“You’re right.”
Derek’s eyebrows lifted, surprised by her calm.
Emma’s hand trembled as she reached for her phone. Not to beg. Not to plead. Not to bargain for scraps of decency.
To open a door she’d kept bolted for six years.
Derek turned slightly, as if he might leave. Veronica tugged his arm, impatient, eager to escape before Emma’s pain became inconvenient to witness.
Emma raised the phone to her ear.
Her voice, when she spoke, was steady enough to make Derek hesitate.
“Father.”
The word hit the air like a bell in a cathedral.
Derek stiffened. Veronica snorted.
Emma closed her eyes, and for one heartbeat she was twenty-three again, standing in a room full of marble and expectations, facing Richard Richardson’s cold insistence that duty mattered more than desire.
“Yes,” Emma said, throat tightening. “It’s Emma. Yes, it’s really me.”
Silence poured through the receiver, thick as tidewater.
Then a voice, low and controlled, carrying the weight of a man accustomed to moving governments with a phone call.
“Emma.”
Her father didn’t say where have you been? Not yet. He didn’t say how could you? Not yet. Because her breathing sounded wrong. Because a father knew the difference between rebellion and emergency.
“I need you,” Emma said simply.
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