Chapter 4

　　"You didn't answer my question."

　　Bianca looked up from her phone. Ethan was still standing where she'd left him a moment ago, watching her the way he had all morning, except now there was something guarded folded into it, waiting for the second half of a sentence she'd never finished.

　　"What question," she said, buying time.

　　"You started to say something. Before your phone went off." His eyes dropped briefly to the screen still lit up in her hand. "Whatever that is, it can wait thirty seconds."

　　She almost laughed. Almost. Instead she turned the phone face down against her palm, like that would somehow undo the words already burned into her head. Careful, Bianca. You don't know what he's capable of. I do.

　　"It's Daniel," she said. "My ex."

　　Ethan's jaw tightened, the same way it had ten minutes ago on the phone with his sister. "What does he want?"

　　"The same thing your sister wants, apparently. For me to stay away from you."

　　Something dark moved behind his eyes. "Small world," he said again, except this time there was no warmth in it at all.

　　Zoe called from the car, impatient, and Bianca held up a finger, one minute, and started walking. Ethan fell into step beside her without asking, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed on the narrow path.

　　"For what it's worth," he said, quieter now, "I don't scare easy. Whatever they're both so worried about, it isn't going to be the thing that makes me walk away from this."

　　"From what, exactly."

　　"You tell me." He glanced sideways at her, something warm cutting through the tension he'd been carrying since the phone call. "You're the one who keeps starting sentences and not finishing them."

　　Her pulse did something stupid and immediate. She could feel the heat of him even through her coat, the small distance between their hands as they walked, close enough that it would take almost nothing to close it. She thought about reaching for it. She didn't.

　　"Maybe I like leaving you curious," she said, and it came out lighter than she felt, almost flirting, a version of herself she hadn't heard in years.

　　"You're good at it." His mouth curved, not quite a smile, something better than one. "Dangerous, actually."

　　For one full second, walking across a cold parking lot toward her daughter, Bianca forgot entirely that her life was on fire. That was the part that scared her most, how easily he made the fire disappear.

　　They didn't get halfway to the car before it came roaring back.

　　"Bianca."

　　She knew the voice before she turned around. She'd know that voice underwater, in the dark, from a hundred feet away. Six years of it did that to a person.

　　Daniel was standing by the entrance, hands in his coat pockets, looking exactly the way he always looked when he wanted something and had already decided how the conversation was going to go.

　　"What are you doing here," Bianca said. Not a question. A wall.

　　"I came to see Zoe." His eyes flicked past her to Ethan, cataloguing him in half a second, the suit, the building behind them, the way Bianca hadn't stepped back from his side. "And apparently to meet the man my ex-wife's been spending her mornings with."

　　"You're not on the visitation schedule today," Bianca said.

　　"I don't need a schedule to check on my daughter's wellbeing." Daniel's voice was calm, pleasant, the exact register he'd used at the restaurant, the one that made strangers believe him and made Bianca's skin crawl. "Especially when I hear she's suddenly part of some program run by a man whose sister I happen to know very well."

　　Ethan went very still beside her. "You know Ingrid."

　　"I know Ingrid extremely well." Something ugly flickered at the corner of Daniel's mouth, gone before it could be called a smile. "She's a good friend. Has been for years. She mentioned she was worried about a woman who'd wormed her way into her brother's foundation right after a very convenient divorce." He looked at Bianca. "I told her that sounded exactly like something you'd do."

　　The words landed like a slap, and Bianca felt her whole body go rigid, every old wound from the restaurant table cracking open again in broad daylight.

　　"You have no right," she started, but Daniel was already talking over her, smooth, unbothered, a man who'd never once in six years let her finish a sentence he didn't like.

　　"I have every right. I'm still Zoe's father." He said it like a trump card, like the word father had ever meant anything close to what it should have. "And I don't think it's appropriate for my daughter to be around a man her mother is clearly involved with less than a week after signing divorce papers."

　　"That's not your decision to make," Ethan said. His voice was quiet, level, but there was something underneath it now, something that had been building since the phone call with Ingrid and hadn't found anywhere to go until this exact moment. "This program exists for children who've been through hell. Zoe qualifies on medical grounds. Nothing else is relevant."

　　"Everything about her home environment is relevant." Daniel finally turned his full attention on Ethan, sizing him up the way he probably sized up every man he considered competition. "I'll be raising concerns with the board. About suitability. About judgment. I imagine a foundation like yours cares quite a bit about optics."

　　"Is that a threat?"

　　"It's a father looking out for his daughter."

　　"You weren't looking out for her three days ago," Bianca said, and her voice finally cracked through the composure she'd been holding since the restaurant. "You weren't looking out for her for six years. You don't get to start now because it's inconvenient for you that I'm standing next to someone."

　　Daniel's eyes narrowed, something colder sliding into place behind the pleasant mask. "Careful," he said, echoing his own text like he'd rehearsed the line twice. "You don't know everything about the man you're standing next to, Bianca. Ask him what happened to his last assistant. Ask him why his marriage really ended." A pause, precisely timed. "Ingrid's told me things. Things you'd probably want to know before you get any closer."

　　Bianca's stomach dropped.

　　Beside her, Ethan had gone completely rigid, his face unreadable in a way it hadn't been all day, and for one terrible second Bianca couldn't tell if that stillness meant Daniel was lying or if it meant he wasn't.

　　"Don't listen to him," Ethan said, but there was something in the half-second delay before he said it that she couldn't unhear.

　　Daniel smiled, satisfied, already walking backward toward his car like he'd gotten exactly what he came for. "Ask him," he said again, louder now, over his shoulder, for the whole parking lot to hear. "Ask him about Rosalind."

　　He was gone before Bianca could say another word, folding into his car and pulling away smooth and unhurried, leaving her standing in the cold with her daughter waiting by the door and a stranger beside her whose face had just gone somewhere she couldn't follow.

　　"Ethan." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "Who's Rosalind?"

　　He didn't answer right away. And that silence, stretching one second too long into two, told her more than any word could have