Chapter 223: A Woman Called Iris

After everything that had happened around the hidden manuscript, Freya had become suspicious of dramatic beginnings. Chapter 223 began without one. There was no threatening package at the door, no impossible phone call, and no sudden collapse at Northstar. There was only another day, another set of decisions, and one new detail that refused to fit neatly into the explanations they already had.

Iris Bell admits she was a Crosswind beta tester but says she has avoided the project for years.

Freya's first response was not fear. It was procedure. She had learned the cost of allowing a strange clue to become a conclusion before anyone checked where it came from. Derek documented the timeline, Louis asked the practical questions, and the relevant records were preserved before anyone started theorizing. Claire and Mercer were included only when the issue touched Crosswind or Mirror. Everyone else received only the information necessary to do their job.

That separation mattered. In the past, a single mystery had spread through every part of Freya's life until business meetings, meals, friendships, and even sleep felt like pieces of the same puzzle. She would not allow that again. Awake Stories still had authors waiting for edits. Sunroom still had drawings requiring approval. The Open Page still had customers who cared far more about finding a good book than about whether Freya Stone's existence could be explained by experimental narrative software.

She recognizes Freya and Claire, yet insists the tell-all manuscript was commissioned as ordinary commercial nonfiction disguised as fiction.

Louis approached the situation differently from Freya, but no longer in opposition to her. He wanted stronger security whenever uncertainty appeared. Freya wanted stronger evidence before changing behavior. Years ago those instincts might have produced an argument. Now they had learned how to combine them. Reasonable precautions could be taken without treating every possibility as fact, and an investigation could remain serious without allowing it to dictate their lives.

At dinner, Freya summarized only what they actually knew. She had begun doing that whenever a case became confusing. Facts first. Assumptions second. Questions third. Louis sometimes teased her for turning their dining table into a briefing room, but he followed the method because it worked. When a sentence sounded more dramatic than the evidence supporting it, Freya crossed it out and rewrote it in plainer language.

The exercise usually made the mystery smaller. Not harmless, necessarily, but human-sized. A stolen file became a security problem. A prediction became a probability. A strange name became a person who could be investigated. Even the unexplained anomalies around Mirror became easier to tolerate when nobody pretended to know more than the records proved.

Freya thought briefly about the woman she had been on the morning she woke in this world. That Freya had believed she already knew the ending because she had read a novel. She had expected Louis to lose everything, expected their marriage to end, and expected the so-called protagonists to win. Almost every important assumption had turned out to be incomplete.

That memory was useful now. It reminded her that knowing a story was not the same as knowing people.

Before going to bed, Freya wrote a short note in her private journal. She did not call it a chapter summary. She refused to give the hidden manuscript that satisfaction. She simply recorded what had changed, what remained uncertain, and what she intended to do next.

Then she closed the notebook. Whatever explanation eventually emerged would have to survive evidence, contradiction, and choice. Freya had no interest in an answer that required her to surrender any of those things.

For now, the next day was still hers.

The development also reminded Freya that the target of seven hundred forty chapters did not mean seven hundred forty predetermined events. If anything, the recent changes in the manuscript had demonstrated the opposite. Branches shifted when people learned, chose, refused, forgave, or simply walked away.

Mia, when told the non-confidential version, gave the most useful reaction of anyone: she asked whether the bookstore schedule needed changing. It did not. Freya smiled at the normality of the question and said they would open at the usual time.

Derek's written report ended with three possibilities rather than one conclusion. Freya approved it immediately. Certainty was satisfying, but false certainty had caused enough damage in both Stone Holdings and Crosswind.