Chapter 2 - The Message Neither of Them Sent
The first thing Emily noticed at St. Catherine’s Hospital was that Nicholas had taken off his expensive watch.
He placed it on the windowsill beside a paper cup of water, rolled up his sleeves, and sat where she could see him. He did not argue when the nurse asked him to leave for the examination. He waited outside the curtain and listened for instructions like a man who understood that money could not change the rhythm of a fetal heartbeat.
The doctor told Emily that the baby’s heart rate was reassuring. She needed fluids, food, rest, and further monitoring; the cramps were less frequent now, but they would not dismiss them until they were certain. When the nurse offered another blanket, Emily began crying so abruptly that she startled herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’ve had a hard night,” the nurse replied. “You don’t owe anyone an apology for that.”
After the medical team finished, Nicholas appeared in the doorway.
“Can I come in?”
Emily nodded. The small courtesy disturbed her more than an order would have. She had once thought she knew every version of his face. The one standing under the hospital lights looked older, as if he had been carrying news he could no longer put down.
“You knew my father was paid,” she said.
“I knew his name appeared in a transfer flagged by an audit yesterday. I didn’t know why.” Nicholas took the chair beside the bed. “My security director thought it might be connected to an internal fraud case. When I saw Richard at the hotel, I recognized him from the report.”
“Two hundred thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“My father told me he couldn’t afford to keep feeding me.”
Nicholas looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t make sense. And you apologizing doesn’t make anything make sense either.”
He accepted the rebuke without moving closer.
“I should have told you my full name,” he said. “I was afraid you would look at me the way everyone else does.”
“So you let me fall in love with somebody who didn’t exist?”
“Nico existed. The part I gave you was real. It just wasn’t all of me.”
Emily stared at the monitor beside the bed. “I had to tell my baby stories about you because I thought that was all he would ever have.”
Nicholas’s jaw tightened. “What stories?”
“That you liked terrible coffee. That you always walked on the street side of the sidewalk. That you once brought me a book with a missing cover because you thought I’d love it anyway.”
He gave a short, miserable laugh. “You did love it.”
“I did.” Her voice cracked. “That’s the problem.”
He told her about the morning they had lost each other. He had left town unexpectedly after an attack against one of his shipping facilities. Two days later he returned to the bookstore café. The manager said Emily had quit. A woman who claimed to be her roommate answered the number he had saved and told him Emily wanted nothing to do with him. He had sent letters to her apartment, and every letter had come back.
“I thought leaving was what you wanted,” he said.
Emily closed her eyes. Patricia had insisted she move home when the bookstore reduced her hours. Patricia had offered to help pack, had borrowed her phone, had even driven her to close the old bank account. Emily had mistaken control for concern because she desperately wanted to believe somebody cared.
“I never got a letter,” she said. “I got a text saying I was a mistake.”
“Show me if you still have it.”
Her old phone was dead. Nicholas asked permission to have someone bring a compatible charger. While they waited, Emily watched him struggle to stay still.
“You’re that DeLuca,” she said finally.
He did not pretend not to understand. “Yes.”
“Do you hurt people?”
“Sometimes I have. I won’t lie to you.”
Her fingers tightened around the blanket. “Then why should I trust you with a child?”
“Not because I say you should.” He lifted his eyes. “Because I have to earn it. And because you get to decide what being safe looks like.”
At two in the morning, Marco Bellini entered with a charger, a spare phone, and a manila folder. He had a weary face and the alert posture of a former detective. He waited until Emily agreed to hear the information before opening the file.
“The two messages were routed through replacement accounts,” Marco explained. “Someone requested number forwarding for both of you during the same week. Your old café coworker confirmed a woman came by looking for your schedule.”
“A woman?” Emily asked.
Marco laid down a photograph taken from a camera near the café. The woman wore a white coat and large sunglasses. Even with her face half concealed, Nicholas recognized her.
“Isabella Romano,” he said.
Emily looked up. “Who is she?”
“The woman my uncle wanted me to marry.”
Silence spread through the hospital room.
Nicholas explained in short, reluctant sentences. The Romanos controlled a rival commercial network. His uncle Vittorio had been proposing a marriage alliance for years, speaking of peace while demanding voting rights and access to contracts. Nicholas had refused. He had believed the subject was closed.
“And she knew about me?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know how much she knew.”
“Enough to come to my job.”
“Maybe. I won’t pretend we have proof of what she did yet.”
Marco showed them the suspicious transfer. Its recipient was a shell consultancy registered to Richard Carter, paid from an expense account under DeLuca Financial Holdings. Four words were typed into the memo field: Remove the girl immediately.
Emily felt the bed tilt beneath her.
“No,” she whispered. “My father wouldn’t…”
She remembered Richard pushing the baby socks back toward her with the tip of his shoe. She remembered the way he avoided her eyes at the hotel.
Her voice hardened. “He would.”
Nicholas reached for her hand and stopped halfway. She studied the offered hand for a moment before taking it.
“This is not your mess to clean up for me,” she said.
“I know.”
“If I stay near you, I need the truth. Not whatever you think will keep me calm.”
“Then that’s what you’ll get.”
Her phone finally powered on. The old message appeared, as cruel as she remembered. Beneath it was a notification from the day before, buried in a folder she had never noticed. An unknown sender had written: If you tell DeLuca about the baby, you’ll both be sorry.
Emily turned the screen toward Nicholas.
Marco swore under his breath. Nicholas read it once, then twice.
Before either man could speak, Marco’s replacement phone vibrated. A security officer at the hotel had recovered footage from just before the confrontation. It showed Patricia speaking with Isabella in a service corridor. Then Isabella passed Patricia a slim black envelope.
The timestamp was less than an hour before Emily arrived.
“They weren’t surprised to see me,” Emily said slowly.
Nicholas lifted his gaze to Marco. “Find out what was in that envelope.”
May you like
Emily pressed a hand to her stomach. For the first time since Richard had locked the front door, she understood that homelessness had not been the beginning of her nightmare.
Somebody had planned for her to have nowhere else to go.
