Chapter 13
Grant
The phone call is brief. Too brief.
"Grant?" Emma's voice is small, thin. Like she's calling from the bottom of a well. "Can you—can you come over?"
"I'm on my way."
I'm already grabbing my jacket, my keys, texting my driver before I even process what I heard. It's not what she said—it's what I heard underneath. The fear. The exhaustion. The defeat.
Something happened.
The drive to her apartment takes twenty minutes, and every single one of them is agony.
I text her that I'm coming, but I get no response.
Try calling back, straight to voicemail.
My mind cycles through possibilities, each worse than the last. Is she hurt?
Sick? Did something happen with the babies?
Ever since I told her I love her—in a goddamn text, what the hell was I thinking?—and didn’t hear anything back, I knew there was something wrong. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, but I figured the best thing to do was to give her some space.
By the time we pull up outside her building, my blood pressure is through the roof.
I take the stairs two at a time and knock on her door. "Emma. It's me."
The door opens, and my heart stops.
She looks—destroyed. That's the only word for it. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face blotchy. She's wearing sweats and a T-shirt and her hair is pulled back in a messy knot, strands escaping everywhere.
"Hey," she says, and her voice cracks on the single syllable.
I'm inside before she can say anything else, my hands framing her face, searching for injuries, for explanations. "What happened? Are you hurt? Are the babies—"
"They're fine." She pulls back slightly, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm fine. Physically, anyway."
Physically. Which means emotionally, she's not fine at all.
I close the door behind me and follow her into the small living room. She sinks onto her couch and curls into the corner, pulling her knees to her chest.
The defensive posture sends alarm bells screaming through my head.
"Talk to me." I sit on the coffee table across from her, close enough to touch but keeping my hands to myself. "What happened, baby?"
For a long moment, she just stares at her hands. Then, quietly: "Victoria and I had a little chat today."
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. "What?"
"At the cafe near here." Emma's voice is flat, reciting facts. "She sat down like we were old friends. Told me all about your twenty-year history together. How she was there for every acquisition, every success. How you have patterns—a love of shiny, new things that you always get bored of."
White-hot rage floods through me. Victoria. Of course it was Victoria. I’m sure Samantha told her all about our conversation yesterday.
"She said—" Emma's voice wavers. "She said you always come back to things of real value. As opposed to me. The temporary distraction."
I'm going to kill her. I'm actually going to kill my ex-wife.
"Emma—"
"And the thing is, Grant, she wasn't wrong about everything." Emma finally looks up at me, and the pain in her eyes guts me. "I am significantly younger than you. People are going to look at us and see exactly what she implied—some naive girl who got herself pregnant to trap a rich man."
"That's not—"
"And your daughter." Her voice breaks. "Samantha already hates me. Victoria just reinforced it. I'm the horrible woman that got myself knocked up. The mistake you'll regret when the excitement wears off."
The full picture crystallizes. Samantha's hostility, Victoria's calculated cruelty. They coordinated this. Tag-teamed Emma from both sides, knowing exactly where she's vulnerable.
My hands curl into fists. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do.
I'll call Samantha first thing tomorrow, make it clear that her behavior was unacceptable.
I'll have my lawyer send a cease-and-desist to Victoria—she can't just harass you like this.
And I'll issue a statement to the press, make our relationship public on our terms. We can—"
"Stop."
The word is quiet but firm. I look at Emma, and she's staring at me with something that looks like disappointment.
"Stop trying to manage it, Grant." Her voice rises slightly. "This is my life. Our life. And you can't just—you can't fix it with lawyers and press statements and your money."
She's right, as usual. My first instinct—my only instinct—was to solve the problem. Deploy resources. Control the situation.
Exactly what she's been afraid of from the beginning.
"I'm sorry." I unclench my fists, force myself to breathe. "You're right. I just—Emma, I'm so angry right now. At Victoria, at Samantha, at myself for not protecting you from this. And when I'm angry, I want to fix things."
"I know." She sounds tired. "But you can't fix this. We can't make Victoria stop hating me. We can't force Samantha to accept us. And we definitely can't control what people think when they find out about the pregnancy."
"So what do we do?"
She looks at me for a long moment. "You could sit with me. Stop trying to solve it. Just... be here."
It's such a simple request. And somehow, it's the hardest thing she could have asked.
Because sitting with someone's pain, just being present for it without trying to make it go away—I don't know how to do that. I've spent my entire adult life solving problems. Fixing what's broken.
But Emma's not broken. She's hurt. And those are two different things.
I move from the coffee table to the couch, settling beside her. "Okay. I'm here."
She leans against me, her head on my shoulder, and we sit in silence. Outside her window, the city hums—sirens, music, the perpetual motion of New York. Inside her small apartment, we're still.
After a while, she says, "Tell me about your marriage."
"Emma—"
"I need to understand. Victoria said you have patterns. I need to know what your marriage was really like. Not the public version. The truth."
I could deflect. Could tell her it's ancient history, not relevant to us. But she's asking me to be honest. To give her something real instead of trying to manage her feelings.
"Okay." I shift slightly, my arm around her shoulders. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
So I tell her. Tell her about meeting Victoria twenty-two years ago, when I was just starting out. How she was sophisticated, connected, exactly the kind of woman who could help a kid from Queens navigate the world I was trying to break into.
"I thought I loved her," I say. "Maybe I did, at first. But looking back, I think I loved what she represented. A future that looked nothing like my past."
"What changed?"
"I started succeeding. Making real money.
And suddenly, the power dynamic shifted.
" I stare at the opposite wall, seeing the past instead of Emma's modest living room.
"Victoria was used to being the one with the connections, the one who opened doors.
When I didn't need that anymore, when I was the one with the power. .. she resented it."
Emma's quiet, listening.
"She started making these little jabs," I continue.
"Subtle at first. Questioning my judgment on deals.
Undermining my confidence in social situations.
Making sure I knew that even though I had the money, she had the taste, the breeding, the things money can't buy.
" The old anger stirs, familiar and cold.
"Every success I had, she found a way to diminish me.
Every failure, she made sure I knew she'd warned me. "
"That sounds exhausting."
"It was. But I told myself it was normal. That all marriages had these dynamics. And whenever I thought about leaving, she'd pivot. Become supportive again, remind me of everything we'd built together." I shake my head. "Classic manipulation. I just didn't see it."
"What about Samantha?"
The question makes my chest tight. "Victoria was a good mother.
Is a good mother. I won't take that away from her.
But she also used Samantha as leverage. Made it clear that if I left, I'd lose my daughter.
That she'd make sure Samantha knew the divorce was my fault.
" I close my eyes. "And she did. Even though I tried to shield Samantha from the worst of it, Victoria made sure she saw me as the villain.
The absent father who cared more about work than family. "
"Were you absent? I know we talked a little bit about it before but I want to know more."
"Yes." The admission brings up all the shame again.
"I was. I threw myself into work because it was the one place where I felt competent and successful.
Where my judgment was trusted instead of questioned.
I told myself I was providing for my family, but the truth is, I was escaping. And I let Samantha down."
Emma's hand finds mine, threading our fingers together. The simple comfort of it makes my throat tight.
"Victoria's right about one thing," I say. "I do have patterns. I did use work to avoid dealing with my marriage. I did fail as a father." I turn to look at her. "But Emma, you're not a pattern. You're not some shiny, new thing I'm going to get bored with. You're—"
I stop, searching for the right words. Words that won't sound like empty promises.
"You're so important to me," I say finally.
"You’re the first person who cares about my work because it interests her, not because of what it can do for her.
The first woman who challenges me to be better instead of making me feel lesser.
You remind me why I wanted to build something in the first place—not for the power or the status, but because I love creating things.
Solving problems. Making something from nothing. "
Tears track down her cheeks, silent and steady.