Emery’s POV
The weeks before the gala pass in tense preparation.
I throw myself into it like a woman possessed, because perhaps I am. The argument with Landon hangs between us—unresolved, acknowledged only in the careful way we move around each other now.
He still reaches for me at night. I still let him hold me. But something has shifted, and we both feel it.
I select my dress on a Tuesday afternoon, standing in front of the boutique mirror while a saleswoman hovers nervously behind me.
"The navy is beautiful," she offers. "Very striking."
"Too striking." I turn slightly, examining the lines. "It needs to be elegant. Understated. Nothing that can be criticized as trying too hard."
"Or not hard enough?" she guesses.
I meet her eyes in the mirror. "Exactly."
The dress I choose is midnight blue—dark enough to be serious, soft enough to be approachable. It says nothing and everything. It is armor disguised as silk.
At night, alone in our bathroom, I practice my expression in the mirror.
Serenity. Calm. The slight upward curve of lips that suggests contentment without demanding attention. I hold it until my face aches, until the muscles memorize the position, until it becomes a mask I can wear at will.
"You're getting good at that," Harmony observes one evening, watching me from the nursery doorway.
I don't break the expression. "At what?"
"Looking peaceful when you're anything but." She crosses to settle beside me on the window seat, a folder in her hands. "Ready for your lesson?"
The coaching sessions become our routine. Harmony drills me on names and faces, on histories and grudges, on the intricate web of alliances that makes up Remington society.
"Charles Whitmore," she says, holding up a photograph. "Board member. Lost a significant investment when your father-in-law made a questionable decision fifteen years ago. Still holds a grudge against the family."
"But he attends every event," I counter. "Why?"
"Because proximity to power matters more than personal feelings." She sets down the photo and picks up another. "Harlow Bell. Socialite. Third marriage. Trades in gossip like currency—she'll sell your secrets to anyone who pays attention to her."
I memorize each face, each story, each potential threat. The knowledge settles into me like stones dropped into water, building a foundation I didn't know I needed.
"You're a fast learner," Harmony tells me after one particularly grueling session.
"I have good motivation."
The tabloid piece surfaces on a Thursday.
I'm scrolling through my phone while Elsie nurses, half-watching news alerts while she feeds contentedly. Then a headline catches my eye, and my thumb freezes mid-scroll.
"Foreign Roots, American Heir: Is Remington's Bride Fit to Raise the Next Generation?"
My stomach drops through the floor.
I tap the article with trembling fingers, already knowing what I'll find. The language is careful, coded—questions phrased as concerns, xenophobia dressed up as thoughtful journalism.
Sources close to the family wonder whether cultural differences might impact the child's upbringing...
Some question whether someone unfamiliar with American traditions can adequately prepare an heir for her responsibilities...
The Remington legacy stretches back generations. Will foreign influence dilute what so many have worked to build?
Each sentence cuts deeper than the last. They're not attacking my character this time. They're attacking my blood. My heritage. The very essence of who I am.
I read the article three times while Elsie sleeps peacefully in my arms, her tiny fingers curled against my chest. She doesn't know that strangers are already questioning her mother's fitness. That people who have never met us have decided I'm not worthy of raising my own child.
The rage burns cold and clean through my veins.
I don't cry. I don't scream. I don't give them the satisfaction of a breakdown, even one no one would witness.
Instead, I screenshot the article. I open the folder I've started keeping on my phone—evidence, dates, patterns—and save it alongside the others. Each piece of ammunition they've fired at me, carefully preserved.
When they come for me officially—and they will, I'm certain of it now—I will have documentation.
That night, I cannot sleep.
I slip from bed around two in the morning, careful not to wake Landon, and stand at the window watching shadows move across the grounds. The estate sprawls before me in the darkness, every carefully placed light and security camera a reminder of how thoroughly the Remingtons control their world.
I'm still standing there at three when I hear him stir.
"Emery?" His voice is rough with sleep. "What time is it?"
"Late. Go back to sleep."
But he doesn't. Instead, I feel him rise from the bed, hear his footsteps cross the room. Then his arms wrap around me from behind, his chin settling on my shoulder as he joins me at the window.
"What are you thinking?" he asks quietly.
For a long moment, I don't answer. I watch the security lights sweep across the gardens, the endless patrol protecting the Remington empire.
"I'm thinking about the women who came before me," I say finally. "In this house. In this family."
His arms tighten slightly. "What do you mean?"
"The ones who disappeared quietly." My voice is steady, flat, stripped of emotion. "The assistant who asked too many questions about financial transfers. The employees who left with generous severances and legal agreements. All the people your mother silenced over the years."
He doesn't deny it. Doesn't try to defend his family or explain away the patterns I've uncovered.
"What about them?" he asks instead.
"They were erased." I turn in his arms, facing him in the darkness, letting him see the steel in my eyes. "Paid off or pushed out or simply... disappeared. And no one ever spoke about them again."
"Emery—"
"I've been thinking about what that must have felt like." I cut him off gently. "To realize you'd become inconvenient. To understand that all the power, all the money, all the carefully constructed reputation—it could crush you without anyone even noticing."
He reaches up to cup my face, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. "I won't let that happen to you."
"I know you won't." I cover his hand with mine. "Because I won't let it happen either. I am not going to be erased, Landon. I'm not going to disappear quietly and let them rewrite history without me."
"What are you going to do?"
I think about the folder on my phone. The screenshots and dates and patterns. The evidence I'm building, piece by piece, of a coordinated campaign to destroy me.
"Whatever I have to," I tell him. "I'm going to survive this. And when it's over, they're going to remember my name."
He pulls me against his chest, holding me tight in the darkness while the estate sleeps around us.
"I believe you," he whispers into my hair. "God help anyone who tries to stop you."
I close my eyes and let him hold me.
They wanted to break me. Instead, they forged something new. And I will not be one of the women who disappeared.