The red coat opened, revealing a white blouse and a faint scar near her collarbone.
“You had a childhood,” she said. “I had a hiding. You had parents who tucked you in. I had handlers who watched me. You had a company waiting for you. I had a box of backdated documents. And then they used you as bait to draw out my father’s enemies.”
She stepped closer.
“You think you were protected?”
She touched my chin.
Anger surged through me, and I stepped away.
“I was protected from people like you.”
“People like me?”
“People who keep secrets while pretending to love you.”
Claire laughed.
“Richard Hayes taught you that?”
“No,” I said. “Daniel did.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
Vanessa looked at him with fresh suspicion.
Claire slowly clapped.
“You’re more like me than you think, Emily.”
“We are nothing alike.”
“We both married the same man.”
I didn’t react.
“I didn’t marry him,” Claire said. “I planned him.”
Silence swallowed the room.
A phone rang somewhere in the hallway.
No one moved.
It stopped.
Then mine rang.
Dad.
I declined the call.
