7. Emilia
EMILIA
He beats me to the front door.
I don't know how. I walked straight down the hallway, plastic bag in hand, bare feet in his wool socks sliding on the hardwood.
I didn't stop. Didn't hesitate. Rounded the corner into the living room and there he is, spine flat against the heavy steel-reinforced door, arms crossed, filling the frame like he was poured into it.
Six foot five. Two hundred and forty pounds. Shoulders that block the deadbolt, the handle, and both sidelights.
"Move, Justice."
He doesn't move.
The fire in the woodstove has burned down to embers because he killed it for the blackout protocol.
The only light in the room comes from the blue glow of his security tablet on the kitchen counter, casting hard shadows across his face.
His jaw is granite. His eyes are cold and fixed on me with an intensity that pins my feet to the floor.
"You're not leaving."
"That's not your decision."
"It is now."
I grip the plastic bag tighter. The handles bite into my palm.
"You heard what I said. About the woman in Denver.
These people don't negotiate. They don't threaten.
They just hurt whoever is in the way and take what they came for.
My father has more money than God and absolutely zero conscience and I am telling you, if they find me here, they will not care that this is your home.
They will not care that you have guns and cameras and sensors.
They will come back with more men. They always come back with more men. "
He looks at me. Doesn't interrupt. Doesn't shift his weight. Doesn't blink.
"So please. Please let me go. I can disappear. I've done it before. I can do it again."
"No."
One word. Low. Final.
"You drove a car with a blown radiator over a mountain pass in silk and loafers.
You bought that sedan off some lot in Nevada with cash and didn't know to check the coolant before crossing eight thousand feet.
You weigh a buck ten soaking wet and you're planning to jog to the highway in my socks and hitch a ride south in the dark, in January, with two armed investigators camped in the valley below. "
Each sentence lands like a stone dropped into still water.
"That's not surviving, Emilia. That's dying slow."
"I've been dying slow my whole life." The words come out before I can catch them. Raw. Ugly. True. "At least out there it's my choice."
Something shifts in his face. Not softening. Not pity. Something deeper, more dangerous. The muscles along his jaw flex and release. His hands uncurl from his biceps and drop to his sides, and I see the way his fingers close into fists, then force themselves open again.
He takes another step. Then another. Closing the distance between us in two strides that eat up the living room floor, and suddenly he is right there.
"You walk out that door and you die on my road. In my snow. On my mountain. You think I'm going to stand here and let that happen?"
"You don't owe me anything."
"This isn't about owing."
"Then what is it about?"
He looks down at me. The blue light from the tablet catches the pale ice of his eyes and I see something there I have never seen directed at me in my entire life. Not from my father. Not from the handlers. Not from the man they tried to marry me to.
Rage. Not at me. For me.
"You're mine to protect now."
"I don't care who your father is. It doesn’t matter how many men he sends.
Who cares if he drives an army up this mountain with tanks and torches.
" He reaches down and takes the plastic bag from my hand.
Gently. His calloused fingers brush my knuckles and the contact burns.
"I will put every single one of them in the ground before I let you walk out that door and freeze to death alone. "
He sets the bag on the floor.
"I'd rather burn this whole mountain down."
My vision blurs. The tears I've been choking back for three days, for three months, for twenty-four years, break the surface all at once. They spill hot and fast down my cheeks and I can't stop them, can't swallow them, can't shove them back into the locked box where I keep everything that hurts.
I move my forehead to him. His shirt is rough against my skin. His heartbeat is steady, slow, impossibly calm for a man who just declared war on my father's empire.
His hand comes up. Hovers over the back of my head. I feel the heat of his palm before he touches me.
Then he rests it there. Heavy. Warm. Certain.
And I break apart.
I cry until there's nothing left.
Not the pretty kind. Not the delicate tears that roll down a woman's cheek in the movies.
This is the ugly, gasping, full-body kind that shakes me apart from the inside out.
Years of it. Decades. Every swallowed scream, every bitten lip, every night I pressed my face into a silk pillowcase so the housekeeper wouldn't hear me.
It all comes pouring out against the front of Justice Spanks's flannel shirt while his hand stays on the back of my head, steady as bedrock, and he doesn't say a word.
He doesn't shush me. Doesn't rock me. Doesn't pat my back or tell me it's okay. He just stands there, a wall between me and the door, between me and the cold, between me and every single thing in the world that wants to drag me back.
"Sorry."
"Don't."
I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. "I ruined your shirt."
"Got forty more."
I almost laugh. Almost. The sound catches in my throat and comes out as something between a hiccup and a sigh. My legs are rubber. The adrenaline crash from trying to leave is settling into my bones like wet cement.
"I'll stay."
He plucks up the plastic bag from the floor and walks it to the hallway without looking back, and I hear a closet door open and shut. The bag is gone. The conversation is over. That's it. That's all he needs.
He rebuilds the fire.
I observe from the couch, wrapped in the heavy wool blanket he pulled off his bed, while he kneels on the stone hearth and works kindling back to life.
His hands are sure and unhurried, cracking dry cedar into strips, building a small pyramid, blowing gently on the first orange curl of flame until it takes.
He adds two split logs. Adjusts the flue.
He settles into the leather armchair across from me. The fire paints his face in shifting gold. He doesn't reach for the tablet. Doesn't check his phone. He just sits, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, hands resting on the arms of the chair.
The silence should be uncomfortable. It isn't.
"I've never seen stars like that."
He glances at me. I'm looking past him, through the A-frame window behind his chair. The sky is absurd. Thick with light. A billion pinpricks scattered across a black so deep it looks purple at the borders.
"In LA you can see six stars on a good night. Seven if you're on the roof and the smog clears." I rest my chin on my knees. "My bedroom window faced the neighbor's security wall. Ten feet of poured concrete. My father had it built after I tried to climb the fence when I was sixteen."
Justice says nothing. But his eyes move from the fire to my face and stay there.
"He called it 'the perimeter.' Made it sound like we lived in a war zone.
I guess we did, in a way." I pick at a loose thread on the blanket.
"I had a nanny until I was eleven. Then a 'personal aide' until I was eighteen.
Then a driver who doubled as a guard. Different titles.
Same job. Make sure Emilia stays inside the box. "
The fire pops. A log shifts and sends a shower of sparks up the chimney.
"I used to read travel magazines in the bathroom because that was the only room without cameras.
National Geographic. Condé Nast Traveler.
I'd rip out pages and hide them under my mattress like contraband.
" I smile, but it's thin. "Montana. Alaska.
Patagonia. Anywhere with open land and no walls.
I had this whole folder of places I was going to go when I turned eighteen and could legally leave. "
"What happened at eighteen?"
"My father introduced me to Aiden Greaves.
Son of his business partner. The engagement was announced at my birthday party.
I found out the same time the guests did.
" I look at the fire instead of Justice because I can feel the temperature in the room change, and it has nothing to do with the woodstove.
"Twenty-four years old and I've never chosen where I eat dinner.
Never picked my own clothes. Never driven a car without an armed escort until four days ago.
One of the estate drivers taught me the basics in secret years ago, but my father never let me take the wheel past the front gates. "
The armchair creaks. I glance over. His knuckles are white on the armrests.
"You want to know my dream? It's so small it's embarrassing.
" I relax my face against my knees. "I want to walk out a door.
Any door. Walk down a street. Go into a store and buy groceries and cook a meal that I chose.
Sit on a porch and drink coffee and not wonder who's regarding me through the gate. That's it. That's the whole dream."
The fire crackles and hisses between us.
"Doesn't sound small to me."
Four words. Quiet. No gravel, no growl. Something raw underneath that he buries as fast as it surfaces. I lift my head and find his blue eyes already on me, and the look in them steals the breath right out of my lungs.
He doesn't fill the silence after. Doesn't offer advice or platitudes or the hollow comfort of "it'll be okay.
" He sits in that armchair with his white-knuckled grip on the armrests and he listens to the quiet settle between us like snowfall, and somehow that is the most validating thing anyone has ever done for me.
I keep talking. I don't mean to. The words pour out like water through a cracked dam, finding every fracture I didn't know existed.