Chapter 7 - Emily
I met Emily at a coffee shop just outside Bexley because she didn’t want to talk on the phone anymore and I didn’t blame her. She looked like she hadn’t slept in two days. Her hair was pulled into a knot that kept collapsing, and she was wearing the same oversized denim jacket she had borrowed from me sophomore year and somehow never returned.
“I’m sorry,” she said before I even sat down.
“You told him about my family?”
“I told him you hated being seen as a bank balance. That’s all. He already knew your last name mattered. He said he was trying not to embarrass himself around your dad.”
I believed her. Not because I was naive, but because guilt sat on Emily’s face too honestly to be staged.
She handed me her phone. “I printed the call log too. Florence used Jonathan’s phone that morning, but she also called me once from an app-based number. I think she wanted me scared.”
Reese had asked me to collect everything. Screenshots. timestamps. context.
“I should’ve said something when Jonathan started asking questions about whether your family still did ‘legacy rescue financing,’” Emily whispered. “I thought he wanted to understand your world.”
“No,” I said. “He wanted a map.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then Emily frowned. “Charlotte, there’s something else. At the bridal brunch, Florence asked where you kept your planner. Not your purse. Your planner.”
“My paper one?”
She nodded. “She said old-fashioned girls always write down what matters.”
My skin prickled. My planner contained my meeting schedule, including the morning-after brunch I was supposed to skip and the observer briefing with special assets I had next week. It also held shorthand references only a patient manipulator would bother mining.
When I got back to Reese’s office, Nina was waiting with more news. The anonymous account that first posted the bucket clip had been accessed using login credentials previously tied to Emily’s old tablet. But the IP address at posting time traced back to a Miller Home Systems office subnet.
“They wanted her to look involved,” Nina said.
Another reward. Emily hadn’t betrayed me in the way I feared.
But the larger twist landed right behind it.
Nina placed one more sheet on the table. “We examined the source folder attached to Jonathan’s pending financing package. Among the uploaded materials was a personal biography summary. Not scraped from public sites. Written from conversation. Very specific.”
I scanned it. It referenced my discomfort with public attention, my volunteer work with the women’s transitional-housing nonprofit my late mother had loved, my habit of taking black coffee after bad meetings, and the fact that I never asked for help until I was already too exhausted.
Whoever wrote it didn’t just know me.
They had studied me.
At the bottom of the file history was a note tag authored by L. Davis.
Luke again.
May you like
Then Reese’s assistant knocked and said Luke was downstairs refusing to leave until I saw him.
📖 Emily helped clear one betrayal I feared, but the file that replaced it felt worse—and Luke Davis was suddenly at my door asking for five minutes. 👇
