Page 32 of Hawk
My vision narrowed, a red haze crawling around the edges. “The ones helping him collect the photos?”
Deviant gave a slow nod. “Possibly. Or they work for the buyers. The black market collectors.”
“What’s the buyer list look like?” Maverick asked.
“Still tracing the backdoors. But the seller? That I got.”
I crossed my arms and leaned forward, voice hard. “Who?”
Deviant spun the screen around. “Name’s fake. But the IP that uploaded the files bounced through three VPNs and a Tor server before hitting a cloud storage address traced to a house outside Nashville. Belongs to a shell corporation, but guess whose name showed up on an internal transfer request last year?”
He clicked, and a face appeared.
My blood turned molten.
Darren Thomas.
Ellen’s ex.
I gripped the back of the chair so hard I heard the wood creak. My molars ground together, rage clawing up my spine. It wasn’t enough that he’d hurt Ellen—he had to drag Gemma into it. Put her in his crosshairs like she was nothing but leverage.
“When I saw him, I went back to Ellen’s phone and pulled more off her cloud backup. Stuff that hadn’t synced to her visible folders. Like texts she’d deleted.”
The words hit hard. I didn’t move. Just stared at the lines of text now filling the laptop’s display.
Deviant clicked to enlarge the file. “They’re all from her ex.”
I took a step forward. The room fell into a tense hush as the first message came into focus.
Asshole Ex
You don’t get to walk away. You think you can just erase me and start over? I was the only one who made you feel beautiful. You think someone else will lie to you like that?
Another pinged up as Deviant scrolled.
Asshole Ex
You don’t need other people telling you you’re beautiful. That’s just fishing for attention.
Then another.
Asshole Ex
You should be grateful I overlooked the things other guys would’ve walked away from. That’s how much I love you.
You need me. Other men wouldn’t have looked twice at you. I didn’t care about all that. I chose you anyway.
You owe me, Ellen. I stuck around when no one else would have. Don’t forget who made you feel wanted.
There’s a difference between love and settling. You were lucky I never made you feel the difference.
I overlooked a lot because I loved you. That kind of patience doesn’t come around twice.
You were never easy to love. I just never said it out loud.
The more I read, the harder my jaw locked, my pulse thudding behind my eyes.
The language was textbook control. Possessive. Threatening. The kind of psychological warfare that left invisible bruises.
