Chapter 4: The Ghosts Of Memories

The morning after my first meeting with Zane leaves a sour weight in my chest, like a nightmare I can’t fully get over. I was going over flower arrangements with Leah who was a bit chatty, but her words went right through my ears. I nodded when I was supposed to, smiled when I should. Acted like everything is okay. Gave Zane’s pretense a run for his money.

Because how could he not remember me?

Was it perhaps a trauma response? Like when you want to forget something so bad you manipulate your brain into forgetting it. I could understand that. But the accident-induced amnesia storyline? I won’t fall for that.

I closed the binder and excused myself. I stepped out into the balcony of the hotel suite that I was lodging at during the planning period. The skyline stretched out in the distance, a wide expanse above Manhattan. It was a thousand feet away from who I used to be.

It had been five years.

Five years since I set fire to my old life with one desperate choice and helplessly watched everything I’d built burn to ashes.

##

Five Years Ago…

It was raining that night. It wasn’t so heavy, just enough to smudge the ink of the letter inside the envelope I was grasping. I had tried everything – calling, messaging, sending emails. Zane didn’t respond. My voicemail was succinct and brief. Zane, you need to listen to me. Something’s going down. I found something. Please. Don’t do that meeting tomorrow. You have to get out of there. Don’t trust– The voicemail cut off.

I tried again and again. Nothing

I don’t think Zane had listened to it. He would’ve responded. So I panicked and sent him a brief email. I attached all the proof and documents to the email, apologized for the short notice and I told him that he was being set up and he should get out while he can.

With trembling fingers, I shoved the letter into his mail slot outside his apartment. It was an old fashioned method, but at least I tried. I didn’t want him blindsided. I wanted him to hear the truth from me. The truth about his family’s foundation and what they did behind the scenes. The ghost beneficiaries, falsified grants, shell accounts.

The USB drive was in my palm as I stood in the parking lot of an empty car garage. My breath was fogging with the night air my thick cardigan barely from shivering. I had gone through the files in the drive ten time. Emails, contracts, coded, encrypted bribes. It was the kind of corruption that could bring people down – both the corporations involved, and the person who dared expose it.

Zane’s name wasn’t on the documents. But he was close to the men who were. And although Zane was smart, very brilliant, he trusted too easily. Especially when it came to loyalty to his family and their legacy. Loyalty to his father.

Zane was unreachable, and I was desperate. So I did the next thing I could think of. I handed over all the proof to a journalist I trusted so that they could oust the criminal billionaires and corporate dynasties. I thought I could save him by doing so. And someone was on my trail, so I had to hasten up because they could silence me forever.

I had to do something. And I did. A rash decision, maybe. But it was for Zane.

I just didn’t realize how late I already was.

My father had helped me to dig up all the evidence. He handed it over to my in a coffee shop, hands trembling over a cup of tea. “Are you sure about this? You could get into trouble. If they find out that it is you… they don’t play fair.”

“They don’t deserve to play at all,” I whispered back. I took his fingers in mine and tried to smile reassuringly. “Daddy, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

His grey brows tightened even more. “And Zane?”

“I’ll explain everything to him. Hopefully he will understand.”

He sighed deeply. “Amara, this can ruin your relationship with him.”

“I know,” I admitted. “But I can’t keep this a secret from him. He will understand.”

Zane didn’t understand. Hours later, when everything had leaked, he gave an impromptu press statement. Nestled in my bed, clinging to a cup of coffee and distracting myself with N*****x, I received a news alert with Zane’s name in bold.

Zane stood under a sea of microphones, his jaw tight. Lights and clicks from cameras and hushed paparazzi voices accompanied him. Anger and fury radiated through every inch of him. His voice was cold, eyes even colder. “This cowardly act of betrayal was orchestrated by someone very close to me. Someone I trusted and let into my house, into my life. Whoever leaked these lies against my father and everything he has worked for over the years will be held accountable. I won’t stop until they are.”

My blood ran cold. He knew it was me. And it didn’t matter that I had done it for him. In his eyes, this was the biggest form of betrayal.

I grabbed my jacket to take a walk. Anything you distract myself, to forget the press statement that Zane gave the media. I was out for about 30 minutes when I heard sirens of tire trucks and an ambulance… headed towards the house I shared with my dad.

I ran as fast as my feet could carry me. By the time I reached the house, flames were licking the night sky. The air was thick with smoke. Neighbors stood on the sidewalk, watching in horror.

“No!” I cried, pushing past spectators. “No! My dad… he’s inside! No!”

Someone grabbed me and pulled me back. I fought against them, screaming. Fighting. Kicking. Two burly men came to hold me down. All I could do was scream as I watched our house burn to ashes. Our home, our photos, our letter, our memories, our years together as struggling immigrants. And the man who had given me everything. The man who always stayed by my side.

Gone. Just like that.

I ran, ran until I could no longer feel my legs. I stopped by at a bus station miles away, my body coated with soot and blood. I could still remember the pungent choking scent of smoke in my lungs, the tears I buried deep in my heart. I became someone else that night. The girl I had been – Zane Blackwood’s fiancée – died that night, along with her father.

And the blood – there was lots of it. That night, the next day, two days later. I never told anyone about how I doubled over in the bathroom of a motel room, hands pressed to my lower abdomen as pain ripped through me. I bit down on my own screams because crying would make it real. I couldn’t afford real.

That was a loss I buried so deep that I forgot how to grieve it.