Page 37 of Iggy

The number was blocked. She nearly let it ring out, but desperation had trained her to answer anything.

“Who is this?”

A man breathed on the other end. Not nervous breathing. Deliberate breathing, held close to the receiver so she would hear it.

“You still sound angry,” he said. “But then, you always did mistake anger for control.”

The room narrowed to the voice. Age had roughened it, but she knew it before memory supplied the face. Terry. That was the name he had given her when they were young enough to believe names were harmless.

To everyone else now, he was Luca—Luca Vale, Luca Mercer, Luca whatever-had-kept-him-hidden—yet beneath every borrowed name lived the same patient man who had evaded her for two decades.

Don’t let him hear it. Not the shock. Not the urgency. Terry had once known every crack in her armor, and Luca would test them all until he found one still open. Make him speak. Keep him speaking. If Olive is alive, one careless word is enough.

Not because Neela needed to see her face, but because a location could become a signature, a signature could unlock the accounts, and the accounts could put the club back beneath her hand.

“Terry,” Neela said, and the old name scraped her throat raw. “Or is it Luca now? Which one answers when someone asks where you buried the truth? Where is she?”

He gave a quiet laugh. Olive’s father had always laughed when he believed he possessed something another person needed. He wasn’t born into the same world as Neela, but he damn sure learned quickly how to fit in. How to maneuver, connive, twist, hide, and keep her on a damn leash.

“Terry is dead,” he said. “Most people call me Luca. You can call me the only man willing to tell you what happened to Olive. No hello after all these years? No question about how I survived you?”

“I’ve been looking for you for more than twenty years.”

“I noticed,” Luca said. “Every motel clerk you frightened. Every man you paid to lie to you. You made quite a religion out of chasing ghosts, Neela, but you never learned the difference between a ghost and a man who simply didn’t want to be found.”

Neela gripped the edge of the desk.

“Tell me where my daughter is.”

“Our daughter,” he corrected. His voice softened, which frightened her more than the laughter. “Still possessive after all this time. I know where Olive is. I know what name she uses, what town she wakes up in, and who she trusts. Twenty-five thousand dollars buys the location. Nothing less.”

The sum was almost absurd. It would drain what remained, force her to abandon the suppliers, and leave the club exposed before sunrise. Yet the rest of his words had lodged deeper: what name she uses. Present tense. If Olive was alive, the ownership chain was alive with her.

Neela’s vision sharpened. The missing girl was not a daughter returning from the dead; she was access—to the trademarks, the land options, the protected accounts, and the authority Neela had spent decades pretending was already hers.

He knows her name. He knows her town. He knows who she trusts.

Neela tested each detail for value. He could have invented all of it, studied the club’s structure, and shaped the perfect lie around the one person who could legally override her.

But what if he didn’t?

Twenty-five thousand was ruinous only if it bought nothing. If it bought Olive, it bought the club, the accounts, and the power to make every doubter kneel again.

“You’re calling the wrong woman,” she said.

“No,” Luca said. “I’m calling exactly the right woman—the one who tried to keep my daughter from me and spent twenty-six years pretending Olive belonged only to her.

“Don’t dress this up as love, Neela. You don’t want absolution. You want her name on a line, her rights in your hands, and your throne secured before the club realizes it was never legally yours.”

Neela stared at the stock ticker plunging across the screen.

“If you’re lying, there won’t be a road long enough for you to run.”

“Then come hear it face-to-face,” Luca said. “Bring the money in cash. Alone. No riders, no trackers, no clever little ambush. I’ll send the place in one hour, and if I see anyone but you, Olive disappears again. This time you won’t even have a ghost to chase.”

Alone means vulnerable. Cash means no trail. One hour means panic instead of planning.

She recognized the design because she had used it on other people. He wanted her rushed, stripped of witnesses, and afraid to lose the prize.