Reformed Villain’s Ex: Don’t Love Me, It’s Futile

Chapter 3 — Midnight, Rooftops, and Bad Invitations

The text looked like a dare written by someone with either a very specific brand of bravado or a taste for drama. *Tonight. Midnight. Rooftop. Bring Rowan.*

I read it five times because repetition is the only polite way to deal with passive-aggressive threats. The sender was anonymous, which is internet-speak for: someone with too much time and not enough scruples. The timing was spectacular, though — as if the universe had decided that our family chaos needed a soundtrack and possibly a lighting designer.

Damien saw the message and, predictably, didn’t actually panic in the way normal people panic. He recalibrated. Panic, for him, looks like decisive action: a command list whispered into the air, security measures like chess moves. He also did something unusual — he looked worried in a way that almost passed for tenderness. Dangerous and confusing. Mostly confusing.

“You can’t bring Rowan to whatever this is,” he said. He said it like a lawyer delivering the bad clause in a contract: blunt, unwavering, somewhat tragic for anyone who still kept a heart in their living room.

“And you can’t tell me how to parent,” I answered, because if there’s a sport I’m good at it’s delivering relevant facts with aggressive charm. “Also, you didn’t say please.”

He c****d his head at me like a man trying to understand a negotiation written in emoji. “You know I don’t like being asked for permission about other people's safety.”

“Good to know you care about safety,” I said, “now tell me when you started caring about calendars and not feelings.” The line was sharper than a paper cut and twice as polite.

He studied the phone like it might explode. Then he made a decision the way men with resources often do: he offered options dressed as ultimatums.

“You go alone, you hire proper security, and you have my lawyer on speed dial,” he said. “You bring Rowan under my supervision.”

Translation: I either accept his terms, or I set up a battleground. The thing is, I don’t like being managed, but I do like not being used as cannon fodder for someone’s PR stunt. He knew this, which is why his words came wrapped in a velvet glove and a regulation warning.

I called Mason because when anonymous threats involve showbiz, the first instinct is to ask the person who treats chaos like a business model. He picked up with the kind of enthusiasm a man who lives to make content and sell panic can only have.

“Rooftop?” Mason asked. “This is gold. Honestly, Lex, this is that sort of cinematic moment — like a trailer. We can monetize intrigue.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of 'avoid our son being used as a prop,'” I answered.

He didn’t miss a beat. “We’ll get security. We’ll clear the rooftop. We’ll make sure Rowan is never even in the same zip code as dramatic lighting. Also, I’ll get a drone.” His last sentence hung in the air like a flag that said *We plan everything and then charge extra for feelings*.

I looked at Rowan’s sleeping photo on my phone. The kid had a mole by his eyebrow that looked like it belonged in a very cute tattoo campaign. He had no idea what political theatre his parents made for the world. He had, however, mastered the art of stealing socks.

“I’ll bring him,” I said, because I was stubborn and because sometimes the best thing you can do is meet a ridiculous demand head-on with better planning. “But I’m not doing it without assurances.”

Damien inhaled like someone who found out a spreadsheet had emotions. “I’ll be there. I will not let anything happen to him.”

It was as much a promise as a threat, and promises from Damien never arrived without a cost. He also, annoyingly, looked like he meant it. That was the problem with men who are used to controlling things: when they protect, it’s not always gripless. It can be possessive. It can smell like entitlement. It can make your stomach do small, inconvenient flips.

We agreed on a plan that involved a nanny, two security detail people I’d never seen before (they wore suits like they’d been made by the same sculptor who invented the word “reserved”), and an agreement that if anything looked sketchy, we left. It was adulting with dramatic lighting, which is to say: a carefully produced surrender to caution.

Midnight came with an accent of wind. Rooftops around the city glittered like someone had scattered fairy lights for the paparazzi. I parked two blocks away because subtlety is a dead language but it still has applications. The rooftop in question was on a midtown building with a view that could sell a bad marriage as architecture.

Rowan held my hand like a tiny anchor. He had on a fuzzy jacket and a hat that made him look like a small, fierce otter. He asked me, in the tone of children who suspect adults are lying or at least embellishing, “Are we going to meet a friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’re meeting a friend.” Friends, of course, can be multifaceted: sometimes they’re people who feed you coffee, sometimes they’re people who stitch up PR nightmares. Tonight, the friend might be an enemy.

We took the elevator up with three other figures: a nanny who smiled like she’d been through worse, a security man who measured everyone in the room with the kind of math that involved temperament and helmet lines, and a stringer photographer shoved discretely by a local tabloid who’d clearly forgotten the professional line between journalist and opportunist.

The rooftop door opened and I expected either a dramatic reveal or a very unpleasant confrontation. What I did not expect was a tableau: Damien already there, rainwater beading off his coat though the sky was clear, standing beside Lila Morrison—and behind them, the blurred figure from the photo, only clearer now, watching with an expression that attempted to be casual and achieved the opposite.

The person’s face was familiar in the way an unkind childhood memory is familiar—like you remember the laugh before you remember the name. It was a woman in her late thirties, hair chopped into something practical, eyes sharp, wearing a jacket that screamed “I own a database and also have opinions.” She smiled when she saw us, and it was not a friendly smile. It was an *I know things* smile.

“Lexi,” Damien said. He didn’t introduce her; introductions felt like a formality he’d decided to skip. “This is Miriam Grey.”

Miriam Grey. The name itself sounded like she was either a journalist or a prosecutor, which was a useful combination for someone who’d apparently been stalking rooftops. She extended a hand like she was offering a business card in a courtroom.

“I don’t do fan club tours,” I said, because snark is a reflex and sometimes an art form. “But I will give you a courtesy handshake.”

She accepted my hand and squeezed with a pressure that said: *I know your file numbers.* “I send the city’s press releases,” she said, voice lower than the wind. “I also find things that people prefer to keep buried.”

She looked at Rowan and then at Damien, and then back at me like a woman who’d read too many narratives to believe in neat endings.

“You asked us to bring him,” I said. “That seems a rather specific request for someone who ‘finds things.’”

She tilted her head. “I didn’t request anything,” she said. “I forwarded something. A photograph. Someone wanted someone to see it.”

It takes a special kind of arrogance to use a child as bait for information. Whoever orchestrated this clearly had metrics and a cold heart. I felt that coldness like a draft.

Lila, who looked impossibly composed for someone who’d been implicated in any kind of scandal, stepped forward with the practiced smile of actors trained in damage control. “I didn’t know the context,” she said. “I was at the gala. He was with me for a portion of the evening. I don’t know who that person is in the background.”

Her answer was practiced, precise. Damian’s jaw tightened the way it does when a man is trying not to steam. Miriam smiled, and there was a glint of triumph in it.

“Do you two want me to show you the original?” she asked, and when she asked, she pulled a tablet from her bag like a magician producing a rabbit that would probably bite.

In the dim rooftop glow, she swiped and enlarged the photo. On the screen, the trio from the gala appeared — Damien, Lila, and the blurry figure who’d somehow become central to the narrative. But now the photo carried more detail: a distinct hat in the background, a hand not clapping but holding a phone, and a reflection on the glass behind them that showed more than what the camera had captured.

“Someone wants to stitch a story,” Miriam said. “But photos don’t lie. People lie. Photos don’t.”

She was wrong. Photos lie all the time. People lie too. The rooftop smelled like a messy truth.

I felt my phone buzz against my thigh. A text from an unknown number: *Good. You came. Now talk. Or you’ll regret it.*

The nanny tightened her grip on Rowan’s sleeve like an anchor. Damien’s face closed into a map of decisions. Lila’s smile flickered and looked suddenly exhausted. Miriam’s eyes glinted. The city below shimmered, indifferent.

I had a choice: run with my son back into the safe glow of ignorance and legal counsel, or stay and see who wanted us to be their headline.

I chose to stay. Drama is a job hazard now, and I had become very good at showing up.

The woman — the one who called herself Miriam — tapped the tablet with a fingernail and said, clearly enjoying the moment like it was theatre and not a crime scene, “Someone paid to have this distributed. Someone who wants a reaction. Who benefits if you act.”

I opened my mouth, weighed my words like tools, and said: “If you think we’re entertaining, you’re about to find out this family does not play background music for strangers’ ratings.”

A hush fell like someone trying to save their headphones from being stolen.

Then Miriam smiled, and the smile was slow and satisfied and utterly without empathy. “Actually,” she said, “the person who benefits is standing right behind you.” She gestured, and I turned.

There, in the shadowed corner of the rooftop, a man I had assumed was a vague passerby stepped forward. He was not a passerby. His face was older, the jaw a little softer, eyes sharper. He held a camera that had no business being that expensive in the hands of an amateur.

He stepped forward and removed his hood.

“Good evening, Lexi West,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

I smiled back the way you smile at a storm cloud: politely, with an umbrella ready.

The man lowered his camera, and in the flash of his lens I saw, for a heartbeat, someone else reflected in the glass behind him — someone I knew, someone I hadn’t seen in years, and a name I thought had been buried with the old life I’d left.