Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 51 - Chapitre 60

Emily’s POV“I need you to tell me the truth, Dad, even if it’s the version that makes you look bad, because the version where you protect yourself is the version Marcus is going to use against you either way,” I said, sitting across from my father in the back office of the bakery, the same office where this entire story had started thirteen months earlier.Walter Hart looked older than he had that first day, though it had only been a little over a year, the weight of thirty years of silence finally showing in the lines around his eyes now that he had started, slowly, to let it show at all. “The fire wasn’t an accident,” he said quietly, and my stomach dropped straight through the floor. “But it wasn’t arson either. It was faulty wiring your mother had asked me to fix twice, and I kept putting it off because we didn’t have the money, and I have spent twenty six years letting everyone believe it was simple bad luck because the alternative was admitting it was my fault.”I sat very stil

Emily’s POV “You look like a man who hasn’t slept in two days and fought his ex fiancee in a boardroom, and I need you to know that somehow still counts as one of your better looks,” I said, dropping my bag the second I saw Nathaniel waiting for me at the gate, exhaustion written into every line of his face. He pulled me into him before I’d even finished the sentence, holding on longer than he needed to, longer than the crowded gate really allowed for, and I let him, because I understood, in a way I hadn’t fully understood before this trip, exactly how much weight he had been carrying without complaint since the moment we landed back from Rome. “Vanessa looked different,” he said quietly, into my hair. “Sharper. Angrier. I don’t think this is really about the deal for her, Emily. I think this is about proving something to herself, some old wound that never actually closed.” “That’s not your problem to fix,” I said. “It’s hers. You don’t owe her closure, Nathaniel. You already gave

Emily’s POV“Emily, you need to see this before the crew touches another beam, because I don’t think either of us is ready for what’s inside it,” the foreman said, holding a rusted metal box like it might still be hot from the fire that buried it twenty six years ago.I stood in the middle of what used to be Hart and Daughter, half torn down now, sunlight pouring through gaps where the roof used to be, and I felt my whole chest go tight at the sight of that box. Nathaniel was beside me in a hard hat that looked wrong on him in the best possible way, his hand finding the small of my back before I even realized I’d swayed on my feet.“It was behind the old chimney,” the foreman said. “Must have been sealed in there before the fire ever happened. Whoever put it there wanted it kept.”I took it from him with both hands, surprised by how light it was for something that had survived twenty six years of silence. My mother’s initials were scratched into the lid, faint but unmistakable, and my

Emily’s POV“Dad, I need you to tell me everything about that night, because I just found out Eleanor kept a secret from both our families for twenty six years, and I think you might have known more than you let on,” I said, standing in the kitchen of the apartment above the old bakery where I grew up.Walter set down the dish towel he’d been holding, his face going through several expressions in quick succession before settling on something that looked almost relieved, like he’d been waiting years for someone to finally ask. The kitchen smelled like it always had, cinnamon and old wood, and for a moment I felt like I was twelve years old again, waiting for him to explain something too big for me to understand.“I always wondered if she’d tell you eventually,” he said quietly. “Eleanor, I mean. I wondered if I’d have to be the one.”“You knew,” I said, my voice catching. “Dad, you knew Eleanor was responsible for the delay, and you let me believe for my entire life that our debt was b

Emily’s POV“Who sends a warning like that and doesn’t even sign their name,” I asked, staring over Nathaniel’s shoulder at the message glowing on his phone, my stomach already tightening around a feeling I didn’t have a name for yet.“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said, “but I intend to find out before the night is over, because whoever sent this clearly knows something about Vanessa’s actual motive, and right now I’ll take information from anywhere I can get it.”Dana traced the number within the hour to a burner phone purchased with cash, a dead end on the surface, but she flagged something odd buried in the message’s metadata, a location ping from a coffee shop two blocks from Vanessa’s own office. I sat across from Nathaniel in his study that night, the message still open on his phone between us like something we couldn’t quite stop staring at.“Someone close to her sent this,” Dana said. “Someone who wanted you to know something without wanting to be seen saying it.”I thought immedi