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Fair enough.

He shifted carefully, one arm coming across his ribs before he looked at me again, and the change in his expression told me he’d moved past surprise and into the part that mattered to him. “How much do they know?”

That was the question I’d been dreading. “Doryu found the payments.”

Ash’s face tightened, although there was still no shock. He seemed to absorb it instead, fitting the information into whatever he’d already suspected and deciding how angry he had a right to be.

“Since when?”

“Before Friday night.”

For a moment he didn’t say anything, and I watched him go back over the last two days in his head. The apartment. The confession. The moment he’d finally told me his father had been taking money from him for years.

When his gaze came back to mine, it was steady. “So when I told you, you already knew there was money going somewhere.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t know why.”

“No.”

His jaw tightened, and he looked away toward the empty corridor before letting out a long, tired breath. “Jesus Christ.”

I couldn’t tell whether he meant me, Doryu, Ignatius, or the entire mess, and I suspected the answer was all of us. “I should’ve told you.”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face. “You should’ve.”

There wasn’t much heat in it, which somehow made it worse. I started to explain about Doryu overhearing the call and the text his father had sent afterward, but Ash stopped me with a small lift of his hand.

“I know why he looked.”

I fell silent.

Ash leaned back against the wall for a second, careful of his ribs, and I could see him working through it. “Doryu heard enough to know somebody was threatening me, Ignatius isn’t exactly the kind of man who waits around hoping a problem fixes itself, and you…” His eyes came back to mine and narrowed slightly. “You were never going to sit on your hands once you knew.”

“No.”

“I know.” That quiet certainty unsettled me more than anger would have.

Ash wasn’t furious that we’d tried to help him. He wasn’t even especially shocked that Doryu had started digging. What bothered him was more complicated than that, and when he finally spoke again, I understood why.

“What I don’t like is everyone apparently having pieces of my life spread out in front of them while I was still pretending none of it existed.”

There it was.

Not betrayal.

Exposure.

I understood that far too well.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” His answer came quickly, not dismissive but tired, and that was worse than making me fight for forgiveness. For a few seconds, he stared down the corridor toward the exit, then pushed away from the wall.

Well, no. I wasn’t sorry I cared. “Doryu found something this morning while you were with Cinder. He called Ignatius, and Ignatius put them on his plane and flew them straight out. They landed while we were at the arena.”

Ash closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, resignation had settled over his face alongside something I hadn’t seen before.