Kyle didn't expect the file to make him feel like this.
It arrived just after noon—encrypted, labeled plainly with a name that now carried more weight than it should have.
Kate A.
He dismissed the meeting he was supposed to attend and locked his office door. The city hummed outside the glass walls, indifferent and alive, while something cold settled deep in his chest. This was information. Facts. He told himself that as he opened the file.
The first pages were clinical.
Age. Education. Employment history.
St. Vincent's Private Hospital—Registered Nurse. Trauma ward. Night shifts. Commendations for patient care. A note from a supervising physician praised her "exceptional empathy under pressure."
Kyle closed his eyes briefly.
He remembered that empathy. The way she had spoken softly when pain made him sharp and unkind. The way she hadn't flinched when he woke screaming from dreams he couldn't remember but felt everywhere.
He scrolled.
The next section was titled Domestic Incident Report.
His jaw tightened.
It began subtly. Almost harmlessly.
Her former boyfriend—name redacted for privacy—had been described as "intensely attentive" in the early stages of their relationship. The kind of man who framed control as concern. Who checked in often. Who wanted to know where she was, who she was with, why her phone was silent for more than a few minutes.
Isolation came next.
He discouraged her friendships. Told her coworkers were "too interested" in her. Accused her of being naive, too trusting, too friendly. Slowly, methodically, he cut away her world until he was the only constant.
Kyle's fingers curled against the desk.
The report detailed how the accusations escalated—how he began accusing her of affairs with doctors, patients, even colleagues she barely spoke to. His jealousy wasn't fueled by evidence, only by suspicion. By possession.
A psychologist's note described him as exhibiting sociopathic tendencies—a pattern of manipulation, emotional volatility, and escalating aggression.
Kate had tried to leave.
That sentence lodged itself painfully in Kyle's chest.
She had planned it quietly. Saved small amounts of money. Looked for apartments. But fear anchored her in place. Threats followed her attempts—subtle at first, then explicit. He promised to ruin her career. Promised no one would believe her.
Promised to hurt her.
She never dared to escape.
Kyle scrolled further, his breathing slow, controlled.
He made her quit her job.
Told her that working nights was "inviting temptation." That the hospital was full of men waiting to take advantage of her. He framed it as protection. As love.
Without work, she lost independence. Without independence, she lost herself.
The report did not linger on the worst parts. It didn't need to.
It stated plainly that she was physically and sexually assaulted over an extended period. That she was kept inside the apartment for days at a time. That contact with the outside world was monitored, restricted, punished.
Kyle stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor.
He walked to the window, but the city blurred. His reflection stared back at him—controlled, composed, furious in a way he had never allowed himself to be before.
She had stopped speaking near the end.
The phrase was clinical. Detached.
But Kyle understood what it meant.
She became compliant. Quiet. Dissociative. Medical professionals described her state as "psychologically withdrawn," her affect flat, her responses delayed. It was as though she had learned that existing without resistance was safer than trying to survive.
She had become—according to one note—"present in body, absent in mind."
A neighbor had noticed.
Late nights. Sounds through the walls. Bruises she tried to hide when she collected the mail. One evening, the neighbor heard screaming—cut short too abruptly.
They called the police.
Kyle read the final pages slowly.
Her boyfriend was arrested. Charges were filed. But when officers found Kate, she was unresponsive. Disoriented. Unable to answer basic questions. She did not identify herself. Did not recognize where she was.
She had been taken first to the emergency department.
Then transferred.
Hollowridge Mental Health Institute.
Kyle closed the file.
The silence in his office felt heavy, oppressive.
He saw her again as she had been in the hospital with him—steady hands, warm eyes, gentle strength. The woman who had anchored him through his own brokenness had been unraveling quietly all along.
And no one had seen it.
A sharp, unfamiliar emotion twisted through his chest.
Anger—yes. At the man who had done this to her. At a system that noticed too late. At the world that let someone like her disappear behind closed doors.
But beneath that—
Guilt.
Kyle had been surrounded by power, by protection, by people who fought over him even in grief. And Kate—Kate had been fighting alone.
He returned to his desk and picked up the phone.
"Emily," he said, voice low but steady. "I want updates daily. Any changes in her condition. Any requests from Hollowridge—anything at all, you bring it to me."
There was a pause. "Understood."
He hung up and sat back slowly, the weight of the truth pressing into him.
This wasn't curiosity anymore.
This was connection—unwanted, undeniable.
The girl on the hill wasn't a mystery to be solved.
She was a wound the world had left open.
And for reasons he didn't yet understand, Kyle knew one thing with terrifying clarity:
He would not turn away again.