Claire moved another step away.
David noticed and panicked.
“Claire, don’t listen to him.”
I handed her a folded printout.
She accepted it automatically.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Life insurance policy.”
David lunged for it.
Nico caught his wrist and twisted just enough to make him gasp.
Claire read.
Her face shifted from confusion into horror.
“You put two million dollars on your son?”
David flushed red. “It’s financial planning.”
“Then why isn’t his mother the beneficiary?” I asked.
Silence.
The valet stand fell quiet.
Even the doorman pretended he wasn’t watching too closely.
I leaned toward David.
“Here is what happens next. You will transfer the Callaway building to Emily by morning. You will sign over funds sufficient for Oliver’s medical care until adulthood. You will confess to insurance fraud if my people confirm the policy was opened with false or manipulated medical statements. You will not go near your wife or son.”
David breathed heavily through his nose.
Then he smiled.
Small.
Desperate.
But real.
“You think you can scare me into giving away everything?”
“No. I know I can.”
His smile stretched wider.
“You shouldn’t have brought her into this.”
Something in his tone made my entire body go still.
“Who?”
He looked toward the glow of the hotel lights in the distance, and for the first time that night, satisfaction appeared in his eyes.
“Emily always needed rescuing. That was her problem.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then I heard Emily’s voice.
Not talking to me.
Screaming.
“Oliver! Oliver, wake up!”
The line crackled.
Then came a man’s voice, low and steady.
“Mr. Vale. You took something that belongs to Mr. Carter.”
My blood turned to ice.
I looked at David.
He was smiling fully now.
Nico had him by the throat a heartbeat later, slamming him back against the Mercedes.
“Where are they?” I said into the phone.
The man on the other end chuckled.
“Your hotel has beautiful service corridors.”
Then the call cut off.
For one second, I was no longer Marcus Vale, the man Chicago feared.
I was a boy again in a freezing hallway, listening to my mother plead behind a locked door.
Then I returned to myself.
And when I did, the world narrowed to one purpose.
I seized David by the collar and dragged him close enough to smell the expensive whiskey on his breath.
“You’d better pray,” I said, “that your son is still breathing when I find him.”
David’s smile faltered.
Not because he cared about Oliver.
Because finally, he understood one simple truth.
Chicago had monsters worse than him.
And he had just given one of them a reason.
PART 3 — THE HOTEL WITH HIDDEN DOORS
By the time I got back to the Veyron Hotel, the lobby lights seemed far too bright for the kind of darkness waiting above.
Nico drove as if the city owed him mercy and he meant to collect it with the front bumper. David Carter was trapped between two of my men in the back of the second car, his hands zip-tied, his face stripped of every rich-man excuse he had worn so confidently outside The Ormond Room.
He was no longer smiling.
Good.
But that did nothing to quiet the voice still echoing inside my skull.
“Your hotel has beautiful service corridors.”
Emily had screamed Oliver’s name.
Then nothing.
There are noises a man can force himself to forget. Gunfire. Sirens. Pleading. Bone cracking against pavement.
But a mother screaming for her child sinks its claws into the soul and refuses to leave.
The Mercedes had barely stopped before I was out, moving before the tires had finished rolling. The night manager hurried toward me, pale and shaking.
“Mr. Vale, security is already—”
I seized him by the collar. “Where are they?”
His lips shook. “The twelfth floor cameras cut out eight minutes ago. Two men came in through the catering elevator. They were wearing staff badges.”
“Names.”
“Fake.”
“Faces?”
He swallowed hard. “One of them used to work here.”
Behind me, Nico said, “Mason Bell.”
The manager nodded too quickly. “Yes. Former maintenance contractor. Fired six months ago.”
I turned toward the elevator.
Nico moved beside me. “Boss, we should wait for—”
“No.”
The elevator climbed too slowly.
Every glowing number above the doors felt like an insult.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
When the doors opened, the hallway was silent except for the gentle hum of luxury lighting. Too calm. Too polished. The kind of silence that arrives after something terrible has already happened.
The suite door was standing open.
Inside, a lamp in the living room had been knocked crooked. Emily’s coat was on the floor. The pharmacy bag had been ripped apart, two inhalers scattered over the carpet.
In the bedroom, the sheets were twisted.
Oliver’s stuffed fox lay near the bed.
Its one glass eye missing.
Emily was gone.
Oliver was gone.
For one second, I couldn’t breathe.
Then I noticed blood on the white carpet.
Not much.
Only a smear near the service door.
Nico crouched and touched it with two fingers. “Fresh.”
I stared at the service door concealed behind the paneled wall. Most guests never realized those corridors were there. Staff used them to move invisibly, carrying towels, trays, and secrets.
Tonight, someone had used them to take a woman and a child from beneath my roof.
From beneath my protection.
I pressed my palm to the door and felt the cold metal.
Then I looked at the manager. “Lock down the hotel.”
“Sir, guests will—”
“Lock. It. Down.”
He ran.
Nico pulled open the service door, gun already in his hand.
The corridor beyond was narrow and gray, smelling of detergent and old pipes. Somewhere far off, metal clanged.
We moved quickly.
At the stairwell, we found the first man.
Dead.
He lay twisted across the landing, his neck bent at the wrong angle, one hand still wrapped around a hotel access card.
Nico crouched beside him. “Mason Bell.”
I looked at the blood under his ear.
“Emily did this?”
“Maybe he fell.”
I thought of her eyes when she said, “Ruin him.”
“No,” I said. “He was pushed.”
Something inside me shifted.
Emily Carter was not sitting still and waiting to be saved.
She was fighting.
We kept moving.
Two floors below, we heard coughing.
Small.
Weak.
I ran.
At the ninth-floor laundry room, the door had been jammed from the inside. Nico kicked it once, and it cracked. Twice, and it burst open.
Oliver was curled inside a laundry cart beneath a heap of towels, his face wet with tears, his chest hitching.
Alone.
Alive.
I crossed the room in three strides and lifted him carefully.
His tiny fingers clutched my coat. “Mommy told me to hide,” he whispered.
“Where is she?”
His breathing rattled. “Bad man took her.”
“Which way?”
He pointed toward the freight elevator.
Nico was already moving.
I took an inhaler from my coat pocket, the third one I had bought, and placed it gently into Oliver’s trembling hands.
“Can you use it?”
He nodded, trying to be brave.
“Good boy.”
His eyes rose to mine. “Are you going to get my mom?”
The answer came from somewhere deeper than thought.
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
I had shattered a thousand promises in my life.
Not that one.
“I promise.”
I handed him to the security chief, who had finally arrived breathless in the doorway.
“If he leaves your arms,” I said, “you answer to me.”
The man nodded as though I had just handed him something explosive.
Then Nico and I ran toward the freight elevator.
The doors were closing.
I caught a flash of blonde hair.
Emily.
Her wrists were bound. Blood streamed from her temple. A man held her from behind, his arm locked around her throat.
Our eyes met as the doors narrowed.
She did not scream.
She mouthed one word.
“Oliver?”
I shouted, “Alive!”
Her entire face changed.
Relief.
Pain.
Then the doors slid shut.
Nico cursed and slammed the elevator button.
I turned to the stairwell instead.
“Where does it go?”
“Basement loading dock.”
We ran.
Twelve floors is a long distance down unless rage is moving your legs.
On the third floor, my phone rang.
David.
Still being held by my men.
I answered while running.
“You found the boy,” he said.
His voice sounded thin now. Afraid. Trying to sound amused and failing.
“You hired idiots,” I said.
“I hired desperate men.”
“Same thing.”
“They were supposed to take both of them. Cleanly. Emily always makes everything difficult.”
“You should stop talking.”
“I want a deal.”
That almost made me laugh.
“You don’t have anything I want except the location of the man who has your wife.”
David hesitated.
And in that hesitation, I heard it.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“You don’t know where she is,” I said.
“I know where he’ll take her.”
“Tell me.”
“Not until you guarantee—”
I stopped on the stairwell landing. My voice became quiet.
“David, listen to me carefully. Your son is alive because Emily hid him while your hired man dragged her away bleeding. If she dies, there won’t be enough of you left for a closed casket.”
Silence stretched long.
Then he whispered an address.
“An old clinic on Ashland. Bell used it before. Cash jobs. No cameras.”
“Why a clinic?”
Another silence.
Then the truth crawled out.
“Because Emily has documents.”
“What documents?”
“The ones that prove Oliver’s policy wasn’t just fraud.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You did something.”
His breathing turned uneven. “Emily found out. She found old medical reports. Oliver’s asthma got worse after we moved to Callaway.”
I stared down the stairwell into the dark.
“What was in that apartment?”
David said nothing.
I understood then.
Not everything.
Enough.
“You poisoned your own building,” I said.
“I didn’t know people were living in that unit when the contractors sealed it.”
“Liar.”
“It was supposed to be temporary. The mold, the chemical residue, all of it—Rourke said it was manageable. Then Oliver started getting sick, and Emily started asking questions.”
The whole world went still.
The asthma had not been bad luck.
Not completely.
It was negligence covered over with paint and rent checks.
And David had turned his son’s illness into a chance at insurance money.
I ended the call before I killed him through the phone.
At the basement level, the freight elevator stood open.
Empty.
The loading dock door swung in the rain.
Outside, tire tracks sliced through the puddles.
Nico pointed. “Black van. No plates.”
I was already calling every man I trusted.
“Clinic on Ashland,” I said. “Now.”
PART 4 — THE WOMAN WHO WOULD NOT BREAK
Emily regained consciousness to the scent of antiseptic, dust, and something that felt like old terror.
Her skull pounded. Fire burned through her wrists. A sheet of cold metal pressed against her spine.
For a brief moment, she convinced herself she was in a hospital.
Then her eyes focused on cracked green tiles, a broken examination light hanging from the ceiling, and a broad-shouldered man rinsing blood from his knuckles in a rusted sink.
Not a hospital.
Just a place pretending to be one.
The man turned around.
His shoulders were thick, and a scar split one eyebrow nearly in half. She recognized him from the hotel hallway. The one who had gotten to Oliver first.
Her son.
Panic slammed through her so hard she almost choked on it.
Oliver had hidden.
Marcus had shouted a single word before the elevator doors closed.
Alive.
Emily held onto that word like it was air itself.
The man wiped his hands on a towel. “You caused a lot of trouble.”
Emily tested the restraints around her wrists. Plastic. Tight. Her fingers had gone numb.
“Where’s David?”
The man smirked. “Worried about your husband?”
“No,” she said. “I want to see his face when this falls apart.”
Part of his smile disappeared.
Good.
Men like him expected tears.
They expected begging.
Emily had already spent every tear she owned in grocery store aisles, pharmacy queues, overdue bills, and dark bedrooms where her little boy woke up gasping for air.
She had none left for him.
The man moved closer. “You had a folder.”
Emily’s heart jumped.
The folder.
She had taken it from the apartment before leaving. At the time, she hadn’t understood everything inside. Old inspection reports. Photographs of mold spreading behind Oliver’s bedroom wall. Contractor invoices carrying David’s signature. A doctor’s letter she had discovered hidden inside one of his old briefcases. A letter warning that prolonged exposure could worsen respiratory illness in children.
She had copied some of the pages.
But the originals remained in that folder.
“Where is it?” he asked.
Emily stared directly at him. “Go to hell.”
He struck her.
Pain exploded across her cheek in a flash of white.
The chair rocked violently but stayed upright.
For a second, the room spun.
Then Emily laughed.
Even she didn’t expect it.
The man blinked.
“You think that scares me?” she whispered. “I have watched my child turn blue while my husband told me I was overreacting. You’re just a man with dirty hands.”
His expression hardened.
Before he could move again, a phone rang.
He answered.
“Yeah?”
Emily listened carefully.
His expression shifted.
“What do you mean the boy got away?”
Relief flooded through her so suddenly that her entire body weakened.
Oliver was alive.
Oliver was safe.
The man looked at her, and now there was anger beneath his skin.
“No. I still have her.”
A pause.
“I don’t care what Vale said.”
Another pause.
Then he lowered his voice.
“David doesn’t get to change the deal now.”
Emily looked up.
Deal.
The word settled inside her mind like ice.
The man ended the call.
“David’s scared,” she said.
He shoved the phone into his pocket. “David’s a coward.”
“You work for him?”
“I work for money.”
“He won’t pay you.”
“His girlfriend already did.”
Emily froze.
Claire.
The woman living in the Lake Forest house.
For a moment, confusion hit her so hard she nearly lost her balance.
Then the clinic door opened.
A woman stepped inside wearing a cream-colored coat that looked completely out of place in a building like this. Her dark hair was pinned neatly. Her eyes were red, but not from crying.
From anger.
Claire Whitmore.
Emily recognized her from the Christmas party at the Lake Forest house. Once, through a window, she had seen Claire laughing beside David beneath a chandelier.
The woman David had chosen.
The woman living in the house Emily had admired from outside like a fool.
Claire looked toward the man.
“Leave us.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t the plan.”
Claire reached into her purse and produced a handgun.
Her hand trembled.
The barrel didn’t.
“I said leave us.”
The man watched her for three seconds before lifting both hands and backing toward the door.
“Rich people,” he muttered. “Always making things complicated.”
When he left, silence settled across the clinic.
Emily stared at the gun.
Claire stared back.
Neither woman spoke.
Finally, Claire lowered the weapon slightly.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
Emily laughed harshly. “Which part?”
Claire flinched.
“I didn’t know about Oliver. Not really. David said you were divorcing. He said you kept the boy from him. He said the house was tied up in legal proceedings.”
“He said a lot.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s lips trembled.
“I believed him because I wanted to.”
It was the most honest thing Emily had heard all night.
“Did you pay those men?”
Claire shut her eyes.
“I paid Mason to get David’s documents from you. He told me he could scare you. I thought—” She opened her eyes, disgusted with herself. “I thought you were blackmailing him.”
Emily glanced at her bruised reflection in a nearby cabinet. “Do I look like a blackmailer?”
“No.”
“Then untie me.”
Claire hesitated.
Emily leaned forward as far as the restraints allowed.
“My son is six years old. He was struggling to breathe tonight because David decided keeping money was more important than keeping him alive. You want forgiveness? Fine. Start with scissors.”
Claire moved immediately.
Her fingers fumbled, but she used a small blade from her purse to cut through the restraints. Blood rushed painfully back into Emily’s hands.
Emily stood too quickly and nearly collapsed.
Claire caught her.
For one strange moment, the wife and the mistress kept each other standing in an abandoned clinic, both victims of the same smiling liar.
Then headlights swept across the broken windows.
Claire’s face went pale.
“That’s not Marcus,” she whispered.
The scarred man burst back through the door.
“We have to move.”
Claire raised the gun again.
He laughed.
“You gonna shoot me?”
Emily saw his hand move toward his coat.
She didn’t think.
She grabbed a metal tray from the examination table and swung with every ounce of strength motherhood had left inside her.
The tray smashed into his face with a sickening crack.
He staggered.
Claire screamed and fired.
The bullet shattered the sink behind him.
He lunged forward.
Emily grabbed Claire by the wrist and ran.
They burst through a side exit into an alley that smelled of rain and garbage. Behind them, the man cursed. Ahead, a fence blocked the way.
Claire wore heels.
Emily was dizzy.
Neither stopped.
“Climb!” Emily shouted.
“I can’t!”
“You can.”
Claire climbed.
Badly.
Emily shoved her upward, then scrambled after her as the clinic door exploded open behind them.
The scarred man stepped into the alley.
Emily dropped over the other side of the fence and landed hard on her knees. Claire crashed down beside her with a sob.
The man started climbing after them.
Then bright headlights flooded the alley.
A black Mercedes rolled to a stop at the far end.
Marcus stepped out.
He wasn’t running.
He was walking.
Slowly.
Like a storm had put on a black coat and come hunting.
The scarred man froze on top of the fence.
Marcus looked up at him.
“You touched her,” he said.
The man immediately dropped back into the alley and ran the other direction.
Nico emerged from the darkness behind him.
The fight lasted eight seconds.
Maybe less.
Emily looked away before it ended.
Marcus reached her and stopped just short, as though one step too close might cause her to disappear.
“Oliver?” she gasped.
“Safe. Breathing. Waiting for you.”
Her knees gave out.
This time, when Marcus caught her, she didn’t pull away.
For one second, she allowed herself to fall against the chest of Chicago’s most feared man.
And he held her as though she were something sacred.
Then Claire whispered, “I helped cause this.”
Marcus looked at her.
She lifted her chin through tears.
“I can prove everything.”
PART 5 — THE HUSBAND WHO BUILT A HOUSE OF LIES
David Carter had spent his entire life believing money could turn truth into background noise.
By sunrise, he discovered that truth could bite.
I kept him in a private office beneath the Veyron Hotel, the kind of room executives used for meetings they later pretended never happened. He sat tied to a chair, his expensive suit wrinkled, his hair fallen across his forehead.
There wasn’t a drop of blood on him.
Not yet.
I wanted him thinking clearly.
Emily insisted on being there.
A doctor had already examined Oliver upstairs. He was stable, sleeping in a clean bed with oxygen nearby and his stuffed fox tucked beneath one arm. Emily had stood over him for nearly a full minute, pressing kisses to his forehead before turning toward me and saying, “Now.”
I told her she didn’t have to do this.
She replied, “I know. That’s why I’m going.”
So she stood beside me in the basement office, one cheek bruised, eyes tired, spine perfectly straight.
Claire stood across the room, her arms wrapped around herself, looking like a woman watching the beautiful fantasy she had built rot from the inside out.
Nico leaned against the door.
The moment David saw Emily, he tried to become a husband again.
“Em,” he whispered. “Thank God.”
She didn’t move.
“I was terrified,” he said. “When I heard what happened—”
Emily smiled faintly.
It was worse than tears.
“You hired the men who took me.”
“No.”
“You let Oliver live in poison.”
“No.”
“You insured him.”
“That was for protection.”
“You watched me sell my phone for his inhaler.”
His mouth opened.
No words followed.
Because he hadn’t known about that part.
That was the one act of cruelty he never personally witnessed.
I stepped forward and placed the cracked iPhone on the table in front of him.
“She got one hundred and eighty dollars for it,” I said. “The prescription was three hundred forty-two.”
David stared at the phone.
For the first time, shame flickered across his face.
Tiny.
Weak.
Worthless.
Emily’s voice softened.
“I called you seventeen times yesterday.”
“I was busy.”
“Our son couldn’t breathe.”
“I didn’t know it was that serious.”
“You never thought anything was serious unless it cost you something.”
Claire made a sound that was almost a sob.
David shot her a sharp look.
“Claire, don’t listen to this. She’s twisting things.”
Claire stepped forward into the light carrying a folder.
Emily’s folder.
Only now it was thicker.
“My attorney has copies,” Claire said. Her voice shook, but the words remained steady. “Emails. Payment records. Contractor reports. The policy documents. Texts where you told Rourke to ‘keep pressure on Emily until she breaks.’”
David froze.
Emily closed her eyes.
That sentence landed differently from everything else.
Until she breaks.
Not until she leaves.
Not until she pays.
Until she breaks.
David looked at me.
“What do you want?”
I smiled.
There it was.
The language he actually understood.
“Everything.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You can’t just take everything.”
“No,” I said. “But she can.”
Emily looked at me.
I placed a stack of documents on the table.
“Emergency injunction. Asset freeze petition. Criminal complaint draft. Civil suit. Medical negligence claim. Insurance fraud report.”
David laughed.
The sound came out thin and ugly.
“You think paperwork scares me?”
“No.” I leaned closer. “Prison does.”
He swallowed.
Emily stepped forward.
“You’re going to sign temporary full custody to me. You’re going to sign consent for Oliver’s medical treatment. You’re going to transfer the Callaway building into a trust for the tenants you poisoned. And you’re going to confess enough to keep yourself useful.”
David stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time.
Not his exhausted wife.
Not the woman he lied to.
A witness.
A survivor.
A threat.
“You don’t have the stomach for this,” he said.
Emily picked up the cracked iPhone and held it between them.
“I sold the last thing I owned so our son could breathe while you were drinking with another woman in a private club.”
Her voice never rose.
That made it colder.
“Do not tell me what I have the stomach for.”
For a moment, fear nearly swallowed David whole.
Then something changed.
A slow, poisonous calm spread across his face.
“You think you’ve won because you found the obvious things.”
I didn’t like that.
Neither did Nico.
David shifted his attention to me.
“You especially. Marcus Vale. Always so certain you’re the most dangerous man in the room.”
I leaned back.
“Usually accurate.”
David smiled.
“Not tonight.”
The office door opened.
One of my men stepped inside, tension written across his face.
“Boss. We have a problem.”
I never looked away from David.
“What problem?”
“The police are upstairs.”
Nico straightened immediately.
“Who called them?”
The man looked toward David.
David’s smile widened.
“Federal task force too,” he said. “I wondered when they’d arrive.”
Emily stiffened.
I felt the trap closing.
David had never intended to beat me with violence.
He planned to expose me.
Local police could be managed. Most detectives knew my name and preferred not to say it too loudly.
Federal agents were different.
Especially if someone handed them the right story.
Kidnapping.
Coercion.
Organized crime.
A businessman tied to a chair beneath my hotel.
David turned toward Emily with fake sympathy.
“I’m afraid Mr. Vale has put you in a very difficult position. A frightened mother manipulated by a criminal. It will be tragic in court.”
The color drained from Emily’s face.
He looked at Claire next.
“And you. Poor Claire. Hysterical. Jealous. Misled.”
Claire whispered, “You monster.”
David shrugged.
“I prefer survivor.”
A hard knock echoed from somewhere upstairs, distant but heavy.
Nico moved toward me.
“We need to go.”
I looked at Emily.
Her eyes remained locked on David.
Then she did something none of us expected.
She laughed.
Softly.
Not broken.
Not hysterical.
Almost amazed.
David frowned.
Emily reached into her pocket and pulled out the cracked iPhone.
David’s expression changed.
She tapped the screen.
A small red bar glowed at the top.
Recording.
“I started recording when I walked into this room,” she said.
David’s smile vanished.
Emily turned the screen toward him.
Forty-three minutes.
Every lie.
Every admission.
Every threat.
Recorded.
Claire covered her mouth.
Nico grinned like Christmas had arrived carrying a weapon.
David whispered, “That won’t hold.”
Emily tilted her head.
“Maybe not alone.”
She looked at me.
I understood immediately.
I called the head of hotel security.
“Bring Oliver’s doctor downstairs. Bring the pharmacist from Ninth Street if he’s arrived. Bring Rourke.”
David looked confused.
Then frightened.
Because truth hadn’t arrived with a single witness.
It had brought an audience.
When the federal agents entered five minutes later, they found Emily Carter standing calmly beside a table covered in documents, with a recording already copied onto three phones and sent to an attorney Claire had contacted before dawn.
They also found David Carter untied.
Because I had cut the zip ties moments earlier.
He sat rubbing his wrists, pale with fury.
An agent named Ramirez looked from David to me.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Agent.”
“Interesting morning.”
“Chicago keeps strange hours.”
David surged to his feet.
“This man kidnapped me.”
Ramirez glanced toward Emily.
Emily lifted her bruised face and said, “My husband arranged the abduction of me and my son, concealed environmental hazards that worsened our child’s illness, and opened a fraudulent insurance policy naming himself as beneficiary.”
David pointed at me.
“She’s lying because he told her to.”
Emily pressed play.
David’s own voice filled the room.
“You think you’ve won because you found the obvious things.”
Then another recording.
“Federal task force too. I wondered when they’d arrive.”
Then the worst one.
“Emily always needed rescuing. That was her problem.”
Ramirez’s expression hardened immediately.
David’s mouth moved.
Nothing useful came out.
For the first time in a very long time, his money wasn’t speaking fast enough.
PART 6 — THE PRICE OF BREATHING
Justice did not come down like a thunderbolt. It came through documents, sirens, drained witnesses, and a little boy asking whether he could have pancakes.
By noon, David Carter had been arrested.
Not for all of it.
Not yet.
Men like him buried themselves under layers, and peeling those layers back required time.
But he was no longer untouchable.
That mattered.
Oliver woke at eleven with warmth back in his cheeks and wanted to know if the hotel served waffles. Afterward, Emily cried in the bathroom, silently, with one hand pressed over her mouth.
I stood outside the door and acted like I couldn’t hear.
Sometimes kindness is simply letting someone have privacy.
When she stepped out, her eyes were red but steady.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m made of glass.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m made of unpaid bills and rage.”
“That’s stronger.”
A tired smile barely touched her lips.
Oliver ate waffles while wearing a robe much too large for him, kicking his feet beneath the table as Nico showed him how to build a tower from sugar packets.
Emily watched them with an expression caught between amusement and horror.
“Does he always look like he’s planning a bank robbery?” she asked.
