Chapter 5

The moment the door closed, Michael dropped all his masks.

He came around the table, planted both hands on it, leaned in, and glared at me.

"What the hell do you want?"

His voice shook with the rage he was holding down.

I leaned back in my chair and watched him without a flicker.

"I was very clear. I'm buying your company, and that's only step one."

He looked like he'd just heard the biggest joke of his life.

He sneered, "Step one? Emily, on what grounds?

"That rebuilt face of yours? Or whichever old man you found overseas?"

His words were dripping with contempt and insult.

I laughed, "Michael, five years, and you're still this full of yourself.

"You think a woman only gets somewhere if there's a man behind her. That's your world, not mine."

My calm only made him angrier.

He said, "Then tell me how you got through those five years.

"I watched that building come down with my own eyes. I looked for you for two days. Everybody said you were dead."

He started spinning his excuses.

Acting like the tragic, helpless husband who did everything he could, but was powerless to save his wife.

"Two days, huh?" I repeated his words, my voice dripping with sarcasm. "Is that so?

"Funny, I remember you were right there on the third day when the rescue helicopter arrived."

My words unlocked the memories he'd tried to bury.

The anger on his face froze.

Panic flickered in his eyes for a split second.

"I..." He tried to say something, but nothing came out.

I stood up, taking my time as I walked right up to him.

I stood and walked toward him slowly and met his eyes across the width of the table.

I said, "Remember it now? The helicopter with room for one more.

"Vivian in your arms with a scratch on her leg.

"And me, your wife, forty feet away, covered in blood and barely breathing."

With every word I said, his face grew even paler.

His eyes darted away, unable to meet mine.

I continued, "You chose her, and you gave up on me.

"Michael, it isn't that you couldn't find me. You never planned on saving me at all."

He was giving ground with every word, and his lips were shaking.

He said, "No. That's not how it was. It was an emergency. I thought you were already gone."

"You thought I was already gone?"

I cut him off with a cold laugh.

"So you left me in the rubble to die and slept fine that night?

"Then you took my death certificate and collected everything we owned together?

"And then you bought Vivian the best dance studio in the city?

"Michael, you really do know how to run a set of numbers."

He was completely speechless.

Beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

He had never expected me to know all of it, because he thought it had gone into the ground with me.

He looked at me, and for the first time, there was real fear in his eyes.

The woman across that table was not the Emily of five years ago who did what he said and loved him more than her own life.

I had crawled back out of that hole with nothing in me but the debt he owed, and there was no love left in my eyes for him.

"Emily, I'm sorry."

He had finally started apologizing, and his voice came out dry.

"I know I was wrong back then. But I didn't have a choice.

"Please. For everything we used to be, let this one go."

He was pulling the emotional card.

I sneered, "Everything we used to be?"

It was the funniest phrase I had heard in years.

"That went up in smoke the second you carried Vivian onto that helicopter."

I walked around the table, leaned down to his ear, and spoke low enough that only he could hear it.

"One more thing before I go.

"The holes in your books are far too obvious.

"Especially the money you moved offshore as investment, three months before the earthquake.

"Tell me what happens if I hand all of that to the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Michael's body went rigid as a stone.