Page 51 of Terms of Exposure
"Emma—"
"Did you falsify Elion's audit?" She threw the question like a blade.
There it was. The one question I'd prayed she'd never say out loud.
The truth I'd been holding like a live grenade.
"Did you fabricate financial documents to push the merger through? Documents that Nathan is now using to—" She faltered. "To try to buy me?"
The words slammed into me.
Buy her.
Because of me. Because I'd thought I was protecting her.
Instead, I'd painted a target on her back. Given Nathan the ammunition he needed to corner her in his office, to let his gaze crawl over her body, to imply she could whore herself out of the mess I'd created.
Speech evaporated. The excuses I'd prepared—I did it for you, I did it for Elion, I did it because I love you—turned to ash on my tongue.
But none of that would matter. None of that made what I did okay. None of that would change the position I'd now put her in.
"Emma, I—"
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Again. A ringtone cutting through the tension.
She held my gaze—a silent promise that this conversation wasn't over—before swiping the screen and bringing the phone to her ear.
"Candace? What's wrong?"
I couldn't hear the other end. Only watched Emma's face. The tight line of her mouth. The crease between her brows.
Her lips parted. Shock slackened her features, replaced by something raw.
When she looked at me again, the fury was gone.
"We'll be right there," she breathed.
The phone slipped from her fingers.
"What is it?"
Her gaze found mine, wide and glassy.
"Sebastian's awake."
Chapter sixteen
Candace
The room was cold, even with Sebastian's hand cradled in mine, my thumb brushing over knuckles that didn't move. I held on anyway—stealing what warmth I could.
Emma had left the night before—off to a well-deserved date night with Damien. I'd stayed. Read three chapters of Twilight out loud to a man who couldn't hear me, then curled up in the chair beside his bed and slept in fitful bursts between nurse check-ins.
Now morning light filtered through the blinds, pale and thin. Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang. A cart rattled past the door. Rosie was home recovering from a cold that had knocked her flat. Damien and Emma were both at work—meetings they couldn't cancel, lives that kept moving even when his didn't. None of us could stomach the idea of Sebastian waking up alone.
So here I was. Rumpled and exhausted. Running on vending machine coffee and the stubborn hope that maybe today would be different.
Fear and grief clung to the walls like humidity, settling into my pores. Machines beeped and hummed in uneven rhythms—a symphony of suffering.
