Chapter 6 - The Boy Who RememberedThe ambulance lights painted Ethan’s face red, then blue, then red again.

He sat wrapped in a thermal blanket on a stretcher in the mansion’s east entrance, refusing to release Emma’s hand. Paramedics checked his pulse, blood pressure, hydration, pupils. They spoke gently, but every new adult face made him flinch.

William stood beside him, shattered and silent.

For once, the billionaire had no command to give that could fix anything.

Reporters gathered beyond the iron gates, their camera lights blinking through the rain. The party guests had been escorted into separate rooms for questioning. Women in designer gowns whispered beside police officers. Men who controlled hedge funds and newspapers stood barefoot in shoe covers while crime scene technicians moved through the mansion.

The Sterling house had become evidence.

Emma watched a detective photograph the hidden painting.

The same hallway that had looked elegant an hour earlier now looked sinister.

A woman approached them with a badge on a chain around her neck.

“Detective Rachel Monroe,” she said. “Special Crimes. Mr. Sterling, I need to speak with your son as soon as doctors clear him.”

William’s face tightened. “He’s been through enough.”

“I understand,” Monroe said. “But if the suspect fled, your son’s memory may be the fastest way to identify where she went.”

Ethan gripped Emma’s hand harder.

Emma crouched beside him. “No one will force you.”

Detective Monroe noticed the way Ethan looked at Emma. She adjusted her tone.

“Ethan,” she said carefully, “you don’t have to tell me everything tonight. But anything you remember could help stop her from hurting someone else.”

Ethan stared at the detective.

Then he whispered, “She keeps a blue phone.”

Monroe leaned in slightly. “A blue phone?”

He nodded. “Not the pretty one she used upstairs. A smaller one. She kept it in the black drawer in her dressing room. She said only ghosts called that phone.”

Emma looked at William.

He was already moving.

“No,” Monroe said sharply. “You don’t touch anything. We search with a warrant.”

William stopped, jaw clenched.

Detective Monroe turned to an officer. “Secure the dressing room. Now.”

Ethan swallowed. “And there was a name.”

“What name?” Emma asked.

He closed his eyes, fighting exhaustion.

“Vera,” he whispered. “She said Vera cleaned up the Maine problem.”

William frowned. “Maine?”

Emma’s stomach tightened. “She told everyone Ethan was in Maine with family.”

“I have no family in Maine,” William said.

Detective Monroe wrote quickly. “Did she ever take you there, Ethan?”

He shook his head. “She made me write postcards. She told me if I didn’t, Daddy would think I hated him.”

William turned away, one hand covering his mouth.

The guilt hit him so visibly that Emma almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

But Ethan had been calling for him behind a wall.

That truth stood between them like a locked door.

The paramedic cleared his throat. “We need to transport him.”

Ethan panicked. “Emma comes.”

William looked at her.

Emma still wore yellow cleaning gloves, one torn, her uniform stained with dust from the basement. She was not family. Not legally. Not socially. In this world, people like Emma cared for children until the real adults arrived.

But Ethan looked at her as if she were the only solid thing left.

William said, “Emma rides with him.”

Detective Monroe nodded. “An officer will ride too.”

As they wheeled Ethan toward the ambulance, Mrs. Hargrove approached Emma and pressed something into her hand.

A small silver key.

“What is this?” Emma asked.

Mrs. Hargrove’s voice was low. “Caroline’s desk. I kept it after she died.”

Emma frowned. “Why give it to me?”

“Because Caroline trusted you with Ethan,” the older woman said. “And because William loved his wife, but he did not always listen to her.”

Emma looked down at the key.

Mrs. Hargrove continued, “Three weeks before the accident, Caroline told me she was afraid of a woman William had just hired for a charity foundation project.”

Emma’s breath caught. “Isabella?”

“No,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “That woman used another name then.”

“What name?”

Mrs. Hargrove’s eyes flicked toward the police. “Celia Grant.”

Emma felt a chill.

Celeste Marron. Isabella Sterling. Celia Grant.

How many lives had this woman worn like dresses?

“What did Caroline know?” Emma whispered.

Mrs. Hargrove looked toward Ethan.

“Enough to die for.”

Before Emma could ask more, the paramedic called her name.

She climbed into the ambulance and sat beside Ethan. He immediately reached for her hand again.

The doors closed.

As the ambulance pulled away from the mansion, Ethan stared through the rear window at his home.

“Emma?”

“I’m here.”

“Do I have to go back there?”

The question broke her heart.

“No,” she said. “Not tonight.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

Then he whispered, “She said there’s a room under the garden.”

Emma froze.

“What?”

Ethan’s eyes remained fixed on the rain-blurred mansion.

“She said my mom found it. That’s why she had to die.”

Emma’s fingers closed around Caroline’s silver key.

Behind them, the Sterling mansion shrank into the storm.

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Ahead of them, the hospital lights waited.

And beneath the garden of one of New York’s richest families, something was still buried.