Chapter 7: The First Morning With Isabella
Emma called Daniel Reyes at eight the next morning and accepted the offer.
He told her she could start the following Monday.
He also told her, in the same unhurried professional tone, that Mr.
Moretti had arranged for the Langford Group's complaint against her to be formally reviewed by the city's hospitality licensing board, and that her employment record at Elevate had been corrected to reflect a contract termination rather than a dismissal for cause.
Emma thanked him and hung up.
She did not yet mention the envelope.
Monday arrived gray and cold.
Daniel met her in the lobby of the Moretti family residence — not the office tower on Michigan Avenue but a quieter building in Lincoln Park, a full floor that had been converted for Isabella's care.
A medical team came in each morning.
A night nurse stayed until six.
Emma's hours were seven to five, five days a week.
Isabella was seated at the breakfast table when Emma was brought in.
The old woman looked different from the night in the ballroom.
Smaller, somehow, without the crowd around her.
Her silver hair was neatly pinned.
She wore a pale blue cardigan and was working on a cup of tea with careful concentration.
She looked up when Emma entered.
"You're the girl from the party," Isabella said.
"Yes, ma'am." Emma pulled out the chair across from her and sat without being asked.
Isabella watched her do it.
"Vincent told me what you did." Isabella wrapped both hands around her cup.
"He said you held on even when you were frightened."
"I was very frightened," Emma said.
"I know." Isabella's eyes — dark, still sharp in the way that sometimes survived the illness longer than everything else — settled on Emma's face.
"I could feel your hands shaking."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Isabella smiled, small and dry.
"Mine were shaking too."
That first morning, Emma simply stayed close.
She accompanied Isabella to a window seat where the old woman liked to read.
She made sure the tea was refilled.
She learned that Isabella preferred silence in the mornings, conversation in the afternoons, and did not like being spoken to as though she might shatter.
At eleven, Isabella set down her book and looked at Emma directly.
"What did she want from me?" Isabella asked.
Emma met her eyes.
"Victoria Langford."
Isabella nodded once.
Emma thought carefully.
"I think she wanted you to feel powerless in a room full of people.
I think she wanted everyone to see it."
Isabella was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," she said.
"That sounds right." She looked down at her book again.
"She's been doing it for years.
Small things.
Looks across a room.
Comments at the right moment.
Just enough that no one ever steps in." She turned a page she hadn't read.
"I used to wonder why she needed to.
What I had ever done to make her feel she needed that from me."
"You were there," Emma said quietly.
"That was enough for someone like her."
Isabella looked up.
Something in her expression shifted — not surprise, exactly.
More like recognition.
"You've known someone like that," Isabella said.
Emma thought of Dale's office that morning.
The carefully closed door.
Seventeen people on payroll.
"Yes," she said.
They sat together in the quiet until lunch.
At two o'clock, Emma's phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
Four words:
*Did you like the photo?*
Emma turned the phone face-down on her knee without looking up.
Across the room, Isabella was already watching her.
May you like
The old woman said nothing.
But her eyes stayed on Emma's face for a beat longer than usual, patient and certain, as though she already knew something Emma hadn't yet figured out.
