Emma's bitter laugh cuts deep. "Of course. Business always comes first. Even over my dead brother."
I turn toward the window, phone pressed to my ear, discussing shipping routes I don't give a fuck about. But I'm hyperaware of the silence behind me shifting, the whisper of movement that shouldn't be there.
Stellina, what are you…
The soft click of my desk drawer opening. The drawer I always lock, except this morning when grief and exhaustion made me careless. I spin around, the phone clattering to the floor.
Emma stands at my desk, papers spilling across the mahogany surface like blood from a wound. The medical reports, transfer orders, custody agreements. All of it spreading before her in damning clarity.
"What is this?" she asks, her voice deadly quiet, each word is a bullet fired at point-blank range. "Patient name: Thomas Pitt."
The silence that follows feels like the moment before an execution.
"He's alive." She looks up at me, and the devastation in her eyes is worse than if she'd pulled a gun. "Tommy is alive, and you knew. Did you stage the whole thing?"
"What? No, of course not. Emma, let me explain…"
"Explain?" She holds up the medical report, her hands shaking so violently the paper rattles. "Explain how my brother has been in your custody for three days? How you've been getting medical updates while I grieved? While I…" Her voice shatters. "While I tried to kill myself because I thought he was dead?"
Fuck.The papers tremble in her fingers. Each document another nail in my coffin, proof of my deception spreading across my desk.
"I was protecting you," I growl, the words inadequate even to my own ears. "The threats, the blackmail. If they knew he was alive…"
"You let me believe he was dead!" The scream tears from her throat. "You held me while I sobbed for him. You comforted me through nightmares about his death. And the whole time, he was breathing in some facility you control?"
I move toward her, desperate to make her understand, but she backs away like I'm poison. Three days ago, this body learned to crave mine. Now it remembers how to resist.
"You're just like them." The words leave her lips like shattered glass. "The Hewsons. Mrs.Hewson deciding what I could handle. And now you. Deciding what truth I deserve, what pain I'm allowed to feel."
She throws the papers at me. They scatter like dead birds, medical files and court orders fluttering across the Persian rug. One lands at my feet. Tommy's intake photo, very much alive, staring up at me in accusation.
"Emma, please…"
"You watched me grieve!" Her voice cracks with betrayal.
"I couldn't risk…"
"Risk what? Me having agency? Me making my own choices?" She laughs, but it sounds like breaking. "You don't see me as your wife, do you? I'm just another acquisition. Another beautiful thing to collect and control. A doll you can lock away when reality gets messy."
The accusation cuts deep. Every instinct screams to lock the door, to trap her here until she understands. But that's exactly what she's accusing me of. Making her another beautiful prisoner. The irony draws blood.
"I love you," I say desperately, my control fracturing. "Everything I did was to protect you."
"You don't protect someone by lying to them about their brother being dead!" Her voice echoes off the walls. "You held me after I woke up, whispered that you understood my pain, that you'd help me through losing Tommy. But you knew. You knew he was breathing, recovering, living. And you let me believe he was gone."
My carefully constructed justifications crumble. Every word she speaks cuts deeper than any knife. I treated her exactly likethe Hewsons did. Like someone too fragile for truth, too weak for reality.
"I thought if you knew…"
"You thought." She emphasizes each word with bitter precision. "You decided. You controlled. Just like everyone else in my life, you took away my choices and called it protection."
The tears on her face gut me, but when I step toward her, she backs away with her hand raised. The rejection burns worse than any bullet wound.
"Don't. Don't touch me. Don't comfort me." Her voice steadies into something worse than anger. Cold resolution. "I trusted you with everything. My real name. My past. My body. My heart. And you couldn't trust me with the truth about my own brother. I was wrong about you, Alex." Emma's voice carries a deadly calm that makes my blood freeze. "I thought you were different."
She moves toward the door with measured steps, no longer asking permission, no longer seeking approval. Each click of her heels on marble sounds like bullets being chambered.
She pauses at the door, hand on the handle. "The truth is, you never trusted a mere servant to handle her own life."
