Rebirth; it’s too late, Dear ex의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 30

Kara’s POV. “Slate paid her six years ago,” I said. “Not twenty years ago when my parents died. Six years ago.” “Yes,” Xavier said. “Which means he wasn’t just keeping her quiet from the beginning. He found her specifically, six years ago, and paid her to stay hidden. Something triggered it. Something that made him feel like she was becoming a risk.” I was already out of bed, pacing the length of my kitchen in the dark, phone pressed to my ear, my mind moving fast and cold through every conversation I had with Maren that afternoon. She had seemed genuine. The photographs she described, the details about my mother, the fourteen years of friendship, none of that felt performed. But Slate had put money in her account six years ago and she had taken it and stayed quiet and now she had walked into Ashford’s lobby and found me. “She could be clean and still complicated,” I said. “People take money to survive. That doesn’t automatically make them weapons.” “No,” Xavier agreed. “But it m

Kara’s POV. “He’s outside,” Xavier said before I could speak. He was already at my window, one step back from the glass, looking down at the street. “Black car. He’s in the passenger seat. Someone else is driving.” “Victoria?” I asked. “Can’t tell from here.” He turned to look at me. “Don’t answer.” I looked at the phone still ringing in my hand. Jeremy’s name on the screen, patient and persistent, a man who had come to my building and was now calling like that was a normal thing to do. I let it ring out. Three seconds later a text came through. I know you’re home. I saw the lights. I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need ten minutes. Please. Xavier read it over my shoulder. I felt him close behind me, the warmth of him, the steadiness, and I made myself focus on the screen instead of on the way that steadiness had started to feel like something I was actively choosing rather than simply accepting. “He said please,” I said. “He’s scared,” Xavier said. “Scared people do unp

Kara’s POV. “We can’t tell Ashford,” I said. “Not yet. Not until we know who it is.” Xavier nodded. We were sitting in his car two blocks from my building, engine off, the morning quiet around us. “If we tip him and he tells the wrong person, everything we’ve built collapses before the hearing.” “Exactly.” I pressed my fingers against my temple and thought through it carefully. “Ashford himself is clean. I believe that. He’s spent six years genuinely looking for me and everything he’s done since I found him has been consistent with someone who wants this case to win.” I paused. “But his office has staff. Archive access. People who have been handling my parents’ files for years without him knowing exactly who sees what.” “I’ll have Marcus run every person on his staff roster,” Xavier said. “Quietly. Nothing that looks like an investigation.” “How long?” “Forty-eight hours.” I nodded. Forty-eight hours was manageable. The forensic hearing was ten days out. We had room to move care

Kara’s POV. “Don’t open it here,” Xavier said the moment he sat down across from me. His eyes went to the envelope, then to my face, reading both with the same focused attention. “Not in a public space. Not until we know if it’s been tampered with.” “It hasn’t been tampered with,” I said. “The seal is original. Brittany said she never opened it.” “Brittany also drugged you and helped manufacture a two-year lie.” He kept his voice low. “I’m not saying she’s lying tonight. I’m saying we verify before we react.” I looked at him. He was right and I knew he was right and the envelope was sitting in my hands with my name on it in my father’s handwriting and every rational part of me understood the logic of waiting. “Fine,” I said. “We go now.” We were in his car within four minutes. Marcus followed two vehicles behind. The city moved past the windows and I sat with the envelope in my lap and my hand flat on top of it and I did not think about what might be inside because thinking about

Kara’s POV. “Marcus Webb,” I said. “My PI. The man I hired on day four of this second life. The man I trusted with every piece of this case.” I sat down on Xavier’s sofa and said nothing else for a moment. The full shape of it was assembling itself in my head with the cold efficiency of a puzzle finding its last piece. Every conversation I had with Marcus. Every document I asked him to source. The decoy trail I had asked him to build to mislead Jeremy’s investigator. The surveillance on Brittany at the airport that had been flagged within hours. He hadn’t just been feeding information to Slate. He had been feeding Slate a map. “How much does he know?” I asked. Xavier sat beside me. Close. “Everything you told him directly. The client letters, the PI decoy trail, the meeting with Maren, Brittany’s statement, the break-in at Ashford’s.” He paused. “But not the drive. You never told Marcus about the drive. And not the confession letter because you only got it tonight.” I pressed m