She blinks hard, shoving the emotion down, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen it.

“Show me your blocked numbers.”

I hand my phone to her, a sharp breath escaping her lips. “That’s my number… blocked.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and it cuts me down to the bone.

“I didn’t do this.” My voice is rough, desperate. “I swear to you. I don’t have a clue how this happened.”

Her eyes, wide and wounded, lift to mine.

“Show me my contact in your phone.”

I hand over my phone without hesitation, offering her full access—proof I have nothing to hide. She wastes no time navigating to my contacts, her fingers sure even though her hands are still shaking.

After a beat, she stiffens. “Alex… the number saved under my name isn’t mine.”

Ice crawls through my veins. “What? It has to be.”

She turns the screen toward me. “It’s not even a U.S. number… it’s Australian.”

I stare at the screen, my mind racing to make sense of what I’m seeing. “I didn’t change your number.”

“Well, someone did.”

A thick, stunned silence settles between us.

Magnolia’s hand tightens around the phone as she looks back up at me, her voice cracking. “I couldn’t reach you because my number was blocked. And even if I hadn’t blocked you, you still wouldn’t have been able to reach me—because whoever did this changed my number in your phone.”

The full weight of it crashes down on me like a landslide—violent, unstoppable.

Someone did this, plotted this, wanted us torn apart.

“This isn’t a tech glitch. Someone made sure we lost each other. Someone who had access to your life and your phone.”

The pieces lock into place with brutal clarity, and anger crawls under my skin, hot and sharp. “Yeah. They did.”

Her eyes widen with something that looks a lot like realization. “Someone leaked your emails to Celeste. Stands to reason they had access to your texts as well.”

“I got rid of my personal assistant. The texts would’ve happened long after she was gone.” Was I wrong about her? Was she telling the truth when she denied leaking the emails?

A sharp bitterness rises in my throat. “My texts sync to my work computer. If someone got into it, they could’ve sent the breakup text.”

Magnolia shakes her head, her brows knitting together. “To change my contact number, they would’ve needed access to your actual phone. Once they swapped the number, they controlled everything. They could send messages that looked like they came from me—and send you ones I never even wrote.”

She’s right. And the worst part? My carelessness made it easy for them.