Page 47 of The Sexy Ex's Brother
As I walk toward the waiting car, I spot a man loitering by the corner newsstand, face half-obscured by a scarf and dark glasses. Something about his stance puts me on edge. He’s not reading. He’s watching. I make a mental note to pass his description to Ari. If Derek has eyes on me, I want them burned.
Back inside the car, I dial another number, this one less official. A journalist I once trusted with a leak that saved a senator’s seat. She owes me.
"Talia. It’s Jack Wilson. I have a story you’re going to want to hear."
A pause. Then: "I’m listening."
"Meet me at the café on 52nd. Back booth. Midnight. Come alone."
"Jack…what’s this about?"
"It’s about the truth, and making sure it comes out before Derek can twist it into something else."
I hang up. Rest my head against the cold glass. Time to set the fire.
25
IVY
The door to the co-working loft clicks shut behind us, muffling the drone of traffic outside. Inside, everything smells faintly of printer toner, strangely comforting in a way that reminds me of deadlines and adrenaline. Sienna walks ahead, her boots echoing against the polished concrete, her posture tight and efficient. Rosenthal’s already waiting, backlit by the glow of three monitors, sleeves rolled to her elbows like she hasn’t slept in days.
"You came armed," Sienna says, nodding at the tangle of cables and blinking drives.
Rosenthal doesn’t look up. "I don’t get dressed without encryption. You have what I need?"
I nod, pulling the slim flash drive from my coat pocket and handing it over. It contains Derek’s threat recordings, the photos he tried to bait me with, and a few files Sienna helped pull from her own archived inbox, emails that might connect Derek to someone already under federal scrutiny.
"Good," Rosenthal mutters. "Because I’ve been peeling through Derek’s digital trail, and let’s just say, your ex-fiancé? He’s not just shady. He’s a walking subpoena."
I glance at Sienna, whose mouth twitches. "Told you."
While Rosenthal works, I perch on the edge of a worn velvet chair and try to slow my pulse. But my brain won’t settle. It drifts, traitorously, back to Jack. His hands, his mouth, the way his voice went gravel-rough when he said my name like it meant something sacred. My thighs press together involuntarily. I remember the last time he kissed me, slow and possessive, like he already knew I’d try to run and was trying to mark me with the memory of it. A hot ache pulses low in my belly, just under the edge of everything else.
And then, an image: the blue button-down shirt he wore when we first met. Wrinkled from the plane, sleeves shoved to his elbows, ink on his cuff. He’d offered it to me once when I was shivering on a balcony, and I’d worn it for hours, pretending it didn’t smell like him. I never gave it back.
"Earth to Ivy," Sienna says, nudging my knee. "You’re thinking about him again."
"Of course I am."
She smirks, then softens. "We’ll get him back. The truth will level this."
Rosenthal turns from the screen. "We’ve got a hit. One of Derek’s encrypted folders was cloned two months ago. From an IP address tied to a private server in Zurich. Jack’s team must be close."
"Can we access it?" I ask.
"Not without triggering an alert," Rosenthal says. "But if someone on your side is already in Zurich, I can piggyback on their access if they give me a ghosted mirror. We’d need that link. Fast."
Sienna sends a message to Claudia Mercado, a cybersecurity analyst she once worked with during a high-profile corporate takedown. Claudia was part of an auxiliary team with a reputation for digital stealth, someone who valued discretion,burned bridges for justice, and never stayed anywhere long enough to leave footprints. It's been years, but if anyone could ghost a system and leave no trace, it’s her.
We pose the ask as a routine inquiry: access to a mirrored drive for a dormant Zurich asset, phrased so blandly it could be mistaken for bookkeeping. The language is dry, sterile, and deliberately boring. Minutes pass. The cursor blinks like it’s holding its breath.
Then a ping. The reply is short, unsigned:Thirty minutes. Don’t contact again.
Sienna shows me the screen, her expression unreadable. "She’s in, and if Claudia’s in, she’ll move fast and clean. We won’t get a second chance."
Rosenthal nods. "That’s our window. Once I’m in, I can extract everything. Emails. Transfers. Threats. Enough to bury him."
A weight presses into my ribs. Hope, sharp and terrifying.
