LOGINCalista's POV I spread the papers across the dining table until there was no clean wood left.Bank statements, old transfer confirmations, a thin folder of correspondence I should have burned years ago and hadn’t. I sat in the chair at the head of the table and tried to map what they could possibly have.Emma, that much I knew. She had left and she had taken things with her. The problem was no longer any single piece. The problem was whether someone had finally laid them in order.I had spent eleven years believing I controlled the story. Who knew what. Who believed what. Which version of Scarlett’s disappearance hardened into fact. For the first time I could not see the other side’s board, and the not-knowing made my hands go cold on the edge of the table.I reached for my phone, then stopped. Harris was a door I could not open without making noise I wasn’t ready to explain. Konrad had made his position clear,contact again and the next conversation would not be one I walked away fro
Nicholas's POVMy phone rang while I was still beside Scarlett, it was Ashfield again.I glanced at Scarlett. “I need to take this.”She nodded once, and didn’t follow when I stepped a few paces away toward the windows.“Nicholas, I need you to come somewhere private.” Ashfield’s voice was clipped. “Richard’s already here and bring whatever you still have from your father’s office. Address is coming now.”“I’m on my way," I said and looked back at Scarlett. “I’ll check in later.”She didn’t ask where I was going. She just held my gaze for a second, then turned back toward the ICU corridor.She gave me an address across the river, an unmarked federal workspace, not the main building. I drove over with the photos still on my phone and the same tight pressure in my chest I’d been carrying since the hospital corridor. The city moved past the windows without sticking. My hands stayed steady on the wheel.The room was plain with long table, two laptops, a whiteboard with dates already mappe
Nicholas's POVI was still near the elevators when Scarlett came down the corridor while sage was a few steps behind her, face tight. Scarlett’s phone was still in her hand and she stopped in front of me and the look on her face had changed, less raw grief, more something colder and focused.“Ashfield just called,” she said. “The preliminary review on the car came in. Someone got to the car before he drove it.”For a second the words couldn't make sense to me, then it all came rushing down on me. Spencer in that ICU bed, the bruising, the lines, the brace. My father had reached past Scarlett, past every careful line that should have kept the original violence contained and had put his hands on someone who had never been part of the original sin, someone whose only crime was staying when staying cost him everything quiet and simple.This was a man who had raised my kids lying broken in a hospital bed because my father’s world had decided he was in the way.“Nicholas.” Scarlett’s voice
Scarlett's POV The ICU was more than the emergency floor. The nurse slid the glass door open just enough for me to step through. The monitors hit me first, steady beeps, the sigh of oxygen, the low continuous hum of machines doing work that should have been ordinary. Spencer lay in the bed, lines running from both arms. One leg was in a heavy brace, bruising spread dark across the left side of his face and down along his collarbone where the seatbelt had locked and had bandages on, his eyes were close. I had stood at the foot of beds like this a hundred times. I had delivered updates in a calm voice while families came apart in front of me, none of that training reached me now. My throat closed and my hands started shaking before I even reached the rail. This was not a patient. This was the man who made coffee every morning for eleven years, who counted standing kicks so a ten-year-old’s heart rate stayed safe, who had walked out of our kitchen hours earlier with his jaw locked an
Scarlett's POV I don’t remember most of the drive. One minute I was standing in the kitchen with the hospital still on the phone, the next I was pushing through the emergency department doors with my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth, he air smelled like disinfectant and floor wax. Someone at the desk asked me to spell the last name twice before they would tell me anything. “Spencer Ashford, I’m the emergency contact." My voice was shaky. "They called me.” "Trauma is still with him," The nurse checked a screen, typed something, then pointed down a corridor. “Family waiting area is to the left. Someone will come out when they can.” I didn’t sit. I stood near the double doors with my arms locked around myself and stared at the scuffed linoleum until the pattern stopped making sense. People moved past me with clipboards and badges. Every time the doors opened I looked up too fast. A doctor in blue scrubs finally pushed through. . He looked exhausted, his mask han
Scarlett's POVI was still sitting on the bottom step when I heard the first set of footsteps on the stairs.I stood up fast, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and walked into the kitchen before either of them could see me on the floor. I turned on the faucet and let the cold water run over my wrists until the skin went numb. The coffee Spencer had made was still sitting on the counter, half-cold, the dark surface reflecting the overhead light. I poured it down the sink. The smell of it made the empty space near the stove feel sharper. I started a fresh pot because the silence needed something ordinary to fill it.Valeria came in first, sketchbook tucked under her arm, socks quiet on the tile. She stopped just inside the doorway and looked at the place where Spencer usually stood with the spatula, her fingers tightened on the edge of the sketchbook, then she looked at me.“Good morning,” I kept my voice even. “Sit down, I’m making eggs.”She set the sketchbook on the table witho







