Page 121 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Then the ceiling resolved. It was smooth white and there was no water stain above the corner, no hairline crack near the window, no old pipes muttering behind plaster. The room was too quiet, too expensive, and way too put together. Light came in through dark curtains in thin gray seams, and somewhere beyond the half-open door, Ivan was working out there.

I was in Ivan’s apartment.

In Ivan’s bed.

With Ivan’s blanket tucked around my shoulders.

I went very still. He had carried me to bed, but he had not stayed, which felt far more intimate than a kiss.

I stared at the slice of hallway visible through the open door and let my body catch up to the morning. Exhaustion still dragged at me, but the vicious edge of it had softened. My head ached faintly. My mouth tasted like stale coffee and old grief. My bottom still stung when I shifted, a warm, humiliating reminder of Ivan’s hand and my own debatably questionable choices.

I pushed the blanket back and sat up slowly. My body protested, and I winced before I could stop myself. Then I glared at no one, because glaring at pain had historically provided mixed results but remained emotionally satisfying.

The apartment outside the bedroom was dim in the early morning, monitors casting blue-white light across the desk. Ivan sat exactly where I had last seen him, though he looked like he had not moved much since. His shirtsleeves were still rolled up, and I look a long moment to admire the muscles in his forearms.

He looked up before I made a sound.

“You slept four hours and eleven minutes,” he said.

I leaned against the doorframe. “Good morning to you too, stalker Daddy.”

His mouth moved faintly. “Good morning.”

“Did you sleep?”

“No.”

“Shocking.”

“You would have woken if I came in.”

I didn’t know what to do with that, so I looked at the screens instead.

“What did you do?”

Ivan turned one monitor toward me.

“Built the revenge you need.”

My stomach went cold and hot at the same time. I crossed to the desk. He did not stand. Did not crowd me. Did not touch me. The space he left was intentional and almost cruel in its restraint, because now I knew what his hands felt like when he did not hold back, and the absence of them almost felt a bit wrong.

The timed release was not flashy. I appreciated that. It was clean, structured, and labeled clearly enough that my half-rested brain could follow it without wanting to commit violence against the interface. Daniel’s evidence had been packaged into a release bundle, with the Seaport chain, the witness conflict, the warehouse documents, the old payment routes, and the authorization thread all tied together in a way that would survive more than one kind of scrutiny.

The recipient list made my eyebrows rise. It included law enforcement, three journalists whose names I recognized because they still had spines, several financial regulators, and two rival Bratva families.

I looked at Ivan and he looked back at me calmly.

“You included rival families.”

“Yes.”

“Subtle.”

“Effective.”

“Dangerous.”

“Yes.”