Page 125 of Knot Unwanted: Part One

I settle into one of the chairs before his desk, waiting. Ren pretends to work for exactly seven minutes before his hands still over the keyboard.

“You should be in your office,” he says without looking up.

“Who cares. What’s the point of being the boss if I can’t use the perks?” I lean back, studying him. The shadows under his eyes aredarker today, his normally perfect posture rigid with tension. “What did you find?”

His jaw works. “Who said I was looking?”

I just stare at him until he sighs, turning his monitor so I can see. “Nothing concrete. Yet.” A map fills the screen, dotted with red markers. “These are all the private academies within a hundred-mile radius. All are legitimate.” He goes silent, fingers drumming against his desk.

I lean forward, examining the pattern of red dots. “Any matches to the Academy’s methods? The conditioning we’ve seen in Hailey?”

“None.” The monitor swivels away from me, but the lie hangs heavy in the air between us. I’ve known Ren long enough to recognize when he’s protecting me from something. And right now, every instinct I have is screaming that there’s more. So much more.

“And the accident?”

“Still no official reports.” Ren’s scent spikes with frustration. “Someone’s covering their tracks. Professional cleanup crew, probably. The kind with enough influence to access traffic cameras.”

I let the words settle between us, studying Ren’s face. There’s something in the way he says it—like he’s speaking from experience rather than speculation. The precise terminology. The understanding of procedure.

“How do you know all this?” I ask carefully.

Ren’s fingers still on his keyboard. For a moment, the only sound is the quiet hum of the staff working in the cubicles outside the door.

“Because it’s what they do,” he says finally, voice flat. “Clean up their messes. Make problems disappear.”

“They?”

His jaw tightens. “People with money. Power. The kind who think they can own others.”

Something clicks in my mind—a half-formed suspicion I’ve carried for years. “Like your family’s charity work?”

The temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees. Ren goes completely still, that eerie stillness that always reminds me he wasn’t born to this life of business meetings and quarterly reports.

“It was never a charity.” His voice comes out like shards of ice. “That was just the cover.”

I wait, but he doesn’t elaborate. The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken truths. Finally, I clear my throat.

“Ren…if your family has connections to this world—if they might know something about this Academy?—”

“No.” The word cuts through the air like a blade.

“We need information. Resources. Anything that could help us protect Hailey.”

His laugh is bitter, barely more than an exhalation. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“Then help me understand.” I lean forward, trying to catch his eye. “Whatever happened with your family, whatever made you leave—I know it was bad. But Finn and Hailey need us. All of us. At full strength.”

“You think my family would help?” Now he does look at me, and the coldness in his eyes makes me want to flinch back. I don’t. “You think they’d helpme?”

I blink, brows furrowing slightly. “Ren, you’re their flesh and blood?—”

“No. I’m Ironwood now. I’ve been Ironwood since you bit me and Stone back in college. Remember that, Jax?”

Of course, I remember that. It was the first time I felt like I had the brothers I’ve always wanted.

“They don’t want anything to do with me, Jax. Not after I destroyed everything.”

The implications of that statement make me blink. But before I can process it fully, Ren continues.

---