Chapter 16 A Voice He Doesn't Want To Hear

• The message wasn’t from him.
• It came through Sonia, short and sterile: He expects you home by nine.
• Not a command. Not even a warning. Just a statement of fact, dropped into her inbox like it hadn’t been days since she last heard his voice. Ivy stared at the words until her phone dimmed, the letters fading back into black. She should have ignored it. She should have finished her meal, gone back to the spreadsheets, stayed in the light of a place that didn’t ask her to kneel just to be seen.