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The curve of Emma’s mouth fell away and the warmth in the room drained out in seconds.
"Tomorrow?" Emma’s voice was barely a murmur. "You're leaving tomorrow?"
"Harrison called an emergency partner meeting," Victoria said, falling back into the flat, corporate tone she used in London. "My presence is required."
Emma looked down at the polished wood. She capped the fountain pen with a sharp click, picking up a stack of spare room keys just to give her trembling hands something to do.
"Right," she said, pulling her mouth into a tight line. "Of course. You have a proper job outside of… whatever this is."
"Emma—"
"No, I get it," Emma cut in, dropping the brass keys into their drawer with a sharp, jerky clatter. "You have a life over there. Real responsibilities. Millions on the line. This place was always temporary."
The word landed like lead in Victoria’s ribs.
She wanted to step around the reception desk. She wanted to crowd Emma against the counter, bury her face against her collarbone, and tell her that nothing about this felt temporary. She wanted to tell her she hadn't slept through the night in ten years until she came here, that she had spent the morning finding legal loopholes to stall a billionaire just to protect the kitchen, the leaky roof, and the cracked floorboards.
Instead, Victoria didn't move. If she told Emma that Richard Vance had the bulldozers lined up for August, and that Harrison was holding her career by the throat, the little ground they had gained together would cave in under them. If she walked out on Harrison now, he would strip her equity, push her off the board, and force the sale anyway.
Victoria kept her mouth shut, letting the quiet sit between them until it turned stone cold.
"I'll pack my things upstairs," Victoria said quietly. "My driver arrives at six."
Emma didn't look up from the ledger. "Sure."
By dawn, the warmth from the weekend had vanished, replaced by a hollow, brittle silence.
Emma stood on the porch, hugging her arms tightly around herself against the morning chill, watching the driver load Victoria’s designer luggage into the boot of the car. Victoria was already dressed for Manhattan—a charcoal jacket, dark lenses hiding her eyes, and her hair pulled into an uncompromising knot.
Every line of her posture screamed corporate authority. The woman who had unraveled under Emma's touch in the dark just two nights ago was gone, buried under layers of expensive wool and titanium resolve.
Victoria paused at the bottom of the porch steps, hesitating by the open car door. She looked at Emma, her throat tight, searching for words that wouldn't betray her.
"Call me if the boiler makes that noise again," Victoria said. It was an absurd, hollow thing to offer on a sweltering June morning, but it was safer than anything real.
Emma held her gaze, her expression smooth, her jaw set.
"Have a safe flight, Victoria," Emma replied, her voice perfectly even.
Victoria got into the back of the taxi without offering an embrace. As the car pulled out of the gates, she looked in the rearview mirror, watching the woman she had held in the dark two nights ago grow smaller and smaller, left alone on the porch.
Victoria turned away, feeling completely sick to her stomach.
✽✽✽
New York was too loud. Has it always been this loud? Victoria thought, pulling the cab door shut against the humidity and the relentless blare of horns outside the terminal.
The glass walls of her Manhattan penthouse felt sterile, almost uninhabited. The central air conditioning hummed with an aggressive chill that made her skin prickle. She unpacked in silence, moving through the luxurious, empty rooms like a ghost in her own life.
The next morning, Victoria woke up at four in the morning, her internal clock still stubbornly wired to the exact moment Emma usually slipped out of bed to start the bakery prep.
The penthouse was pitch black. Victoria sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress. Her bare feet touched the cold, immaculate hardwood floor. Instinctively, her body tensed. She braced herself, waiting for the familiar, loud groan of the old timber floorboards that always echoed through The Amber House.
Nothing happened.
There was only a perfect, dead silence.
The sheer absence of the sound hit Victoria like a physical blow. She sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, her chest aching with a sudden, unbearable hollow. There was no smell of vanilla drifting up the stairs. There was no chaotic bickering over the coffee machine. There was just the quiet, expensive safety of a life she had bled to build.
