Chapter 5
Grace beat me there.
So did the police.
By the time I reached Marissa’s building, neighbors were gathered outside in the rain.
Smoke alarms screamed from the second floor.
My heart stopped.
“Marissa!”
I pushed toward the entrance, but an officer blocked me.
“Sir, stay back.”
“My employee is in there. A baby is in there.”
Grace appeared from the side alley, soaked, furious, and holding Owen wrapped in her coat.
Relief hit so hard I nearly fell.
“Where’s Marissa?”
“Ambulance,” Grace said. “She got him out through the fire escape.”
I turned.
Marissa sat on the back of an ambulance, coughing into an oxygen mask.
Her hair was wet.
Her face was streaked with soot.
But she was alive.
I ran to her.
She looked up and ripped the mask away.
“The envelope,” she rasped.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“Not more than you.”
She stared at me as if she did not know what to do with that sentence.
Grace stepped beside us.
“I got it.”
Marissa’s eyes widened.
Grace pulled the blue envelope from inside her coat.
“Silas warned me enough to be paranoid. I made copies before leaving the office. But this is the original.”
Marissa began to cry.
Not loudly.
Just silently, her whole body shaking.
I looked at the apartment building.
Black smoke curled from one broken window.
“What happened?”
Grace’s voice hardened.
“Neighbor saw a man leaving from the back stairs. Fire started near the kitchen. Police are pulling security footage.”
Marissa looked at me.
“Your father?”
I did not lie.
“I think so.”
Her face changed.
Fear returned.
Not for herself.
For Owen.
She reached for him.
Grace placed him in her arms.
He was crying now, angry and alive.
Marissa pressed her face to his head.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t fight people who burn homes.”
I crouched in front of her.
“You won’t fight alone.”
“I said I don’t need—”
“A savior,” I finished. “I know. Then let me be a witness. Let me be a shield. Let me be the man who stops pretending his family’s money is clean.”
She looked at me for a long time.
Then she said, “I need formula.”
The words broke me.
After fire.
After fear.
After everything.
Twenty-eight dollars still stood in the room.
Grace turned away, crying.
I nodded.
“We’ll get formula.”
“And diapers.”
“Yes.”
“And a place where he can sleep tonight.”
“Yes.”
Marissa looked down at Owen.
“And I need you not to make me feel small for needing those things.”
That was the first time she trusted me with the truth.
I answered carefully.
“You are not small. What happened to you is.”
We took Marissa and Owen to Grace’s house.
Not my estate.
Not yet.
Marissa would not have accepted that.
Grace’s guest room became theirs for the night.
I went to an all-night pharmacy and bought formula, diapers, wipes, baby medicine, bottles, and everything else the clerk recommended.
I bought too much.
Grace narrowed her eyes when I returned.
“She said don’t make her feel small.”
“I know,” I said.
So we put most of it in the pantry quietly and left one can of formula on the counter.
Marissa saw it.
Her lips trembled.
“Thank you.”
Two words.
Not warm.
Not soft.
But real.
At three in the morning, my phone rang.
My father.
I answered in Grace’s kitchen.
“You have made a terrible mistake,” he said.
May you like
Behind me, through the open doorway, I could see Marissa sleeping in a chair with Owen against her chest.
“No,” I said. “I finally noticed one.”
