Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED
Emma did not remember climbing the stairs. She remembered the sting in her cheek, the pressure of her baby's heel against her ribs, and the way fourteen people had watched her husband strike her without anyone moving quickly enough to stop him.
At the top of the staircase, she entered the bedroom she had decorated herself. Cream curtains. Pale blue walls. A small wooden crib beside the window. The nursery had been Dante's idea, and he had spent an entire Sunday assembling the crib while complaining about the instructions.
Emma had once taken a photograph of him asleep in the nursery chair, one hand resting on the unfinished mattress.
She deleted it now.
Her phone vibrated.
DANTE: Come downstairs. We will discuss this privately.
Emma laughed once, without humor.
Privately. He wanted to repair the damage before his men carried the story beyond the estate.
She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and removed a small leather folder hidden beneath her winter scarves. Inside were copies of financial statements, a handwritten ledger, photographs, and a flash drive wrapped in tissue paper.
She had found the first document six weeks earlier, when Dante asked her to retrieve a file from his study. A transfer authorization bearing her forged signature had been tucked between property records. The money had moved through three companies before disappearing into an account associated with Bianca's family.
At first, Emma had believed it was another of Dante's secret business arrangements.
Then she found a hospital invoice bearing her father's name.
Her father, Michael Hayes, had died eleven years earlier in what police called a warehouse accident. Dante had never met him, according to the story she had been told.
But the invoice was dated three days before Michael's death.
And it had been paid by a company owned by Dante's father.
Emma placed the folder inside a waterproof envelope and slid it beneath the lining of her suitcase. Then she packed maternity clothes, her medical records, the ultrasound photographs, and the small knitted blanket she had kept from her first pregnancy.
She removed her wedding ring and placed it on the dresser.
At 2:17 a.m., she called the only person she trusted.
"Rosa?"
Her former nurse, now a close friend, answered immediately.
"Emma? What's wrong?"
"I need somewhere safe to stay. Somewhere Dante won't look."
A pause.
"Did he hurt you?"
Emma swallowed.
"Yes."
Rosa's voice changed.
"Send me your location. I'll meet you at the old pharmacy on Ashland. Don't tell anyone where you're going."
Emma glanced at the nursery.
"There's one more thing," she whispered. "If something happens to me, there's a folder. It contains proof that Dante's family has been lying for years."
Before Rosa could answer, footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Emma killed the call, grabbed her suitcase, and slipped through the servants' staircase.
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She was seven months pregnant, frightened, and alone.
But for the first time in four years, she was leaving without asking her husband for permission.
