No Feelings

CHAPTER FOUR: A Name on the Envelope

Kess didn't remember driving home. She remembered standing on the sidewalk outside the grocery store with her phone in her hand, the message glowing accusatory on the screen, and then she remembered being in her apartment, sitting on the edge of her bed with the same phone in the same hand, as though her body had simply skipped the intervening forty minutes in a fugue of adrenaline and dread.

She read the message eleven more times, as if repetition might change its meaning. Shame about what happened to Malachi Reyes — wonder how the public would feel if they knew the REAL story behind that hit. Someone knew. Not Ronan's carefully guarded, two-years-buried version of knowing — someone with enough information to weaponize it, someone watching closely enough to send a threat within hours of a staged grocery store outing.

Her first instinct was to call Ronan. Her second instinct, arriving half a second later and colder, was to wonder whether Ronan himself had sent it — some twisted extension of the leverage he'd already built, a way of keeping her compliant even after she'd signed the agreement.

She hated that the thought occurred to her at all. She hated more that she couldn't immediately dismiss it.

She called him anyway.

He picked up on the second ring. "Kess?"

"I got a text." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "From an unknown number. About Malachi. About the real story behind the hit."

Silence on the line, long enough that she could hear his breathing change.

"Read it to me," Ronan said, and his voice had dropped into something flat and dangerous.

She read it. When she finished, the silence stretched even longer.

"That's not me," Ronan said finally, quiet and clear. "Kess, I swear to you, that's not me. I know how this looks. I know I'm the person with the most obvious motive to keep you compliant, and I know the timing makes me look guilty as hell. But I didn't send that. I need you to believe me."

"Why should I?"

"Because if I wanted you scared into compliance, I already had the leverage I needed. I didn't need to send an anonymous threat on top of what I already told you." A pause. "Who else knows, Kess? Who have you told about the deal, about the report, about any of it?"

"No one. Priya doesn't even know about the blackmail — I told her it was a straightforward PR assignment. My mother doesn't know anything beyond the fact that I'm faking a relationship for a promotion."

"Then it's not coming from your side," Ronan said grimly. "Which means it's coming from mine, or from somewhere neither of us has accounted for yet. Send me a screenshot. Number, timestamp, everything."

She did, hands still trembling slightly. He was silent for a moment on the other end, presumably studying it.

"The area code's from Toronto," he said finally, something hard entering his voice. "That's not a coincidence I like."

"Toronto? Why would—"

"Victor Ashford," Ronan said, and the name came out bitter in his mouth. "He owns the Toronto franchise circling my trade the hardest. He's the kind of man who doesn't just want to win a negotiation — he wants to win it by making sure every other team walks away looking worse by comparison. If he's found out anything about the facilities report, he'd absolutely use it to tank my value and force the trade to happen on his terms."

"How would he know anything about a report you've kept locked in a safety deposit box for two years?"

"I don't know," Ronan admitted, and the honesty in his voice did more to convince Kess of his innocence than any amount of protesting could have. "But I intend to find out. Kess — don't respond to the number. Don't go anywhere alone for the next few days if you can help it. I'll have someone look into who's behind it."

"Someone like who?"

"A friend. Former team security consultant, does private investigative work now. Discreet. I trust him." A beat. "I should have warned you this could happen. I'm sorry."

The apology landed strangely in her chest — unguarded, sincere, nothing like the calculated blackmailer from the practice rink four days earlier.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "Actually okay, not the version you'd tell Kane."

The question caught her off guard. "No," she admitted, surprising herself with the honesty of it. "I've spent two years trying not to think about that night, and in the space of one week I've found out the official story was a lie, agreed to fake-date the man responsible, and now apparently there's someone in Toronto who wants to weaponize the whole thing."

"I know. I wish I could tell you it gets easier from here. I don't think it does, not for a while. But I promise you — whatever Ashford's playing at, I'm not going to let it land on you. This started because of something I did. I'm not going to let you carry the fallout alone."

"You already made me carry it," Kess said, but there was less anger in it than there would have been a week ago.

"I know," Ronan said again, and the guilt in his voice was so raw that Kess found herself, despite everything, believing every word of it.

She didn't sleep well that night, or the night after. The threatening text sat in her phone like a stone she couldn't put down. She threw herself into work instead, and it was in the middle of drafting a press release about an upcoming charity skate that Priya appeared at her desk with an expression Kess had learned to dread.

"There's a man here to see you. Downstairs. Says his name is Malachi Reyes."

The room tilted.

"He asked for you specifically," Priya said. "You don't have to see him if you don't want to."

But Kess was already standing, already moving toward the elevator with a heart that hadn't beaten this hard since the night Ronan had told her the truth about the ice.

She hadn't seen Malachi in person in nearly a year. He was waiting in the lobby when the elevator doors opened, thinner than she remembered, leaning slightly on a cane he hadn't needed the last time she'd seen him, the easy athletic grace that used to define every movement now replaced by something careful, a body relearning how to exist in a smaller range of motion.

"Malachi." Her voice came out smaller than she intended.

"Kess." He offered a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You look good. Successful. I'm glad."

"What are you doing here?"

He glanced around the busy lobby. "Is there somewhere we can talk? Privately?"

She led him to a small conference room off the lobby, and the moment they were alone, his careful composure cracked slightly at the edges.

"I saw the photos," he said. "You and Vashti."

Kess's stomach dropped. "Malachi—"

"I'm not here to guilt you. God, Kess, that's not — I have no right to that. We've been done for a long time. You get to build whatever life you want, and if that's genuinely what's happening between you two, I'm not going to stand in judgment of it. I mean that."

"It's complicated," Kess said, aware of exactly how much she couldn't say.

"I figured it might be." Something dark crossed his face. "Because that's actually why I came. Not to talk about you and him personally. To talk about what actually happened that night."

The room went very cold.

"I got a call. Two days ago. From a number I didn't recognize." Malachi's hand tightened around the head of his cane. "A man. Didn't give a name. Said he had information about the ice conditions the night of the hit — said there was a facilities malfunction that got covered up, said the settlement I took was hush money dressed up as insurance." His eyes found hers, sharp despite the visible tremor in his hands. "Kess. Do you know anything about this?"

She felt the walls of the conference room press in around her.

"I can't talk about this," she said, and hated how strangled her voice sounded.

"You do know something," he said quietly. "Does this have to do with Vashti? Is that why you're suddenly dating the man who ended my career? Because someone's using this against you?"

"Malachi, please—"

"Two years, Kess." His voice cracked, all the careful restraint giving way. "I took a settlement because I believed there was nothing else to fight for. And now some anonymous man is calling me claiming there was a cover-up, and my ex-fiancée who I still — who I still care about, God help me — is refusing to tell me anything, and I am so tired of being the last person who gets to know the truth about my own life."

Kess closed her eyes, feeling something inside her c***k.

"I need time," she said finally, opening her eyes. "I know that's not fair to ask. But I promise you, Malachi — I am working on getting you real answers. Not rumors from an anonymous caller. The actual truth, with proof, in a way that can't be buried again. Please. Give me a little more time."

Malachi studied her for a long moment. "How much time."

"Six weeks. Maybe less."

He left without agreeing to anything explicitly, but the set of his shoulders as he walked out through the lobby suggested he was willing to grant her the time, at least for now.

Someone was making calls. Someone was digging. And whoever it was, they weren't waiting politely for a trade deadline six weeks away.

She called Ronan the moment she got back to her desk, voice low and urgent. "Malachi came to the office. Someone called him too — told him about the facilities report, told him the settlement was hush money. This is escalating faster than we can control it."

"Damn it." She heard something slam on his end. "This has to be Ashford. Nobody else would have both the resources and the motive to dig this deep this fast."

"What do we do?"

"We move up the timeline," Ronan said, decision hardening in his voice. "I'm not waiting six weeks to show you the report if Ashford's already circling with half the story. I want you to see it. Today. My place, after your shift ends. I'll have the safety deposit box contents ready."

"Today?"

"Today. It's time you saw exactly what we're dealing with — all of it, not the version I've been carefully rationing out to protect us both."

Kess sat at her desk for a long moment after the call ended, staring at a sponsor deck still open on her screen, utterly incongruous with the storm gathering around her. Somewhere in this city, Victor Ashford was making calls, accelerating a timeline that had already felt unbearably fragile. Somewhere across town, Ronan Vashti was preparing to hand her the one piece of evidence that could either destroy everything or finally begin to set it right.

She had agreed to six weeks of careful, controlled distance. Somehow, in the space of a single unread text message, that plan had already come apart at the seams — and Kess had the sinking, certain feeling that whatever waited for her at Ronan's apartment that evening was going to change far more than just the shape of the truth about Malachi's injury.

It was going to change the shape of whatever this thing between them was quietly, dangerously becoming.