Emery’s POV
The morning begins like any other.
Sunlight filters through the sitting room windows as I spread the final checklist across the coffee table. Cake order confirmed. Prize baskets assembled. Face painter scheduled. The garden party Landon and I fought so hard for is finally, beautifully coming together.
I trace my finger down the guest list—twenty-three names, each one someone we actually know and trust. No society photographers. No ice sculptures. Just a simple celebration for a one-year-old who won't remember any of it but whose mother will remember everything.
I'm double-checking the balloon delivery time when I hear the crash.
It's not a small sound—something heavy hitting the floor, followed by a thud that vibrates through the walls. My body moves before my brain catches up, papers scattering as I bolt into the hallway.
Harmony.
She's collapsed against the wall outside the nursery, her body crumpled at an unnatural angle. Her skin is gray. Waxy. Her eyes flutter but don't focus.
"Harmony!" I drop to my knees beside her, cradling her head in my lap. Her pulse threads weak and rapid beneath my fingers. "Harmony, can you hear me?"
Behind me, Elsie's cries pierce the air—startled, frightened wails that slice through my chest like shattered glass.
"Help!" I scream toward the empty corridor. "Someone help me!"
Footsteps pound against marble. A maid appears first, then a groundskeeper, their faces blanching when they see Harmony's limp form.
"Call an ambulance," I order, my voice steadier than I feel. "Now."
The maid fumbles for her phone. The groundskeeper hovers uselessly. I press my palm to Harmony's cheek, trying to anchor her to consciousness. Her skin feels clammy, wrong—like touching something that's already slipping away.
"Stay with me," I whisper. "Please stay with me."
Her lips move, but no sound escapes. Her fingers twitch against the floor, grasping at nothing. I've seen this woman face down Marian Rinaldi without flinching. I've watched her laugh while chasing Elsie's runaway toys across the nursery floor. She is not fragile. She is not weak.
And yet here she is, crumbling in my arms.
"What happened to her?" The groundskeeper's voice cracks with panic.
"I don't know." I check her breathing—shallow, labored, wrong. "I don't know."
Portia appears at the end of the corridor with Lily close behind. They stop several feet away, their expressions shifting from alarm to something harder to read. Calculation, perhaps. Assessment. The way you might examine a chess board after an unexpected move.
"Good heavens." Portia's hand drifts to her mouth. "What's happened?"
"She collapsed." I don't look up. I can't stop watching Harmony's face, the terrifying flutter of her eyelids. "The ambulance is coming."
"Has she been ill?" Lily asks, her tone carrying an edge I don't have time to analyze.
"I don't know."
Elsie's screaming intensifies. My daughter needs me. My friend is dying in my arms. The choice tears through me like broken glass, each shard cutting deeper than the last.
"Someone get Elsie," I manage. "Please."
The maid starts toward the nursery, but Portia intercepts her with a raised hand. "I'll tend to my granddaughter."
"No." The word escapes before I can stop it. "I want—"
"Emery." Portia's voice is smooth, patient, infuriatingly calm. "You cannot take a baby to the hospital. Focus on your friend. Family will care for family."
The paramedics arrive before I can argue.
They swarm the corridor with equipment and questions—when did she collapse, does she have allergies, what medications does she take, what did she eat or drink this morning?
"I don't know," I keep repeating. The words taste like failure on my tongue. "I don't know. I don't know."
"She takes vitamins," I add desperately. "That's all I've ever seen her take. She's healthy. She runs every morning. She doesn't—she wouldn't—"
They slide an oxygen mask over Harmony's face and lift her onto a stretcher. Her arm dangles limply over the edge, and something about that small detail—the vulnerability of it, the wrongness—makes my throat close.
I grab her hand, squeezing hard.
"I'm coming with her." I look up at the nearest paramedic. "I'm riding with her."
He nods once. "Family?"
"Friend." My voice breaks on the word. "The closest thing she has."
They wheel her toward the service entrance, and I follow without looking back. But at the last moment, I stop.
Elsie.
She's in Portia's arms now, her cries softening to hiccups as her grandmother bounces her with practiced ease. My daughter—my baby—in the hands of the woman who has spent months trying to destroy everything I love.
Every instinct screams at me to turn back.
"I'll watch her carefully," Portia says, reading my hesitation. Her expression is unreadable, a mask of maternal concern that could mean anything or nothing. "Go. Your friend needs you."
"If anything happens to her—"
"She's my granddaughter, Emery." Portia's voice carries an edge of reproach. "I'm quite capable of caring for her."
I want to fight. I want to rip Elsie from her arms and barricade us both somewhere safe. But Harmony's stretcher is disappearing around the corner, and the paramedic is calling for me, and I cannot be in two places at once.
The impossibility of it threatens to split me in half.
"I'll call Landon," I say, backing toward the exit. "Don't take her anywhere. Don't let anyone photograph her. Keep her in the nursery."
"Of course."
Lily smiles beside her mother—sympathetic, supportive, utterly false. "We'll take wonderful care of her. Don't worry about a thing."
I turn and run.
The ambulance doors close behind me with a metallic clang. I settle onto the narrow bench beside Harmony's stretcher, my hand finding hers beneath the thin blanket.
The sirens wail to life, and through the rear windows, I watch the Remington estate shrink—the iron gates, the manicured grounds, the house that swallowed me whole and keeps finding new ways to cut.
Somewhere inside those walls, my daughter waits.
"Pulse is weakening," a paramedic announces, adjusting something on the monitor. Numbers flash red. Alarms beep in urgent rhythm.
I squeeze Harmony's fingers tighter. "Please," I whisper against her knuckles. "Please fight. You're stronger than this. I know you are."
Her eyes flutter open for just a moment. Unfocused. Confused. Her lips move beneath the oxygen mask, forming words I cannot hear. Then they drift shut again, and the monitor screams a warning that makes the paramedics move faster.
The estate disappears from view.
My heart splits down the center—one half bleeding in this ambulance beside the woman who protected my child, the other half left behind with my daughter in enemy hands.