Chapter 6 - What Emma Had Been Hiding
Three months changed everything.
Kolov remained in custody.
Mercer accepted a plea agreement.
Vale faced federal charges.
Vincent surrendered his law license and agreed to testify.
Anton entered witness protection after providing information that dismantled what remained of Kolov’s organization.
The buildings Mercer had attempted to seize were returned or transferred to protected ownership structures.
Margaret Carter received treatment at one of the best cancer centers in New York.
Noah entered an advanced rehabilitation program.
And Emma recovered.
Mostly.
The bruises disappeared.
The ribs healed.
The nightmares took longer.
She refused to return to work as my housekeeper.
I was relieved.
Instead, Lucia offered her a position helping manage the charitable foundation our mother had established years earlier.
Emma accepted only after negotiating her salary downward.
Lucia immediately changed it back.
They argued for two hours.
Lucia won.
I stayed out of it.
My relationship with Emma became something difficult to name.
We drank coffee sometimes.
We talked.
That sounds ordinary.
For me, it wasn’t.
People usually wanted something when they sat across from Dominic Castellano.
Money.
Access.
Fear.
Emma wanted nothing.
One evening, I found her standing beside the grand piano.
“You polish that thing for fourteen months and now you’re afraid to touch it?”
She smiled.
“I didn’t know anyone played.”
“My mother.”
“She taught you?”
I nodded.
“Play.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t in years.”
Emma sat beside me on the bench.
“Then you’re overdue.”
I played badly.
She laughed.
I played better.
She stopped laughing.
When the final note faded, she whispered, “That was beautiful.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“It was to me.”
I looked at her.
Something shifted.
Then Noah rolled into the room.
“Am I interrupting?”
Emma jumped away.
“No.”
“Yes,” I said.
Noah grinned.
He and I had become friends in the strangest possible way.
He was one of the few people who openly mocked me.
Apparently surviving catastrophic injury at nineteen removes your fear of intimidating billionaires.
“I need Emma,” he said.
“For?”
“Secret.”
Emma narrowed her eyes.
“What secret?”
Noah handed her an envelope.
She opened it.
Then covered her mouth.
Inside was a photograph.
Her father.
Margaret.
Emma as a child.
Noah as a baby.
The photograph Emma believed had burned.
“How?”
Noah looked at me.
Emma turned slowly.
“You?”
I shrugged.
Marco had spent weeks contacting relatives, photographers, former neighbors, and cloud-storage companies.
We reconstructed nearly six hundred family photographs.
Emma began crying.
“You did this?”
“They’re photographs.”
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“They’re my life.”
I didn’t know what to say.
So Emma did something neither of us expected.
She hugged me.
Not cautiously.
Not politely.
She wrapped both arms around me.
I froze.
Then slowly held her.
Noah quietly rolled away.
That night, something ended.
May you like
And something else began.
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