My Bestie's Dad Likes Me Wet-Chapter 134 I Did Not Look Back.

IVIN POV

Ethan always did have terrible timing.

Some things apparently did not change.

I heard the commotion from two corridors away and I already knew before I turned the corner, something in the specific frequency of my men’s voices telling me whatever was at the entrance was not a threat they could categorize cleanly and uncategorized threats were the only kind that made them sound like that. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

I had been awake anyway, I had not slept properly since we moved everyone into this location and I was not going to pretend the reasons were entirely operational.

I turned the corner and took in the scene in one pass in a way I had trained myself to do a long time ago.

Three of my men with weapons drawn but lowered and Firecracker Nala standing between them and the door like she had appointed herself the wall.

Then Ethan.

Ethan with hands loose at his sides now, looking like the last few weeks had treated him exactly the way he deserved to be treated.

Ethan who shouldn’t be anywhere near my territory seeing as he’s yet to raise a cent of his debt.

He saw me the same moment I cleared the corner.

I watched him try to arrange his face into something neutral and I watched him fail.

Perfect.

I walked the length of the corridor without hurrying because there was no version of this that required me to hurry but I stopped at a distance that was close enough to be deliberate.

"Ivin." He said my name first. Of course he did.

Ethan had always led with his mouth, always put words in the space before he had figured out what the situation actually was, always bet on charm arriving in time to cover whatever the words had already broken.

I looked at him and said nothing.

His jaw moved. "It’s been a while."

I looked at him.

"I came for my sister." He said it with more steadiness than I expected and I gave him that, a small internal credit, because three guns and my silence in a corridor at this hour was not nothing and he was still standing straight. "That’s all. I just came for Nala."

"Ethan." Nala’s voice behind him was one specific kind of tight.

"I tracked the phone, I know that was—"

"How did you get past the perimeter?" I said it quietly.

He blinked. "What?"

"The perimeter." I said it the same way. "My men on the outside. How did you get past them."

Something shifted in his face. "I just came through the—"

"My men do not just let people through." I watched him. "So either you got past them which means you have resources I didn’t know about, or they let you through which means I have a different problem entirely." I paused. "Which one is it Ethan."

His mouth opened and closed once.

There it was.

That specific expression, the one I had watched him wear a hundred times in a different life when he had run out of the particular kind of confidence that had no business being confidence in the first place.

Ethan at the end of his material. Ethan when the charm had nowhere left to go and what was underneath it had to show itself.

I had missed that expression approximately zero times.

"I don’t know." He said it finally. "They were just gone. The outside was clear when I came in."

I held his gaze for another second and then I turned to the man on my left. "Get Matt. Tell him the east perimeter needs a full check right now."

The man moved immediately.

I turned back to Ethan and the corridor was quieter now with one less body in it and Nala was somewhere just behind his left shoulder and I was aware of her the way I was becoming increasingly and inconveniently aware of her in spaces.

"You compromised this location." I said it without much heat because heat was not necessary and I had learned a long time ago that the absence of it was more effective than the presence. "There are people in this building that have nothing to do with what you owe me and you led whatever you are running from to the door."

"I told you I wasn’t followed—"

"And I told you my perimeter was staffed." I let that land. "So one of us is wrong about what we know and it isn’t me."

Ethan looked at me and underneath the performance, underneath the jacket and the healing cut and the attempt at composure, I could see the thing I had watched build in him for years before everything ended the way it ended.

That particular combination of knowing he had done something that couldn’t be undone and not being ready to pay for it yet.

Some things really did not change.

"You can’t keep her here." He said it and nodded toward Nala. "She doesn’t have anything to do with this."

"She has everything to do with this." I said it simply. "Because you made her."

His jaw tightened and I watched him decide whether to push it and decide against it and that decision told me more than anything he had said since I walked into the corridor.

"You’re going to want to get some sleep." I said it to him like I was telling him the time.

"Tomorrow we will talk about what you owe and how you’re going to pay it and how long that is going to take." I paused. "And you’re going to tell me exactly how you got past my perimeter or that conversation is going to be very short."

I turned and walked back the way I came.

Behind me I heard Nala say his name once, low and complicated, and I heard Ethan exhale like a man who had been holding his breath since the moment he saw me.

I did not look back.