Chapter 6 - the girl named Emma
Emma Reese was now twenty.
And alive.
Lena found her through a sealed university enrollment file.
Current name:
Emma Hollis.
Grace read it twice.
“How did she become a Hollis?”
Michael had no answer.
Police requested an interview.
Emma refused.
Then Sophie sent her a message.
Not through police.
Through social media.
My mom almost married the man who was married to your mother. I found pictures. I think you deserve to know.
Emma responded twelve minutes later.
Where are you?
Lena was furious.
“You cannot contact witnesses on your own.”
Sophie folded her arms.
“She answered.”
“That is not the point.”
“Would she have answered you?”
Lena did not reply.
Emma agreed to meet.
She arrived with an attorney.
Tall, fair-skinned, composed, she carried herself with a confidence that made Sophie nervous.
Grace saw Lauren immediately in her face.
Emma sat.
“You think Samuel killed my mother.”
Grace noticed the name.
“You call him Samuel.”
“Yes.”
“You know who he really is?”
“I know several names.”
“Did you grow up with Arthur Hollis?”
Emma looked at Michael through the glass.
“For a while.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother asked him to protect me.”
That stunned everyone.
Lauren Reese had known Arthur.
“How?” Lena asked.
“Her father worked for Hollis Bank.”
“Why would she trust Arthur?”
“She didn’t. She trusted Michael.”
Michael was brought into the room.
Emma looked at him.
“You disappeared.”
“So did you.”
“I had reasons.”
“So did I.”
Grace watched.
They knew each other well.
Emma continued.
“My mother discovered Samuel was using multiple identities. She contacted Michael. He told her to leave.”
“Then she disappeared,” Lena said.
“Yes.”
“Did Samuel kill her?”
Emma looked down.
“No.”
Grace leaned forward.
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s alive.”
The room became silent.
Sophie whispered, “What?”
Emma looked at her.
“My mother never died.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know now.”
Emma explained.
Lauren staged her disappearance after discovering someone was using Samuel’s relationships to access financial information.
“Someone?”
“Arthur.”
“Samuel worked for him?”
“At first.”
“Then?”
“He tried to leave.”
Grace’s entire understanding shifted.
“What do you mean he tried to leave?”
“Samuel was ordered to marry women whose families had access to trusts, companies, property records, political connections. He was supposed to collect information.”
“Did he steal from them?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did he hurt them?”
Emma hesitated.
“That’s complicated.”
Grace’s anger sharpened.
“No. It isn’t.”
Emma looked at Sophie.
“My mother believed Samuel warned her before Arthur’s people came.”
“Then why did he lie to me?”
Grace asked.
“Why did he hide his marriages? Why did he run from the wedding?”
“Because he probably believed Arthur had found him.”
Grace thought of the man with the Hollis ring.
The blackout.
The attempted abduction.
“Why marry me?”
Emma looked directly at her.
“I don’t know.”
That answer frightened Grace most.
Lena placed Grace’s financial profile on the table.
Widow.
Successful architect.
Owner of several commercial properties inherited from her late husband.
Trust beneficiary.
Exactly the kind of woman Arthur’s system targeted.
Grace’s voice became quiet.
“So maybe Samuel never left.”
Emma did not defend him.
“No.”
Sophie looked at her.
“Did he love my mom?”
Emma looked at the child.
“I can’t answer that.”
Grace appreciated the honesty.
Emma finally revealed where she last saw Lauren.
Three years earlier.
Lauren had been living under another name in North Carolina and investigating Arthur’s remaining network.
“She told me if she disappeared again, I should find one person.”
“Who?”
“Lena Avery.”
Lena stared.
“She knew me?”
“She knew who your father was.”
“My father—Samuel?”
Emma nodded.
“She said you were the only person he never used.”
Lena went still.
Grace saw the wound in her face.
Samuel had abandoned Lena as a child.
Yet Lauren believed he had never used her.
“What does that mean?” Lena asked.
Emma slid a key across the table.
“My mother left this for you.”
A storage locker key.
Different city.
Same kind of evidence cache Peter might have created.
Lena opened it that afternoon.
Inside were files on Samuel Kane.
Dozens of identities.
Dozens of women.
But the list separated them into categories.
TARGETS.
PROTECTED.
FAILED OPERATIONS.
Grace found her own name.
Not under TARGETS.
Under PROTECTED.
She stared.
SOPHIE MOORE appeared beneath it.
Beside their names, Lauren had written:
SAMUEL BROKE PROTOCOL FOR THEM.
Lena looked at Grace.
“That sounds like he was supposed to do something to you.”
Grace felt cold.
“And didn’t.”
Then Sophie noticed another page.
A schedule.
Wedding day.
3:00 p.m. ceremony.
3:17 p.m. extraction window.
3:20 p.m. secondary acquisition: Sophie Moore.
The blackout had occurred at 3:17.
Someone had planned to take Sophie at exactly that moment.
Richard may have known.
Or may have been part of it.
At the bottom of the page was one handwritten note:
May you like
IF SAMUEL REFUSES, USE THE GIRL.
👉 The wedding blackout was not improvised—someone had scheduled Sophie’s abduction in advance, apparently to force Richard to obey.
