Chapter 7 - GHOSTS IN THE WIND
The descent from a penthouse to the harsh reality of a Brooklyn studio apartment was brutal. Elena found a cramped, drafty room and immediately took a job scrubbing floors in a late-night diner. The exhaustion was a welcome distraction from the agonizing pain in her chest.
Lily, however, did not understand.
"Where's Mr. Nate?" she asked every night, clutching her one-eared rabbit. "I want to show him my drawing. He needs to put it on the big fridge."
"Mr. Nate is busy, sweetie," Elena would whisper, kissing the top of her head while her tears soaked into her pillow. "He can't play anymore."
Back in Manhattan, Cole Tower was locked in a new ice age.
Nathaniel had regressed. He fired three executives in a week. He stopped eating. He locked the nursery door again. Walter, the butler, walked on eggshells, watching his employer waste away.
But the silence in the penthouse was no longer a comfort. It was a torture. Nathaniel found himself hallucinating the squeak of a rubber duck, or the soft, melodic hum of Elena’s voice from the kitchen.
Late one night, fueled by whiskey and a desperate need to fuel his anger to avoid his heartbreak, Nathaniel pulled out the box of police reports he hadn't looked at in three years. He wanted to read the details of Marcus Ramirez's negligence. He wanted to validate his hatred for the man who took Sarah, and the woman who had lied to him.
He spread the documents on his desk. He read the forensic analysis.
...tire tracks indicate Vehicle B (Ramirez) executed a high-risk evasive maneuver...
...steering violently toward the barrier to avoid a broadside collision with Vehicle A (Cole)...
...evidence suggests Ramirez deliberately sacrificed his own vector of safety to minimize impact on Vehicle A...
Nathaniel stopped. He read the paragraph again. And again.
The whiskey glass slipped from his hand, shattering against the hardwood floor.
Marcus Ramirez hadn't caused the accident. According to the state troopers' reconstruction, Marcus had seen Sarah's SUV spinning out of control on the black ice. Instead of bracing for impact, which would have crushed Sarah's driver-side door, Marcus had wrenched his van into the concrete barrier, taking the lethal force of the impact himself in a desperate, split-second attempt to save a pregnant stranger.
He didn't kill Sarah. He had died trying to save her.
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Nathaniel fell to his knees amid the shattered glass, pulling his hair in profound, agonizing realization. He had punished a widow. He had screamed at the woman who had brought light back into his soul, punishing her for the heroism of the husband who had tried to save his wife.
"What have I done?" Nathaniel choked out to the empty room. "Oh God, what have I done?"
