Chapter 2

Emerson Caldwell POV:

The first half of the night followed a strict, familiar pattern.

At 8:00 PM, my phone buzzed: Arrived at Fiona's apartment. She is breathing normally.

At 9:30 PM: She threw up her medication. Waiting for the doctor.

At 11:00 PM: Doctor left. Prescribed sedatives. I will leave once she falls asleep.

These hourly updates were a rule I had forced upon Hudson two years ago after catching him having dinner with Fiona on my birthday. I had thought that knowing his exact whereabouts would give me security. In reality, it was just a detailed log of my own humiliation.

Whenever Fiona noticed him texting me, she would invent a new crisis to break the schedule.

Midnight passed.

1:00 AM arrived.

The updates stopped completely.

In the past, this was the exact moment my panic would erupt. I would call his phone until it went straight to voicemail. I would call his assistant, his driver, and the doorman of Fiona' s building. Once, I had even driven to her apartment complex in the middle of a thunderstorm, pounding on her door for forty minutes while the neighbors threatened to call the police, only to find Hudson opening the door with his tie undone, looking at me with pure disgust.

I remembered the first anniversary of my father's death. Hudson had promised to accompany me to the cemetery. At 7:00 AM, Fiona called claiming she saw a spider in her bathtub and had passed out from terror. Hudson left me standing in the rain with a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, spending six hours catching a household bug for his ex-girlfriend.

I remembered Ernesto' s sixty-fifth birthday banquet. Hudson had arrived two hours late, his shirt smelling of Fiona' s sweet vanilla perfume, because Fiona had felt dizzy at a boutique and needed him to carry her shopping bags to her car.

I remembered waiting on the rooftop of a restaurant in Brooklyn for four hours on Valentine's Day, watching the snow fall on cold steaks, while Hudson drove Fiona to the top of Bear Mountain because she claimed she needed fresh air to cure her claustrophobia.

Every single time, the excuse was medical. Every single time, I was expected to understand because I was "healthy" and she was "sick."

At 2:15 AM, my phone screen lit up.

It was a text from Hudson' s number, but it contained no text. Only two photos.

The first photo showed Hudson sleeping soundly on a gray suede couch, his face turned toward the camera, a knitted wool blanket tucked under his chin.

The second photo was a selfie taken by Fiona. She was wearing Hudson' s oversized white dress shirt, holding a mug of chamomile tea, her eyes wide and innocent, with the caption: He was so tired taking care of me. Emerson, please don't be mad at him. He just has too much empathy.

I looked at the photos for exactly three seconds.

There was no rage in my chest. My heart rate didn't even accelerate. I felt the cold, clean detachment of someone watching strangers on a muted television screen.

I typed a reply: Keep him.

Then, I went into my settings, blocked Hudson's phone number, blocked Fiona's number, and blocked both of them across all my social media accounts.

I set my phone on the nightstand, turned off the lamp, and slept soundly for seven uninterrupted hours.

The next morning at 8:00 AM, I dressed in a simple beige wool coat, pulled my dark hair into a neat low bun, and called a cab to the Aguilar family estate in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Ernesto Aguilar had been a second father to me. When my father died in that fire, Ernesto had knelt before my father's coffin and sworn to the entire fire department that he would protect me with his life and fortune. For twenty years, he had treated me like a princess, funding my education, defending me against his snobbish relatives, and insisting that I was the only rightful daughter-in-law of the Aguilar family.

I owed him the truth in person. I would not disappear like a thief in the night without giving that kind old man an explanation.

The cab pulled up to the wrought-iron gates of the estate at 9:30 AM.

The butler, an elderly man named Thomas who had known me since childhood, opened the front door with a warm smile. "Miss Emerson! You're here early. Master Ernesto is in the study, but Master Hudson and Miss Hammond arrived half an hour ago."

I paused on the marble threshold. "Fiona is here?"

"Yes," Thomas whispered, his expression tightening slightly. "She came with Master Hudson. She said she needed to apologize to Master Ernesto for taking up Hudson's time last night."

I walked quietly across the foyer. The heavy double doors of the ground-floor study were slightly ajar.

Before I could raise my hand to knock, Fiona' s trembling, tearful voice drifted through the gap.

"...Uncle Ernesto, please don't blame Hudson," Fiona sobbed softly. "It was entirely my fault. Emerson called the firm yesterday and threatened to leak internal financial documents to the press if Hudson didn't sign the wedding registry this week. Hudson was under immense stress, and when he saw me having an asthma attack, he just wanted to make sure I didn't die. Emerson has been spreading rumors among the board members that Hudson neglects his duties for an ex-lover. If the board votes against his CEO confirmation next month, it will ruin everything you built."

She was laying the groundwork brilliantly. She was framing my desperation as corporate sabotage, turning a broken relationship into a threat against the Aguilar family legacy.

In my previous life, I had heard these exact rumors circulate among Manhattan's high society, but I had never understood where they came from. I had spent months trying to explain myself to Ernesto, screaming that I had never talked to any reporters, which only made me look like an unhinged liar.

Inside the study, Hudson' s deep voice spoke up, calm and dismissive. "Dad, Emerson is just throwing another tantrum. She is impulsive and acts without thinking about the consequences. I will handle her. You don't need to stress yourself over her behavior."

I pushed the heavy mahogany door open.