Chapter 3: What Cole Wrote
Emma stared at Tessa's name on the screen.
The phone buzzed a second time.
A third.
Adrian watched her without speaking.
She declined the call.
Her thumb moved to the envelope instead.
The paper was thick, the kind Cole used for important documents, not personal notes.
She worked her finger under the flap and pulled out a single folded page.
The date at the top was two weeks ago.
*Emma,*
*If you're reading this before Saturday, then something went wrong and I wasn't brave enough to fix it myself.
I'm sorry for that.
I'm sorry for all of it.*
*What happened with Tessa was a mistake that became something I didn't know how to stop.
I know that's not an explanation.
I know it doesn't help you.
But I need you to know one thing before anything else happens.*
*The Harborview contract — the one your firm has been working on for eighteen months — Cole Properties pulled it last week.
I told my father it was a business decision.
It wasn't.
Tessa asked me to.
She said if your career kept going the way it was going, you'd never need anyone.
She said she needed me to make sure you did.*
*I should have refused.
I didn't.*
*I'm telling you now because you deserve to know what was actually done to you.
Not just by me.*
*— Cole*
Emma read it twice.
Then she folded it very carefully and held it in both hands.
"Emma." Adrian's voice was quiet.
"Did you know about the Harborview contract?"
A pause.
"I knew Cole pulled it.
I didn't know why."
She looked up.
"Tessa asked him to destroy my biggest account so I would be more dependent.
More—" She stopped.
"More manageable."
Adrian said nothing.
His jaw was tight enough that a muscle moved near his ear.
"That contract was eighteen months of work." Her voice stayed even.
She was distantly proud of that.
"Three colleagues.
My name on the pitch.
We were two weeks from signing."
"I know."
"She stood in a dressing room and fastened the buttons on my wedding gown." Emma set the letter on the stone planter beside her.
"And she had already asked him to take that from me."
Her phone buzzed again.
Tessa, a second time.
Emma picked up.
"Emma, listen to me—"
"I read the letter."
Silence.
"What letter?" Tessa's voice shifted.
Something careful entered it.
"The one Cole wrote.
The one he asked Adrian to give me after the rehearsal dinner."
More silence.
Longer this time.
"Emma, whatever he wrote, he was trying to protect himself.
He was trying to make me look—"
"Did you ask him to pull the Harborview contract?"
Nothing.
"Tessa."
"It was more complicated than—"
"Did you ask him to pull it."
The pause lasted four full seconds.
"You were becoming someone I didn't recognize," Tessa said finally.
"You were always working.
You never had time.
You were going to outgrow all of us and you didn't even notice."
Emma stood up from the planter.
Adrian took one step back to give her room.
"You sabotaged my career," Emma said, "because you were afraid I was going to become too successful to need you."
"That's not—"
"And then you slept with my fiancé."
"Emma—"
"Don't call me again."
She ended the call.
The harbor was still doing what it had been doing.
Boats.
Wind.
A gull landing on a piling twenty feet away and immediately leaving again.
Adrian picked up the letter from the planter and held it out to her.
"Keep it," he said.
"You'll want it later."
She looked at him.
"Why will I want it later?"
His eyes moved back toward the hotel.
"Because my brother is about to make a very significant mistake, and when he does, that letter is going to matter."
Emma took it.
"What mistake?"
Adrian's phone rang.
May you like
He looked at the screen, then back at her.
"He's calling our father."
