(Emery’s POV)
Three days before the book went to print, an email hit her inbox with no subject line.
No sender.
Just one sentence.
You told your version of the fire.
Now I’ll tell mine.
Attached was a photo.
Not of the fire.
But of her.
Running away from it.
Blood on her temple.
Terror in her eyes.
And in the far background, obscured by smoke—
A silhouette.
Familiar.
Wrong.
⸻
Emery stared at the screen for a full minute before she could even breathe.
Then she called Luca.
He answered on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?”
“I got a message.”
He was home ten minutes later.
She showed him the photo.
His jaw locked, hard. “That’s… not possible. No one else was supposed to have footage.”
“It wasn’t footage,” Emery said. “It was a still. A picture. From inside the building.”
