Chapter 6 Anna
The scream tore me from sleep. It was shrill, relentless, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
My phone. It was my phone screaming on the nightstand.
My heart slammed against my ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape a cage. For a disoriented second, I was back in the car—the smell of bourbon, the blur of streetlights, the deafening silence after the thud.
My blood turned to ice.
An Unknown Number didn't mean telemarketers.
Not in my world. It meant Carter. Or his lawyer.
Or worse, one of his friends from the firm, the ones who'd cornered me at the grocery store the week after Carter’s conviction, with their questions and cold smiles.
It had been over a year since the last hang-up, but the terror was a well-worn path in my brain.
The phone kept screaming. On the fifth ring, I finally answered, my voice a sleep-ravaged croak. "Hello?"
"Anna." My name came out ragged, desperate. Not Mr. Spencer's controlled ice, this was a man drowning. "You need to come. Now. Please."
Please? Jack Spencer said Please.
"What's wrong?" I was already throwing back the covers.
"It’s Daisy. She woke up. She's... she won't stop crying. She won't let me near her. She locked her bedroom door." The words came in a rushed, helpless torrent. "I have the override code. I didn't... I was afraid that if I used it, I'd make it worse. She just keeps saying 'no.'"
The image he painted, the powerful, controlled Jack Spencer rendered helpless outside his daughter's door, cleared the last cobwebs of sleep from my mind.
"I'm on my way. Twenty minutes."
I didn't wait for a reply. I pulled on yesterday's jeans and a sweatshirt, shoved my feet into sneakers, and grabbed my keys.
The city at 5 AM was a ghost town, empty streets slick with pre-dawn dew, traffic lights blinking yellow through the gray.
My mind conjured horrors: Daisy hurt, Daisy sick, Daisy asking for her mother and spiraling into some unreachable place.
Please let her be okay. Please.
I used the private garage code and took the elevator up. The moment the doors opened, I heard it. Not the loud, dramatic wails of a tantrum, but a low, heartbroken, utterly exhausted weeping. The sound of a soul in pieces.
I followed it down the hallway.
Jack was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall opposite her door.
He was still dressed in the same black sweater and trousers from yesterday afternoon; they were rumpled now, the collar askew.
His hair stood up on one side where he'd run his hands through it.
He looked like he'd aged ten years in twelve hours.
He looked up as I approached, and the devastation in his gray eyes was absolute. He didn't speak. Just gestured weakly toward the locked door.
I walked past him and knelt on the carpet, my face close to the wood. "Daisy?" I called softly. "Sweet pea, it's Anna."
The crying hitched. A sniffle. Then a small, wet, muffled voice. "Anna?"
"Yeah, it's me. Can I come in?"
Silence. Long enough that I thought she wouldn't answer. Then—a shuffling sound. Small feet padding across carpet. A pause right on the other side of the door.
The distinct click of the lock disengaging.
The door opened a crack, revealing one swollen, red-rimmed gray eye peering through. She studied me, making sure I was real. Then it opened wider.
She stood there in her rumpled pink unicorn pajamas, her face a mess of tears, her entire small body shaking with aftershocks. She didn't say a word. She just lifted her arms.
My heart cracked open. I scooped her up, and she immediately wrapped herself around me, her legs around my waist, face buried in the hollow of my neck.
Her tears were hot against my skin. I held her tight, one hand supporting her, the other stroking her hair.
"I'm here," I murmured. "I'm here, sweet girl. It's okay."
Over her head, I saw Jack slowly push himself to his feet. He took a tentative step forward, his hand outstretched. "Daisy, honey, what's wrong? Can you tell Daddy what happened?"
At the sound of his voice, Daisy burrowed deeper into me, her small hands clutching my sweatshirt like I might disappear.
The rejection was silent but absolute.
Jack's hand dropped as if burned. He took a physical step back, his face crumpling for just a second before he locked it down. The pain that flashed across his features was so stark I had to look away.
"Let's just sit for a minute, okay?" I said, carrying her into the room. I sat in the large armchair in the corner, settling Daisy sideways in my lap, keeping her cocooned. Jack hovered in the doorway, a lost silhouette.
"You don't have to talk," I whispered to Daisy, rocking gently. "You don't have to use your words. Just breathe with me, okay? In... and out..." I took exaggerated, slow breaths, feeling her little rib cage begin to synchronize with mine.
After a few minutes, the violent trembling subsided. Her grip on my sweatshirt loosened. She was listening.
"Was it a scary dream?" I asked softly.
She nodded against my neck.
"Do you want to tell me about it? Sometimes saying it out loud makes the scary go away."
She was silent for so long I thought she wouldn't answer. Then, a tiny, shattered whisper. "Mommy."
The word hung in the dark room. I felt Jack stiffen in the doorway.
"You dreamed about your mommy?"
Another nod. A fresh, silent tear slid onto my collarbone. "Sh… Sh… She was reading. On my bed." Daisy's voice was barely there. "Like before. With the animal voices."
A shaky breath.
"Then she... she put the book down. And..." Another pause, longer. "... left. She didn't... she didn't say goodbye."
The grief in her simple description crushed the air from my lungs. It wasn't a nightmare about monsters. It was a nightmare about abandonment. The pain of knowing I didn’t save her mother, I could’ve done something. I loved Daisy, and I ached to help for reasons I just couldn’t explain to her.
"Oh, Daisy," I breathed, my own eyes stinging. "That sounds so sad and so scary."
"She left," Daisy whispered, the confusion and betrayal unbearable.
"Your mommy didn't want to leave. She loves you more than anything." I glanced up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. "You see those stars? During the day, when the sun is up, can you see them?"
Daisy shook her head slightly.
"But they're still there, right? They're always there, even when we can't see them." I pressed a gentle hand over her heart. "Your mommy's love is like that. It's stuck right here. Forever. You just can't see it with your eyes. You have to feel it with your heart."
She looked up at me then, her gaze searching mine, needing to believe it. "Always?"
"Always and always," I promised, my throat tight.
Her eyes slid past me to the doorway, to her father's silent, anguished form. She looked back at me, uncertainty flickering across her small face. Then she held out one small hand toward him.
It was an olive branch. A plea.
Jack crossed the room slowly, as if approaching a skittish animal. He knelt beside the chair, his eyes never leaving his daughter's face.
"Daddy's here," he said, his voice rough. "I'm not going anywhere. Ever."
Daisy studied him for a long moment. Her gray eyes, so much like his, searched his face, looking for something. A promise, maybe. Or proof that he meant it.
Then, slowly, she reached out. Her small hand found his larger one, fingers wrapping around two of his. She held us both, linking us in her tiny, powerful grasp.
"Can you stay?" she whispered, looking from him to me. "
"Of course," I said.
"Always," he echoed, the word a vow.
We stayed like that until her breathing evened out and her grip went slack in sleep. Gently, I extracted myself, laying her down and pulling the covers up. Jack remained kneeling, watching her, his profile etched with pain in the dim light.
We crept out, leaving the door ajar. In the hallway, the exhaustion hit me. I leaned against the wall.
Jack stood a few feet away, his posture rigid. He stared at the closed door. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable.
Jack opened his mouth, but spoke nothing and closed it.
His face showed he was going through many stages of thought.
The obvious 'thank you' that should have come, that any normal person would have said, was stuck somewhere in the battle between his gratitude and his pride.
Between admitting he needed my help and maintaining that I was just the employee.
Finally, he spoke, not looking at me. His voice was low, gruff. "You got her calm." It wasn't gratitude. It was a stark observation, an admission of his own failure.
"She just needed to feel safe," I said quietly.
"A thing I could not provide." The self-loathing was back, sharp with frustration.
"It's different," I offered, treading carefully. "I'm not... I'm not the one she's afraid of losing. It's less loaded."
He turned his head then, his gray eyes piercing. "Don't." The word was a warning. "Don't therapize me. Or her. Just... do the job."
The rebuff was cold, a deliberate retreat behind the employer-employee wall. It stung more than it should have. I'd just held his daughter through a nightmare, and he couldn't even let me acknowledge the obvious.
But I understood it. Accepting my help was one thing. Accepting my insight was a vulnerability too far.
The guilt I carried surged up, needing to say something. "Jack... about Elena. I'm so—"
"Stop." He cut me off, his voice a whip-crack.
He took a step closer, and I saw the conflict warring in his eyes, the need to talk battling the need to hate.
He looked away. "If you're going to be here.
.. around my daughter... You should know.
Not about the accident, but who she was.
So you don't fill in the blanks with your own ghosts. "
He turned and walked toward the living room. I followed.
He stood at the window, his back to me, a silhouette against the pre-dawn gray. For a long moment, he said nothing. I thought maybe he'd changed his mind.
Then: "She was a kindergarten teacher. Did I mention that?"
I shook my head and realized he couldn't see me. "No."
"She started a foundation. Bright Pages. Gave books to kids in underserved schools. Kids who wouldn't have them otherwise." His voice was robotic, recited, like he was reading from a company brief. "She believed..." He paused. "She believed in fixing broken things. Making them useful again."
The words 'broken things' revolved around my head. Was that how he saw me? A broken thing Elena would have tried to fix? Or was he talking about himself?
"I'm shutting it down. The foundation. The board sends reports. I can't open them. It's... noise." He swallowed hard. "The last event she asked me to attend, I was overseas. A merger. I told her... next time."
The regret was a living thing in the room. "You can't—” I tried to swallow the knot in my throat from seeing his grief, “You just can’t blame yourself for that," I said softly.
He spun around, his eyes blazing. "Why not? Everyone else seems to get a pass for their choices that night. Why shouldn't I examine mine?" It was an accusation, sharp and directed.
He looked away, the fire dying, replaced by weary defeat. "I live in the 'maybes.' Maybe if I'd been here more. Maybe if I'd..." He trailed off, shaking his head.
He was silent for a long moment, staring out at the lightening sky. I could almost see him wrestling with a decision.
"Daisy should see it." He turned to face me. "The foundation. Before I shut it down. She should know it existed. That her mother built something that mattered."
A pause.
"You'll take her." Not a question. An order, but one layered with something painful and raw.
The request was an immense trust. "Of course," I said. "Whenever you want."
He gave a sharp nod. "Tomorrow. I'll arrange it."
The sky was lightening to cold steel blue. I needed to leave, to shower, to process what had just happened. But Jack stood there, not blocking the path physically but emotionally, like he was trying to force something out.
"You handled it," he said finally, the words gritted out like they were costing him. "With Daisy. You handled it... adequately."
It was the coldest, most grudging praise I'd ever received. It was also, from Jack Spencer, a monumental admission. He couldn't bring himself to say thank you, but he had acknowledged my usefulness.
I just nodded, accepting the twisted compliment. I turned and left, the click of the service door echoing in the silent penthouse.
In my car, the dawn finally breaking, my phone buzzed.
Jack
Tomorrow. 10 AM. Our driver will take you and Daisy to Bright Pages. No need to return today, I’ve got it covered.
No 'thank you.' No, ‘I appreciate it.' Just instructions.
I sat as dawn broke fully over the city, turning everything gold. My hands were still shaking from adrenaline, from exhaustion, from the weight of what I'd just witnessed.
Jack Spencer, the man who'd stalked me for nine months, had called me at 5 AM. Not to threaten. Not to surveil. But because his daughter needed me, and he didn't know what else to do.
And I'd come running.
The hooks weren't just in my heart anymore. They were in his too, whether he'd admit it or not. We were bound together now, not by Elena's death, but by Daisy's healing. And I had no idea if that would save us or destroy us both.