Chapter 56
EMMA
Emma leaves Tom’s house and heads to her car. The air is sharp, wet with drizzle, and it stings her cheeks as she walks down the quiet Bristol street. Streetlights stretch shadows long and thin across the pavement; her heels click like punctuation marks in a nervous sentence.
She slides into her car, slams the door, and exhales. For a moment she grips the steering wheel as if holding on to something solid might stop her thoughts from spilling out. Then she starts the engine and pulls away, the headlights carving pale paths through the mist.
Pete’s. That’s where she needs to be. Keep moving. Movement stops the panic from catching up.
Her mind loops through the conversation with Tom.
He looked shattered, nervous, suspicious — and with good reason.
But she had to push him not to call the police and join her.
Pete could be in real danger, and she couldn’t let him stall behind his cautious empathy. There isn’t time for careful anymore.
The car hums beneath her as she drives through the half-empty streets, and her thoughts slide backward, uninvited.
She hadn’t been born into desperation. The Christiansons were comfortable — wealthy, respected, the sort of family who sent smug Christmas cards with matching sweaters and charitable donations listed underneath their signatures.
Her father, Leonard, was an investment adviser — charming, persuasive, and entirely allergic to regulation.
When the investigation came, it came quietly: a handful of frozen accounts, whispered settlements, a “career pause” that became permanent.
Emma was seventeen when she realised money was oxygen and that her family was learning to live without it.
She had to learn the vocabulary of survival: networking, embellishing, bluffing. By her late twenties she was consulting for small charities — raising funds, writing proposals, making people feel seen. She was very good at making people feel seen.
What she was really doing was creating ghost projects — grants that never existed, bank accounts in names that sounded like hope. Little paper worlds where money could go to rest.
It wasn’t greed, she told herself. It was necessity. Just creative accounting with better stationery.
Until one of the charities folded. Until the auditors arrived. Until Fiona Harrow — her bright-eyed, ambitious colleague, Fiona — cut a deal and handed Emma’s name over like a gift.
Prison was less dramatic than she’d imagined. Quieter. Colder. The kind of place that teaches you about stillness and rage in equal measure. She served twenty-four months.
She didn’t mean to find Fiona again after her release. It just happened — London’s small that way. She remembered seeing her at a café near Borough Market, ordering tea like nothing had ever happened. They’d argued, loudly, about responsibility and betrayal.
A few days later, Fiona’s house burned down. Fiona’s husband had died. The police called it arson. And because the universe has a taste for irony, Emma Christianson became the name whispered in connection to another crime.
There was some evidence — circumstantial at best — that pointed the finger at Emma. But enough to get her charged. And more than enough people to testify against her.
She has an alibi though. Well, nearly.
She checks the date on her phone as she so regularly does.
Thirteen days left.
Thirteen days until her trial begins. That’s how long she has until she has to get the evidence to prove her innocence.
And that’s why she needed to find Chris.
Emma’s relationship with Chris had always been a storm disguised as siblinghood — equal parts devotion and destruction.
They loved each other in a way that only children of chaos can: fiercely, possessively, with too much history packed into too little space.
Emma was the hurricane, always scheming, always moving too fast; Chris was the still water she kept disturbing.
He grounded her, but he also infuriated her — that maddening moral compass, that quiet disappointment he never had to say out loud.
They hadn’t spoken for four years. Chris didn’t even know she’d been in prison until long after she’d served her time. But desperation has its own gravity, and one night, when her bank account was gasping, Emma found herself driving to find him.
She told herself it was about reconnection — making peace, rebuilding bridges — but she already knew Chris had money.
Real money. Enough to help her. Enough to make things easier.
For weeks she’d watched from a distance, sitting in her car down the road, tracking the rhythm of his life.
The comings and goings. The laughter. The lights on late.
The house that wasn’t even his, though he moved through it like it was. James and Pete’s house.
That night, the rain came down in slick, silver sheets.
She knocked on the door and a young man with wary eyes answered.
Pete. Chris wasn’t home. She didn’t push her luck — just smiled, said she was his sister, and accepted the awkward invitation inside.
They talked briefly, long enough for her to learn names and see the dynamic, long enough to feel the ghost of her brother in the air.
That was the night of the fire.
When Chris found out about her visit and reached out, it was through a cautious text.
Then another. Then a string of messages that sounded half-loving, half-coded.
They were rebuilding something fragile. He’d mentioned CCTV cameras once — being watched by a thousand eyes.
Emma hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now…
it felt like the key. If she could prove she was there that night, talking to Pete, she’d have her alibi.
She told the police about being at the house. They apparently tried to contact Pete a few times, but he never responded. Chris was her best way in. Her only chance to convince Pete. Or get the video evidence that she was there that night.
Then Chris disappeared.
No trace. No explanation. Just gone, like smoke. As was her one chance at proving she didn’t light that match
Since then, she’d tried everything. Messaging Pete, begging him to help.
Pleading that she only needed him to say they’d spoken that night, to confirm she’d been there before the fire started.
But Pete was scared. He said James would never allow it, didn’t want him involved, didn’t want any footage shared.
If only James were out of the picture.
Now, as she drives through the quiet streets, that conversation replays over and over. If she can’t find Chris, she needs Pete. Or at least, she needs James out of the way. Without him, she might finally get to the truth — and to her freedom.
Yes, she wants to find her brother. Of course she does. He’s blood, memory, unfinished business. But beneath that—beneath the guilt and nostalgia—there’s a deeper truth she can’t escape.
She doesn’t just want her brother.
She needs her alibi.
And time is running out.