ivy. "Withdrew the filing two weeks later. No explanation on record."
"People do that. Fear, financial pressure… "
"Look at the retainer." He pointed to a line near the bottom. "Paid in full, upfront, by a third party. Not Renee. Not Marcus." He tapped the name typed beside the payment. "Selene Cross. Three years before you ever met Renee on that porch."
Ivy's stomach dropped through the floor for what felt like the tenth time in three days. "Selene paid for Renee's divorce and then it just… disappeared?"
"Withdrawn two weeks after filing, the same week Marcus Ashford's finances show a large, untraceable deposit into an account that closed less than a month later." Julian's voice had gone grim. "I think Selene tried to get Renee out safely, through the courts, through money, the quiet legal way. I think Marcus found out and threatened her, or bought her silence, or both. And when that failed… "
"She let it keep going until somebody else finished what she couldn't." Ivy's voice came out hollow. "She let Renee stay in danger for three more years, hoping eventually it would end one way or another, and it did. It ended with me."
Julian didn't argue the point. He didn't have to; the papers said enough on their own.
They drove back mostly in silence, the weight of it too heavy for easy conversation, and Ivy watched the fields blur past thinking about a woman two doors down from her old apartment, humming while she cooked too much rice, never once mentioning that a stranger's wife had tried to buy her freedom three years before anyone ever needed a fire poker to finish the job.
The gate was open when they returned, staff moving with unusual urgency across the front drive, and Ivy's stomach tightened before she'd even fully processed why. Regina met the truck before Julian had cut the engine, her face pale, clipboard forgotten somewhere behind her.
"Where have you been?" she demanded, though the question seemed aimed more at the situation than at either of them specifically.
"What happened?" Julian was already out of the truck.
"Mrs. Cross." Regina's voice shook, unusual for a woman who prided herself on composure in every situation Ivy had witnessed so far. "She's asking for Ms. Calloway. Specifically. She said it has to be now, before Mr. Cross gets back from his meeting in the city."
Ivy followed Regina through the house at a near-run, up the main stairs, down the hall toward Selene's private study, and found the woman standing at the window when the door opened, arms wrapped tight around herself, a suitcase… small, hastily packed… sitting open on the bed behind her.
"I don't have much time," Selene said, turning, her face stripped of every ounce of the careful composure Ivy had come to expect. "I need you to listen to me, and I need you to believe every word, because after today, I'm not sure how much longer I'll have the chance to tell you any of it at all."
She crossed the room fast, gripping Ivy's hands in both of hers, cold and trembling.
"Damian knows," Selene said, voice cracking. "About the folder, about the plan, about everything I've been building for two years. He found the rest of it this morning while you were gone… and Ivy, he's not angry. That's what frightens me. He's calm, and organized, and he told Regina to start packing Mia's things for a trip none of us knew we were taking. I think he means to disappear with her tonight, and I think, if that happens, none of us will ever see either of them again.”