Chapter 3 : The Price of Saving a Vance

The elevator climbed in silence. Rowan counted the floors, tracking their upward progress by the flash of numbers in the bank of darkened windows. Emma nuzzled against her still, and every now and then Rowan would brush her cheek against the top of Emma’s head.

Directly across from her, Asher leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He towered over the narrow space, and every so often she caught the slight twitch of his fingers.

The doors slid open, and Rowan followed Asher out into a penthouse that seemed like a fantasy. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the building, and as she stepped through the threshold, Manhattan stretched out before them, so close Rowan had the illusion of being airborne.

"This way," Asher said.

The guest bedroom was even larger than her own apartment, painted in creams and golds with long windows on either side of an enormous bed in the center.

Emma stirred as Rowan crossed to the bed, lifting her head to gaze at her with wide hazel eyes.

"Are we home?"

Home. Rowan swallowed the word around the lump in her throat, meeting Asher's eyes as she put her down. This was not Emma's home. This was her prison.

"You're safe," Rowan said gently as she laid her down on the bed and settled onto the mattress beside her. She wrapped one arm around the child and held on, afraid to let go.

"Don't go," Emma whispered, snuggling closer into Rowan's side. "Please don't go."

Rowan glanced over the child's head. Asher was watching her as well, the barest quirk to his mouth as if a secret deal had just been brokered between them.

"I'll stay until you fall asleep," Rowan offered instead of leaving.

"No." Emma's voice was fierce in its smallness. "Stay all night. Like a real mommy."

She said the last words carefully, enunciating each syllable as if the difference between the right words and wrong might mean her life or death. Rowan stared at Asher, who was watching her with a storm-gray intensity. She was guessing at the emotions roiling beneath the surface—pain, anger, and underneath it all, that stinging ache of grief.

"Emma," he said in a voice so soft Rowan almost didn't hear it, "Ms. Hayes isn't—"

"She saved me," Emma interrupted, shaking off her half-sleep and turning to face her father with stubborn insistence. "She makes me safe. Don't let her leave like the others."

Like the others. Rowan's stomach clenched. How many parents or caretakers had this child watched leave her life?

"The others didn't matter," Asher replied. His voice was carefully measured. "They were employees. Variables."

"What's a variable?" Emma demanded.

"Something that changes," Rowan said when he answered her. "Something that's unpredictable."

Emma considered this with all the gravity of a child who had learned to read the adults in her life for signs of danger. "Are you a variable?"

Rowan looked at Asher and met his eyes, challenge there as well. "I don't know, sweetheart. That's not up to me."

"It's up to Daddy." Emma was unimpressed by her father's silence. She turned back to him, face earnest. "Don't let her be a variable. Don't let her come back."

Those last words again. Rowan felt them like knives, shattering the fragile peace of the room.

Asher's jaw clenched, and his face went hard. "Emma, that's enough."

But Emma wasn't done. She burrowed further into Rowan's side and whispered: "She tried to take me away before. But Daddy stopped her. Don't let her come back."

The air in the room got colder by at least ten degrees, if that was even possible. Asher's face had gone entirely blank, not calm, but blank—vacant, as if his features had been wiped clean of all expression by a dispassionate and implacable hand.

Rowan's heart pounded in her ears. "Who, Emma? Who tried to take you?"

"That's enough." Asher's words were cool, cutting through the air like a blade. "Emma, say goodnight."

The little girl flinched, but she would not be dissuaded. "She won't leave, right? She won't go away like the others?"

Rowan could not hold back. The desperation in the child's voice wrenched a part of Rowan's heart in two. This child had been let down too many times to expect anything else.

"I'm not going anywhere tonight," Rowan said softly.

"Promise?"

The word reverberated in the still air between them, laden with all of Emma's hope and all of her fear. Rowan felt Asher's eyes on her, warning her not to make a promise she could not keep.

"I promise I'll be right here when you wake up," Rowan said instead.

Emma seemed to accept this limited reassurance. She curled on to Rowan, rabbit drawn beneath her chin, and began the long, slow descent into sleep. She murmured incoherently as her breathing slowed, small body finally beginning to relax.

Only then did Asher speak, his voice so quiet Rowan strained to hear. "You have no idea what you've walked into."

Rowan looked up at him, noting the rigidity in his shoulders, the way he held himself distinct from them. "Then tell me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because some doors, once opened, can't be closed again." He regarded her across Emma's sleeping form, storm-gray eyes meeting hers. "Because there are things in my past that would eat you alive."

"And you think I'm too weak to handle them?"

Something flickered in his expression, something Rowan couldn't name. Surprise? Respect? "I think you're brave enough to try. That's what makes you dangerous."

Asher turned toward the door, and as he walked away Rowan spoke.

"She's not just afraid of being left again. She's afraid of someone specific coming back."

He paused without turning around. "Yes."

"Someone who tried to take her before."

"Yes."

"Someone you stopped."

This time, the pause was longer. When Asher finally spoke, his voice was leaden with grief and anger, as ancient as it was raw. "Someone who won't stop trying."

The door closed behind him with a soft click, and Rowan was alone with Emma and all the new questions with no answers.

Outside the windows, Manhattan sparkled with all the beauty and alien quality of a circuit board. Emma shifted in her sleep, murmuring something too quiet for Rowan to catch.

But she caught the one phrase repeated over and over, a prayer or warning, Rowan couldn't tell which. "Don't let her come back."