She never had the kind of clean paperwork trail private investigators loved.
No mortgage.
No active social media.
No company website.
Just shifts, bus cards, church rosters, and people who knew her by showing up.
‘I thought you disappeared,’ Isaiah said.
She gave him a soft, almost amused look.
‘No.
I just got ordinary.’
He told her about Indianapolis, then college on scholarships and side jobs, then the real-estate internship that taught him how buildings translated into leverage.
He told her how terror had fueled half his ambition, how hunger had made him worship stability until he confused money with safety.
He told her that every success felt thinner than it was supposed to, that he had searched for her for five years because the only truly generous act he had ever received had come from a nine-year-old girl with a red ribbon and no reason to choose him.
Victoria listened without interrupting.
