Chapter 4
Raymond moved Emily into his penthouse that night.
Top floor of the Saint Claire Tower, downtown.
Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city.
A team of housekeepers, a private chef, a 24/7 nurse on call.
Emily hated it at first.
It felt too big.
Too fancy.
Too much like the life she’d tried to build with Preston, only colder.
But Raymond didn’t give her a choice.
“The Whitmores are dangerous,” he said, carrying her suitcase into the master bedroom. “I’m not letting you stay in that house alone. Not with Preston running around, not with Vanessa out on bail.”
Vanessa had been arraigned that morning.
Felony assault.
Bail set at fifty thousand dollars.
Her lawyer had told the press she was “a victim of a bitter wife’s lies” and that the pregnancy “made her emotional.”
The tabloids had eaten it up.
PREGNANT MISTRESS VS. PREGNANT WIFE: HOSPITAL BRAWL AT WEALTHY CLAN’S MEDICAL CENTER.
Emily turned off her phone.
She didn’t want to see it.
Didn’t want to read the comments calling her a gold digger, a cold bitch, a woman who couldn’t keep her husband.
For three days, she barely left the bedroom.
She sat on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, watching the city move below her, one hand always resting on her belly.
The baby kicked more now.
Strong little kicks.
Like he was telling her he was okay.
Like he was on her team.
On the fourth day, there was a knock at the front door.
Torres, who’d been posted outside the penthouse 24/7, called up.
“Ms. Emily? Vanessa Cross is here. Says she wants to talk. Says she’s alone.”
Emily’s first instinct was to say no.
Then she thought about it.
What did Vanessa have to say?
Was she going to apologize?
Threaten her?
“Let her up,” Emily said.
Raymond, who’d been working at the dining room table, looked up sharply.
“Em, no. She’s unstable—”
“I need to hear it,” Emily said. “If she’s going to be in our lives for the next eighteen years, I need to know what I’m dealing with. Just stay in the other room. If I yell, come running.”
Raymond hesitated, then nodded.
“Fine. But if she so much as raises her voice, she’s out on her ass.”
Vanessa came in ten minutes later.
She looked different.
No designer coat.
No cherry lipstick.
Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail.
She wore sweatpants and a faded college hoodie.
Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying.
“Emily,” she said, stopping in the middle of the living room. “Thank you for seeing me.”
Emily sat on the couch, one hand on her belly, watching her.
“What do you want, Vanessa?”
Vanessa took a shaky breath.
“I came to apologize,” she said. “For kicking you. For everything. I was stupid. I was angry. Preston told me you were going to leave him penniless, that you were going to take the hospital and the house and everything, and I just—I lost it. I’m so sorry.”
Emily stared at her.
She didn’t believe a word of it.
But she let her keep talking.
“I’m not going to press charges against you for the baby,” Vanessa said, reaching into her purse. “I signed these papers. I’m giving up all rights to child support. I’m going to move to California. I’ll never bother you or Preston again. I just want to start over.”
She held out a stack of papers.
Emily didn’t take them.
“Where’s your lawyer?” she asked.
Vanessa blinked.
“What?”
“People don’t just sign away child support rights without a lawyer,” Emily said. “Especially not people who were screaming they were pregnant with Preston’s baby three days ago. What’s the catch?”
Vanessa’s face shifted.
The vulnerable mask slipped.
Just a little.
“No catch,” she said, her voice getting tighter. “I’m trying to do the right thing—”
The front door burst open.
Preston stumbled in, drunk, holding a bottle of whiskey, his shirt unbuttoned, his hair a mess.
“Em!” he slurred. “Baby, I’m here! I left her! I left Vanessa! It’s always been you—”
He stopped when he saw Vanessa.
Then his face twisted into rage.
“You!” he screamed, lunging at her. “You told me if I came here and begged, she’d take me back! You said the papers were fake—”
Vanessa jumped up, screaming back.
“I told you to get her to sign them first, you idiot! If she’d signed the liability waiver, we could have sued her for emotional distress! We could have taken the penthouse, the hospital, everything!”
The room went dead silent.
Emily stood up slowly.
She wasn’t angry anymore.
She was just tired.
So tired of their lies.
Their games.
Their endless greed.
“Get out,” she said quietly.
Both of them turned to look at her.
“Both of you,” she said. “Get out of my house. If either of you ever comes near me again, I will have you arrested. I don’t care what you do to each other. But you leave me and my son alone.”
Preston dropped the whiskey bottle.
It shattered on the marble floor.
“Emily, no,” he sobbed, falling to his knees. “Please. I can’t live without you. The baby needs his dad—”
Raymond walked out of the other room, followed by Torres and two security guards.
“Take them out,” Raymond said.
The guards dragged Preston out, kicking and screaming.
Vanessa followed, her face cold again, the vulnerable act gone completely.
When the door clicked shut, Emily sank back onto the couch, shaking.
Raymond sat next to her, putting his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said.
Emily shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I needed to. There’s no going back now. Not ever.”
Raymond nodded.
He pulled a thick manila folder out of his briefcase and set it on the coffee table.
“I had my team dig into Harold’s finances,” he said. “It’s worse than we thought. He’s embezzled over twelve million dollars from the hospital in the last ten years. Preston knew. He helped him cook the books. If we go public, they’ll both go to prison for a very long time.”
Emily looked at the folder.
Twelve million dollars.
Money that should have gone to sick kids.
To single moms who couldn’t pay their bills.
To the women’s pavilion named after her mother.
“Then we go public,” she said.
Raymond looked at her, surprised.
May you like
“Em, that’ll destroy the Whitmore name. It’ll hurt the hospital’s reputation—”
“The hospital is my mother’s legacy,” Emily said, her voice steady. “Not Harold’s. Not Preston’s. If we let them get away with this, we’re just as bad as they are. Tomorrow. We call the board meeting tomorrow.”
