Chapter 4

The Montgomery Name

Elena's hand trembles as she holds the phone closer, and I read the headline three times before the words settle into something my brain can actually process.

EXCLUSIVE: Isabella Voss Speaks Out On The Frost Scandal, "I Always Knew Amara Wasn't Who She Claimed To Be.

"Play it." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Elena, play the video."

She hesitates, glancing at Julian, but I hold out my hand until she finally presses play and turns the screen toward me.

Isabella fills the frame, seated in some glossy studio, her hair perfectly curled, a sympathetic frown arranged carefully on her face like she rehearsed it in a mirror.

"I feel terrible for Amara, truly," Isabella says, dabbing at a dry eye with a tissue. "But I think it's important the public understands the full picture. I've known for months that something wasn't right in that marriage. The late nights, the secrecy, the way she'd disappear for hours with no explanation. I tried to warn Noah, but he loved her too much to see it."

Julian makes a sound low in his throat, somewhere between a growl and disbelief.

"She's rewriting the entire story," Elena says. "She's making herself the concerned friend and you the villain."

On the screen, the interviewer leans forward. "Do you believe the allegations made at the gala have merit?"

Isabella's expression turns solemn. "I can't speak to whose child that baby was. What I can say is that a woman who truly loves her husband doesn't need to hide things from him. I never had secrets from Noah. Not once."

I press the button to stop the video before I have to hear another word, my hand shaking harder now than it was a moment ago.

"She orchestrated this." I look up at Julian. "The man at the gala, the timing, all of it. This interview didn't happen an hour after the story broke by accident. She had it ready."

"I agree." Julian's voice has gone hard, all the softness from earlier replaced by something sharper. "But proving it is going to take more than instinct, Amara. We need evidence."

"Then get it." The words come out with more force than I intend, and both Julian and Elena go still, watching me. I take a breath, forcing my voice back into something calmer. "I'm sorry. I just, I can't keep being the woman everyone pities in headlines. I won't."

The door opens again before either of them can respond, and this time it isn't Elena or a nurse.

It's my father.

Richard Montgomery fills the doorway the way he fills every room he's ever walked into, tall and silver haired, his tailored coat still damp from rain, his face carved from the same controlled steel that built an empire twice the size of the Frost Corporation. He doesn't say anything at first. He just looks at me, really looks, taking in the hospital gown, the IV line, the hollow exhaustion I know is written all over my face.

"Dad." My voice breaks on the single syllable.

He crosses the room in three long strides and gathers me carefully into his arms, mindful of the wires and the bruises, and for the first time in four years I let myself collapse into someone who has never once made me feel small.

"I'm here," he says, his voice rough. "I should have come sooner. I should never have let my pride keep me away this long."

"It wasn't your fault." I press my face into his shoulder. "It was mine. I didn't listen."

"You loved someone." He pulls back just enough to look at me, his hands framing my face the way he used to when I was a little girl scraped up from falling off my bike. "That was never a crime, Amara. Choosing to stay in a marriage that was killing you slowly, that's the only mistake you made, and it ends today."

Elena quietly excuses herself to give us privacy, tugging a reluctant Julian toward the door with her, though Julian pauses at the threshold.

"I'll start pulling everything I can on Isabella," he says. "And Amara, the Montgomery legal team is already assembled downstairs. Your father called them the moment his plane landed."

My eyes snap to my father. "You did what?"

"I did what any father should have done years ago." He sits carefully on the edge of the bed, taking my hand in both of his. "Amara, I've stayed out of your marriage because you asked me to, because you wanted to prove you could build a life that had nothing to do with our family's money or name. And I respected that, even when it broke my heart to watch you disappear into that penthouse like a ghost of yourself."

"I didn't want him to think I was using our family," I whisper. "I wanted him to love me for me."

"I know." His thumb brushes over my knuckles, gentle. "But sweetheart, hiding who you are never once made that man treat you better. It only made it easier for him to treat you like you had nothing behind you. No one to answer to. No consequences."

The truth of that lands heavier than I expect, settling into my chest like a stone.

"The Montgomery Group isn't just successful, Amara." My father's voice takes on the measured, deliberate cadence I remember from board meetings I used to sit in on as a teenager, back when I still dreamed of one day running the company myself. "We hold controlling interests in three of the five banks that finance Frost Corporation's overseas expansion. We sit on the board of two firms that supply half his shipping contracts. Noah Frost has spent four years building an empire without ever realizing the woman warming his bed could unmake half of it with a single phone call."

I stare at him, something cold and clarifying moving through me. "You're saying I could hurt him."

"I'm saying you never had to hide," my father corrects gently. "You never had to shrink yourself to make that man comfortable. The Montgomery name was never a burden for you to carry in secret. It was a gift I gave you, and it's time you finally accepted it."

For the first time since I woke up in this bed, something other than grief moves through me. It's small, and it's fragile, but it's real.

"I want to come home." My voice doesn't waver this time. "Not to hide. To rebuild."

My father's eyes soften, and for just a moment I see the man who used to lift me onto his shoulders at company picnics, who cried harder than my mother did at my wedding even as he shook Noah's hand and wished him well.

"Then come home," he says. "Take whatever time you need to heal, and when you're ready, there's a place waiting for you at Montgomery Group. Not as my daughter. As an equal."

I open my mouth to answer when the machine beside my bed lets out a soft, insistent beep, and a nurse hurries in, her expression shifting the moment she checks the monitor, her professional calm cracking just slightly at the edges.

"Mr. Montgomery, I need you to step outside for a moment," she says, already reaching for the call button on the wall. "We're seeing some irregularities we need to address immediately."

My father's hand tightens around mine, and behind the nurse's shoulder, through the small window in the door, I catch a glimpse of a figure standing frozen in the hallway.

Tall. Dark haired. Still dressed in the same tailored suit from the boardroom he refused to leave.

Noah.