19. Emma #3
“I’ve always loved the idea of New York. His grandfather mentioned they’re expanding there next year, and there might be an opportunity in Dubai too.” Her eyes brighten. “Have you traveled much?”
“No.”
“I hope you can come with us, if we end up going.”
I wonder if she’d still be smiling like that if she knew her husband-to-be had been inside the woman standing in front of her, less than a day ago, in the very bed she just unpacked her suitcase onto.
I wonder whether Alex expects me to go too.
His wife in one room.
His mistress down the hall.
Perhaps I can make breakfast for their children.
The thought is so ugly I have to look away.
“I should get moving.” She hops off the island. “There’s going to be a press announcement soon. I want my friends hearing it from me first, not some article.”
She carries her phone away, already scrolling through contacts.
I make it to my room before anything on my face gives way, and I sink down against the closed door, knees pulled to my chest, and let myself feel the entire shape of it at once.
Trapped.
Watching him build an entire life, a wife, children someday, while I get folded into whatever hours he decides he still wants me.
Alex is gone.
Whoever that was in my room, he isn’t the man who followed me through the rain and pulled a stranger off me with his bare hands.
He was never really here to begin with, not the way I let myself believe.
That is what hurts most.
Because I thought I had found him again.
Not the twenty-two-year-old boy exactly. Neither of us is that person anymore.
But pieces.
The man who remembered my brushstrokes. The man who fastened my mother’s locket around my neck with shaking fingers. The man who let Bee destroy his furniture while pretending to despise her.
The man who held me in his sleep.
I mistook those pieces for proof.
I thought if I waited long enough, loved him carefully enough, told him the truth as soon as Mel gave me permission, we might find our way out of this.
Instead, he brought another woman home and called me the housekeeper.
I go for my bag, digging past folded clothes for the emergency cash I’ve kept. The money means I can get to Liam if I need to, right now, today, no questions asked.
My fingers find the photograph first.
The stolen one, the Hartley Christmas photo I pressed against my thigh in a kitchen a decade ago and carried through every version of the life that came after.
I set it aside and keep searching, but the envelope is gone. I check the side pocket, the inner zip, beneath the clothes, then empty the entire bag onto the bed and go through everything again. Every pocket. Every fold. Every place the cash might have slipped if I had somehow packed it badly.
But I know I didn’t.
I know exactly where I put it because it has lived in the same place for years.
The money is gone.
And instead of panic, something colder settles through me. My pulse slows as the answer begins to take shape.
And there’s only one person who’s had access to this room, this bag, this life, closely enough to take something that specific without my noticing until exactly the moment I needed it most.
Alex.
I sit back on my heels.
Months here, and I’ve never once seen an actual paycheck.
Every time I brought up my salary, he changed the subject, smooth enough that I almost never noticed him doing it.
My bank still can’t explain why my old cards stopped working the week I arrived.
I built an entire story where all of that was circumstance, the natural mess of two lives colliding badly.
It was never bad luck. The bodega, my card declining, Alex appearing when I had nowhere else to turn, none of it happened by chance. He had been behind it from the beginning.
Trapping me while he made himself gentle enough that I’d forget I was being trapped at all.
Being sweet while every soft thing he ever did to me was a leash disguised as kindness.
I have been entertainment.
That is the whole and entire truth of it, and I let myself not know that for months because the alternative was too heavy to carry while also loving him.
My chest hurts.
I pick up the photograph.
Whenever I looked at it, some piece of me remembered that once there had been a place where I belonged.
I set it down on the table.
Then I pick up my phone and throw it as hard as I can at the wall.
It hits harder than I expect, the case popping loose, and something small and rectangular skitters across the floor after it.
Dante’s card.
I remember tucking it in there weeks ago, half a promise to myself I never planned on keeping.
I stare at it.
Then pick the phone back up.
A crack splits the screen corner to corner, but it still lights up when I press the button.
I dial the number before I can talk myself out of it a second time.
Dante answers quickly.
“Belle?”
“I want out,” I tell him the second he picks up. “I want to take the offer.”
“Fucking idiot.”
I don’t know if he means Alex or me, and I don’t ask.
“My guys are already outside the building. I’ll have them bring you straight to the airport. Plane will be ready before you get there.”
“I need to see Liam first.”
“Whatever you need.”
The answer comes before I can brace for it, given without questions or conditions. My throat tightens.
“Not the front.” I press my palm flat against my eyes. “Frank and Steven are always at the front. There’s a service entrance, back alley, employees only. Can your people get to that side instead?”
“They’ll manage. Ten minutes.”
“All right.”
“Belle.”
“What?”
“Don’t do anything rash between now and then. Whatever it is, we can sort it out.”
“I think that ship has sailed.”
“Just get downstairs.”
I hang up and dial again immediately, thumb clumsy over the cracked glass.
Mel picks up on the second ring.
“Emma?”
“Mel, I?—”
The line drops before I finish the sentence.
I look down.
The crack has spread, the whole display gone black and dead in my hand.
“Great.” My voice sounds strange even to me. “Just great.”