Page 48 of The Gilded Cuff
Sophie started forward but Emery turned away. “It went dark. The little voice in my head, the pulsing light that was my brother. It went dark.”
At his words, her own soul seemed to sink below the surface of a deep, cold sea. It would be so easy to surrender to her own pain, to allow his to join hers and drown them both in a tide of misery.
He raked his hands through his hair before he put his palms on the window sill. He hung his head.
“Sometimes I get these flashes, these instant glimpses of someone else, a life so different from mine. It feels like him, but it can’t be. He’s gone. Otherwise he would have come home. I feel like I’m going insane. The world is pulling me apart from the inside out.”
She knew exactly what he meant. There were moments when she felt like an old tapestry with its edges frayed and torn. All it would take to unravel her was a tug on the right thread.
She inhaled slowly and went toward him. When she touched his shoulder he flinched but didn’t pull away. “Is that why you locked yourself away?”
“It’s a fitting punishment. I ran, left him behind to die. Now I wait for a boy that won’t ever come home, a brother who will never grow up.”
Sophie wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek against the back of his shoulder. He was trembling, but he wasn’t alone anymore and neither was she.
“You asked me what happened, what made me understand you. My best friend Rachel was kidnapped. We were only seven. A man stole her from the playground. I was the only one who saw him. They never caught him. They never found her body. And I couldn’t give them any information—no license plate, no details, to catch him. Ifailedher, my best friend.”
Emery went utterly still. He turned around in the loose cage of her arms, wrapping his body around hers, crushing her to him as though she were precious.
“What could you have done? You were practically a baby,” he murmured in her ear. His lips teased her sensitive skin and his warm breath was soothing as he nuzzled her hair.
“So were you.” She stroked his chest, feeling the rich fabric of his dress shirt slide beneath her hands. “Even though it’s the truth, it doesn’t ease our guilt.”
He tilted her chin back to peer down at her in all seriousness. “Is that why you came here? You hoped I had some secret answers, some way of coping?” He laughed softly, full of sorrow. “Sophie, I locked myself away in this place. I have no more answers than you.”
He was right. She hadn’t been willing to accept that tragic truth until now. Suddenly an idea struck her.
“Why did you never tell anyone what happened? Why not take the police to the mansion where they held you?”
“The man in charge, Antonio, said he’d kill my mother and father if we ever breathed a word of what happened. Of course, he told us this while still pretending to ransom us. I thought if I just stayed quiet, he’d leave me alone, not harm my parents.”
“Wait. You just said ‘pretending.’ He wasn’t really intending to ransom you?” If that was true, her research on the case had been leading in the right direction. The real intent could have been to murder the boys. A purpose like that often was connected to an inside job.
Emery shook his head. “After the first three weeks, Fenn and I overhead him talking to the other two men. They were making plans for our disposal, but had to wait for the signal from whoever was in charge. Apparently, the ransom was a ruse. Someone must have hired him, otherwise his waiting so long to finish us off doesn’t make sense. Now it’s happening again.”
Sophie narrowed her eyes, peering over Emery’s shoulder out the window as she puzzled over this new development. Just as she suspected. Planned, carefully planned murder of the Lockwood twins.
“Maybe whoever hired him was waiting for something to happen and killing you had to be postponed. He might have gotten scared about being exposed if he had Antonio make another run at you once you were safely home again.” It made sense. A third party could have hired Antonio and the others to take the twins, kill them, and make it all look like a botched ransom. But once Hans had been hired it would have made Antonio’s job harder, and he’d probably been advised to wait until Hans and Emery lowered their guard. Even if it took twenty-five years.
“Antonio never spoke of anyone else. He was a cruel bastard and spent most of the day finding ways to torture Fenn and me.”
“Emery, who could benefit from your death?” It was a risk to ask him something so sensitive, but she could feel the puzzle pieces were so close to coming together. She felt as though she were in a heavy cloud, and although she could feel shapes a dense fog wrapped around them, cloaking them from view, making them appear different from the truth.
“No one. I don’t have any enemies. Not even my business competitors hate me enough to try to kill me. My parents are retired, my uncle dead. Brant has fifty percent ownership of Lockwood Industries.”
At the mention of Brant, Sophie’s hair rose on the back of her neck. Something in her gut warned her he couldn’t be trusted.
“Through his father?”
“No, Uncle Rand didn’t leave anything to him in his will. He sold everything he held back to my father. Brant had to buy his way back into the company. When I took over from my father, I let him in pretty cheap.”
“That was nice of you,” Sophie murmured.
He shrugged. “I offered him the company, full out ownership five years ago. He didn’t take me up on it. Said he liked his position on the board and didn’t want me to leave as the president. Brant’s not perfect, but he’s no murderer.” Emery cupped the back of her neck and held her still as he bent his head to her, stealing a soft little kiss.
She rose up on tiptoes to return his kiss, letting all of her worries go for the moment. Cupping his face, she stroked his cheeks and licked at his lips, begging him to open his mouth to her. Emery curled his fingers around her waist and lifted her up against his body. With a gasp, Sophie clung to his shoulders before smiling at him and claiming his mouth again. Years of inner wounds—lonely aches, pain, and sadness, all of the things that had weighed her down and punctured her soul since she was seven years old—ceased to matter.
The feel of Emery’s mouth on hers, his arms around her body holding her protectively, flooded her with strength and hope. So long as he held her, kissed her, wanted her, she could do anything. She couldn’t think about when this kiss would end. That someday she’d have to go back to her own life. Leaving him would cleave her soul in two, and she’d have to use every bit of her willpower to stay alive. For now…she had this moment.
