Chapter 6 - DON’T LEAVE
Marco’s forged signature changed the investigation from embarrassment into war.
Not the kind with gunfire.
Not yet.
The kind with accountants.
By morning, two outside forensic firms had access to the Westside payment system. Marco recused himself from the internal committee reviewing his own approvals after Helen pointed out, through Emily, that a man should not supervise the investigation of his allegedly forged signature.
He disliked the logic.
He obeyed it.
Dario’s access was suspended.
His attorney delivered a statement by noon: Dario denied forging anything, denied coercing Robert Foster, and described the audio recording as “selectively edited.”
No one laughed.
The signature analysis became more interesting.
Marco’s real approval stamp had been digitized three years earlier for routine vendor payments. Dario had access. So did three finance employees. So did Giovanni, though only through legal administration.
Emily noticed Marco’s face when Giovanni’s name appeared on the access list.
Trust had become a shrinking room.
“You think he did it?” she asked later.
They were in the townhouse study, both pretending to review separate documents.
“No.”
“That sounded fast.”
“I’ve known Giovanni eighteen years.”
“So?”
Marco looked at her.
“That is not evidence.”
She waited.
He sighed.
“No. It isn’t.”
Progress came in irritatingly small increments.
That afternoon, the city commission postponed Westside review after anonymous documents about Foster Civic reached a newspaper. The leak named Robert, Marco, and Dario.
Not Andrangetta.
Not Vale.
Convenient.
The headline read:
RAVALINI PROJECT PAID DEAD GAMBLER $680K THROUGH SHELL CONSULTANCY
Emily read it once.
Then again.
Her father reduced to the ugliest accurate noun.
Dead gambler.
Lily threw her phone onto the sofa.
“They make him sound like he invented the whole thing.”
“He signed documents,” Emily said.
“He was threatened.”
“Both can be true.”
Lily hated that answer.
So did Emily.
The next article was worse.
It identified Emily as Marco’s new fiancée and connected her to Robert.
Conflict speculation exploded.
Had Marco paid Robert because he was secretly involved with Robert’s daughter?
Had the engagement begun earlier than claimed?
Was Foster Civic a conduit for personal payments?
The truth—Emily dancing by accident in the wrong penthouse—was somehow less believable than corruption.
Marco called a press lawyer.
Emily called Helen.
They agreed on one thing: no lies.
The statement acknowledged that Emily and Marco had met recently, that Robert’s vendor relationship predated them, and that an independent audit was underway. Nothing about the contract.
Not yet.
That evening, Marco told Emily the engagement could end.
They were alone in the library. Rain scratched at the windows. The city lights beyond the townhouse garden looked smeared and distant.
“If you walk now,” he said, “the debt remains canceled. Lily keeps security for thirty days while we transition. Your legal costs remain covered through the escrow already established.”
Emily stared at him.
“You’re firing me?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Giving you the exit I should have made clearer the first night.”
She folded her arms.
“Why now?”
“Because the arrangement no longer helps my image. It damages yours.”
There.
The honest calculation.
She should have felt relieved.
Instead something unpleasant tightened under her ribs.
“You think I care what people think?”
“Yes.”
“I care what Lily thinks.”
“I know.”
“And what I think.”
His expression changed slightly.
“I’m learning that.”
Emily looked away.
The fake engagement had lasted nine days.
Nine days of armored cars, legal briefings, absurd dresses, threats, Lily mocking Marco’s suits, Marco asking before touching her for photographs, and her entire understanding of power becoming more complicated than she wanted.
Leaving would be rational.
Her father’s debt was gone.
She had independent counsel.
She could take Lily somewhere far from Westside, Dario, Andrangetta, and the man whose gaze made her feel too visible.
“Okay,” she said.
Marco’s face became unreadable.
“Okay?”
“I’ll pack.”
There was a pause too long to ignore.
“Tonight?”
Emily looked at him.
“You said I could leave.”
“Yes.”
“So I’m leaving.”
“Yes.”
But something in him had gone still.
Not angry.
Worse.
Disappointed.
Emily hated that she noticed.
She went upstairs.
Lily was sitting on the floor between two open suitcases.
“You’re serious?” Lily asked.
“Yes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Helen found a short-term place in Brooklyn.”
Lily nodded slowly.
“Do you want to go?”
Emily stopped folding.
“What?”
“Do you want to go?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
Lily’s expression sharpened.
“Then why did you spend my whole childhood telling me Dad’s biggest problem was that he made decisions without asking us what we wanted?”
Children should not be allowed to become nineteen.
Emily sat on the edge of the bed.
“This place is dangerous.”
“So is leaving if Dario still wants the files.”
“We have protection.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Emily looked down.
Lily continued more quietly.
“You like him.”
“No.”
“Emily.”
“I do not.”
“You’re wearing his shirt again.”
Emily looked down.
She was.
Damn it.
“That proves laundry failure.”
“It proves you went into his closet.”
Emily threw a sock at her.
Lily caught it.
Then the joke faded.
“You don’t have to stay for me,” Lily said. “And you don’t have to leave for me either.”
The words settled.
Emily finished packing anyway.
At ten, Silvio brought the car around.
Mrs. Valenti stood in the foyer trying not to look emotional about women who had occupied the house for nine days.
Marco did not come down.
That made leaving easier.
It also made Emily furious.
She carried one suitcase to the door.
Then the security alarm sounded.
Not the full building alarm.
One sharp tone from Silvio’s radio.
He turned immediately.
“Rear gate.”
Marco appeared at the top of the stairs as if summoned from stone.
“What?”
“Vehicle breach. Delivery van forced secondary barrier.”
Everything changed.
Silvio moved Emily and Lily away from the glass entry.
Two guards drew weapons.
A crash sounded from the rear courtyard.
Then gunfire.
Lily screamed.
Emily shoved her behind the marble pillar.
Marco came down the stairs fast, one hand inside his jacket.
“Safe room.”
Silvio nodded.
They moved.
A second burst of gunfire hit somewhere outside.
The townhouse lights cut out.
Emergency strips glowed red along the baseboards.
Emily grabbed Lily’s hand.
They reached the lower safe room just as one of the side windows shattered.
Inside, reinforced walls closed around them.
Silvio stayed outside with Marco.
Emily rounded on the steel door.
“Where is he?”
Tessa locked it.
“Handling it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
The attack lasted six minutes.
It felt like an hour.
When the safe-room door finally opened, Silvio stood there with blood along one sleeve.
Not his, he said before Emily asked.
Lily ran past him.
Emily followed.
The foyer smelled of plaster, smoke, and rain.
Marco was near the staircase speaking to police.
Police.
Not only his men.
That mattered.
His left shoulder was bleeding.
Emily stopped breathing.
He saw her.
“It’s a graze.”
She crossed the room and touched the torn fabric before remembering herself.
“You’re hurt.”
“Observant.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not.”
He looked toward the suitcases still standing beside the front door.
Something moved across his face.
Then he said, “The Brooklyn apartment is compromised.”
Emily went cold.
“How?”
“The van had the address in the driver’s phone.”
Silence.
Someone knew she was leaving before she left.
Helen knew.
The independent housing service knew.
Marco knew.
Silvio knew.
Lily knew.
Emily’s gaze moved across the foyer.
Marco understood immediately.
“No one leaves the house until we know where the leak came from.”
She laughed once, hard and frightened.
“So I’m trapped again.”
His expression changed.
“No.”
“You just said no one leaves.”
“I said until we understand an active attack.”
“That sounds exactly like your first penthouse.”
He flinched.
Tiny.
Real.
Then, before everyone, before his guards and the arriving paramedics and Lily staring between them, Marco said the sentence that stripped more authority from him than any apology could.
“Then leave if you need to.”
Emily stared.
His voice lowered.
“But don’t leave because you think I want you gone.”
There.
The room receded.
Marco looked at her as if admitting weakness were more dangerous than the blood on his shoulder.
“I should not say this while you’re frightened. I should not say it when security makes every choice feel pressured.” He swallowed. “But I don’t want you to leave.”
Emily’s heart struck once, painfully.
“Because of Westside?”
“No.”
“Because of Lily?”
“Not only.”
There was no contract language left between them.
Marco continued, quieter.
“I want you here because the house feels different when you’re in it. Because you argue with me. Because you look at numbers nobody else bothers to read. Because I have started waiting for you to walk into rooms.”
Lily made a tiny sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
Emily ignored her.
“This is a terrible time.”
“Yes.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yes.”
“You’re also still technically paying me to be engaged to you.”
“Yes.”
“That makes this almost unusably complicated.”
“Yes.”
He was maddening.
Emily looked at the suitcases.
Then at the ruined glass.
Then at Lily.
She took a breath.
“I’m not leaving tonight.”
Marco’s shoulders lowered half an inch.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“I know.”
The paramedic stepped forward.
“Mr. Ravalini, if we’re done with the relationship breakthrough, I need to look at your shoulder.”
Lily burst out laughing.
Emily did too.
Marco closed his eyes.
For one absurd second, with broken glass on the floor and police lights moving over the ceiling, the terror loosened.
Then Silvio approached holding a phone in a clear evidence bag.
“We identified the driver.”
Marco’s expression changed.
“Who?”
Silvio looked at Emily.
“Velvet Touch security.”
May you like
The wrong apartment had reached back into their lives again.
And this time, it had come armed.
