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The words dropped into the corridor.

Ash’s face drained of color.

A second security guard arrived, and together they began moving his father away, but he kept shouting over them.

“Ask him what he did to her, Renaud. Ask him why he’s been paying me all these fucking years.”

I had to lock every muscle in my body to keep from following.

His voice faded around the corner.

The silence he left behind was worse.

Ash stared at the floor.

For three periods he’d played through pain and ignored the man sitting behind our bench, but this was different. His father had dragged the secret Ash had spent most of his life protecting into a public corridor and thrown it at strangers.

Phoenix appeared at the edge of my vision. He didn’t ask questions. One look at Ash seemed to tell him enough. “I’ve got everyone out.”

Relief loosened something in my chest. “Thanks.”

“I need to go back to the hotel.”

Ash’s voice sounded exhausted. I wanted to take him there. I wanted to get him behind a locked door, hold him, and convince him that nothing his father had shouted changed what I knew about him.

Instead, another thought pushed through everything else.

This cannot continue.

Not another payment. Not another threat. Not another game spent wondering whether his father was watching. I couldn’t stand beside Ash and watch a drunken bastard dismantle him piece by piece while pretending patience was the same thing as respecting his choices.

But I also couldn’t decide what happened next without him. “There are two people at the hotel I think you need to talk to.”

Ash’s gaze sharpened immediately. “Who?”

“Ignatius and Doryu.”

He went still for half a second, and I braced myself for anger because that was what I deserved. Instead, Ash closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

“What?”

When he looked at me again, there was exhaustion in his expression rather than betrayal. “Of course they are.”

That caught me completely off guard. “You’re not surprised?”

Ash gave me a look that suggested I was the one being dense. “Max, Ignatius fixes things for a living, and Doryu heard me tell my father to stay the fuck away from you before he heard my father demand money. I might’ve hoped they’d mind their own business, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe they actually would.”

Despite everything, amusement tugged at me, mostly because that sounded so completely like Ash that it loosened something in my chest.

He saw it anyway and pointed a warning finger at me. “Don’t.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“You were about to smile.”

“I was relieved you weren’t about to punch me.”

Ash’s mouth flattened, but there was the faintest flicker of something warmer behind it. “That option hasn’t been completely ruled out.”