Page 53 of His Orders

The words hit like a blade between the ribs, not because I am afraid but because I know exactly who sent it. The phrasing is polished, the cadence controlled. It reeks of money and entitlement and the kind of man who has spent his entire life taking what he wants and never facing the consequences. Daniel Holt.

I forward the number to a cybersecurity contact I have used in the past for patients who needed protection, women who left dangerous men and wanted to vanish quietly. I ask for a trace. I ask for any confirmed hits. Ten minutes later, my suspicion is confirmed. The number is linked to a private business account under Holt Enterprises, flagged once before for harassment complaints that never stuck.

I lock the phone and let my hand fall to my side. The rage that follows is not explosive. It is cold and steady, the kind of anger that builds without noise, gathering precision like a scalpel before it cuts. Holt is circling again. Ivy did not push me away because she wanted to. She did it because he pushed her first.The message was timed. Calculated. He is sending a warning. Stay away. Do not protect her. Let her fall back into the cage he once built around her.

He chose the wrong man to threaten.

I pull up Drew’s number and call. He picks up after the third ring, his voice casual, unaware.

“Ethan. What’s up?”

“Need five minutes. Private.”

He pauses. “Okay. You all right?”

“Not really. It’s about Ivy.”

His voice tightens instantly. “What happened?”

I don’t miss a beat. “He’s sniffing around the hospital again. There’s talk he’s trying to slide in a donation through one of his shell foundations. Old money dressed up as new tech. You know how that goes.”

Another pause, shorter this time. I can almost hear him weighing it. “He’s not on any board lists.”

“Not yet. But I’ve seen this play before. He gets his name on a wing, starts pulling strings behind the scenes. Next thing you know, patient data’s being used to boost some bullshit biotech valuation.” I let the disgust bleed into my voice. “If there’s anything shady in his past, I need to know now.”

“Stupid, arrogant asshole,” he curses. “I wish I could help, Ethan, but all I know is that he was an ass to my sister, and that’s patchy too.”

“Anything you know is helpful.” It’s a good thing he can’t see my face or how angry I am.

Drew sighs. “I don’t know details. She’s never told me. But I know it ended badly. She came to me in pieces. She told me to never ask about it. I didn’t, but I saw the aftermath. He ruined something in her. And he’s still got his hands on her through fear.”

I lean back against the wall and close my eyes.

“Do you know what he did?” I ask because I need something, any thread to pull.

“No. Only what Cassie once hinted at. That he never hit her, not in ways the law could trace, but that he chipped at her until she was barely herself. Emotional control. Isolation. Gaslighting. The kind of psychological warfare that turns confident women into shadows. At one point, I’m afraid he may have done more, although she never told me. And she loved him. At first, she really did. Which makes it worse.”

I feel something hard settle inside me. The mere image of Danieleverraising a hand to Ivy… The image of Daniel Holt raising a hand to Ivy makes my blood run molten. I don’t just want him gone. I want to set him on fire, watch him burn until he’s nothing but blistered ruin, then drag what’s left back from the edge of death—just to watch the flames take him again. I want him conscious for every second of it, want him to know it’s because he touched her.

“He’s back,” I say. “She’s seen him. I think she’s scared he’ll come after me if she doesn’t back away.”

Drew exhales slowly. “He probably will. And that’s why she’s pulling away.”

“I can handle him.”

“Ethan—”

My nostrils flair. “Drew, don’t you think he deserves to be brought to justice?”

“Yeah,” he replies, voice filled with the same quiet rage I feel. “But how do you do it if Ivy won’t say what’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” I snap, “But I sure as hell am going to find out.”

Those words sit with me long after I hang up. An idea comes to my head as I go to the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, I pull up Cassie’s social media page, scroll until I find a post from nearly a year ago. A photo of Ivy, hair shorter, eyes tired but smiling, standing beside Cassie outside some small shop in upstate New York. The caption is vague. A girl’s weekend. A recovery retreat. But the comments tell another story. Mentions of fresh starts. Of letting go. Of rebuilding trust.

I follow a tag that leads to a blog Cassie runs under a pseudonym where she writes about survival, about reclaiming identity after coercive relationships. There is no mention of names, no details, but the stories she tells are Ivy’s. I feel them in the space between each line.

Men who take power piece by piece. Who wrap control in gifts and charm. Who raise their voices not to scream but to silence. Men who weaponize love, who twist devotion into leverage, who never hit, never strike, never leave bruises. Only cracks.

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