LOGINEmma's POVThe heavy oak door clicks shut behind us.I do not sit down. I stand behind my desk, my hands flat on the polished wood, my weight forward. Lucas remains standing near the leather chair opposite me. He is holding his plastic lanyard in his right hand, his thumb sliding back and forth over the embossed logo of my company."Lucas.""Yes, Ms. Bellamy?"He looks completely relaxed. His posture is loose, his head tilted slightly to the side, his mouth curved in the same polite, helpful expression he wears when he is delivering a courier package to my desk."You processed the residential security invoices for my apartment building last week...""I did," he says. "They were routed to my queue on Tuesday morning. I checked the line items against the vendor contract and approved the payment. Is there an issue with the amount?""No," I reply. "There is an issue with the access."His hand goes still on the la
Emma's POVI leave the apartment twenty minutes later.Adèle has the children settled at the kitchen table with toast and warm milk. Grey is eating his in the correct order... meat first, then cheese, then bread. Ace is feeding his dinosaur a piece of crust. Willa is watching me from her stool with her rabbit under her chin, and when I pick up my bag from the hook by the door, she slides off her chair and walks over to me."Where are you going?" she asks."To the office, baby.""For how long?""I do not know yet."She considers this. She reaches up and touches my hand with her small, warm fingers."Come back," she says."I will."She nods once. She walks back to her stool and climbs up and picks up her toast, and I close the door behind me with both locks turned by Adèle.Henri is waiting at the curb. He opens the rear door before I reach the car. His eyes scan the street, the rooftops, the parked vehicles along Rue de Verneuil. He does not say good morning, he just holds the door and
Emma’s POVI wake up to the sound of someone shouting.It is not the sound of any of my triplets crying, which is the only thing that usually gets me out of bed before my alarm... It is a loud, clear voice, carrying down the short hallway from the living room with the absolute certainty of a child who has just discovered something that requires an immediate audience."Mama! There is a big man on our couch!" Ace. My eyes open. I am under my own duvet, but my limbs feel heavy and stiff, and my clothes are twisted around my waist. I do not remember leaving the hallway floor. The last thing I remember is the taste of cold tea and the sound of Julian’s steady breathing beside me in the dark.I get out of bed.The living room is bright with the thin, grey light of an early morning in Paris. The curtains are already pulled back, which means Adèle has arrived, but she is not in the kitchen. She is standing near the dining table, her coat still on, her bag hanging from her arm, staring at the
Emma's POVThe handle does not move again.It sits there, depressed halfway, the brass lever angled down against the plate, and the silence in the hallway is so complete that I can hear the blood moving in my own ears.Julian does not breathe. His chest is not moving. He is standing between me and the door, his body angled to the left, his right hand raised and open at his side. His eyes are fixed on the handle. His jaw is locked so tight that the muscle beneath his ear is trembling.We wait.One second. Two. Three.The handle releases. It rises back to its horizontal position with a small metallic click that echoes off the walls of the corridor. Then nothing. No footsteps retreating. No voices. No sound of someone walking away. Just the heavy, suffocating quiet of a building at night.Julian moves. He takes one step forward, puts his left hand flat against the door above the deadbolt, and leans his weight into the wood as if his body alone could reinforce the lock. His right hand rea
Emma's POVI look at the screen of my phone. The glow of the display is bright against my palm, but the words themselves are cold.She rented a flat on Rue des Saints-Pères four days ago. Emma, she is in your neighborhood.Three streets away.I know Rue des Saints-Pères. It is narrow, lined with old stone buildings and small boutiques, and it intersects with Rue de Verneuil just a short walk from my front door. If you stand at the corner of that street on a clear day, you can see the upper windows of my apartment. You can see the balcony where Adèle hangs the children's washed shirts to dry.And she has been there for four days.I set the phone on the granite counter, face down. The glass makes a small, sharp click against the stone. My hand is steady, but my chest feels tight, like a band of leather is being pulled around my ribs, squeezing the air out of my lungs with every slow breath.Julian is still standing behind me. He does not ask what the message said. He does not try to loo
Emma's POV The screen of my phone does not go dark. The words just sit there on the glass, bright and cold in the quiet of the car.Ask Grey about the woman who waved at him last Tuesday.I read it once. I read it again.I do not drop the phone. I do not cry. I have spent two years learning how to do both of those things without making a sound, and my hands are completely steady as I lay the device face down on my lap.Beside me, Julian moves. The wool of his coat brushes against mine, a soft, dry sound in the dark of the backseat. He looks at my hand, then at the phone, and then up at my face."Emma?"I do not explain. I just turn the phone over and show him the screen.Julian reads the message. I watch the small muscle at the corner of his jaw tighten. He does not shake his head. He does not swear. He looks out the front window at the wet Paris street, his mouth set in a hard, straight line, and then he looks back at me."Tuesday," he says. His voice is very quiet."Our day," I rep
Emma's POVI am at Cara's apartment. She has gone to stay with a friend of hers so that I can have some solo space. My mother arrives at two in the afternoon with an overnight bag, a casserole dish that smells like something that can fix most things, and the expression of a woman who has been wait
Liam's POVShe is gone by Thursday.Not just her things. Her.The apartment feels different without Emma in it and I cannot explain why in any way that would satisfy me if I try, so I do not try.I stand in the bedroom doorway and look at the cleared nightstand, the empty hooks behind the bathroom
Emma's POVThe guest room door is slightly open.It is always slightly open. Liam never fully closes doors he considers temporarily his, like he is leaving himself an exit route in every room he occupies, which honestly tracks.I push it open and stand in the doorway for a moment.It smells like hi
I LEFT BROKEN AND FAT, I CAME BACK HIS BOSS WITH TRIPLET HEIRSEmma's POVHere is something nobody tells you about being the fat wife of a billionaire.The staff learn his coffee order on Day One. Then they learn yours somewhere around month nine, if you remind them enough times, and even then they







