Chapter 6 - THE TWIN TRAGEDYThe wind howled through the Greenwich trees, carrying the chill of the approaching storm. Julian stood motionless, the world spinning off its axis.
“What are you talking about?” Julian choked out, his hands gripping the wooden railing for support. “What did he tell you?”
Emma stepped out onto the porch, shielding Nora behind her skirt. The anger in her eyes had melted away, replaced by a profound, haunting sorrow.
“When the car went off the bridge,” Emma explained, her voice barely a whisper, “I wasn't just pregnant with one baby, Julian. I was carrying twins.”
Julian’s breath stopped. The sound of the wind seemed to fade into a vacuum.
“Twins?” he repeated dumbly.
“Two girls,” Emma nodded, tears carving tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “When the rescue divers pulled us from the freezing water, one incubator was rushed to the main hospital in New Haven, and the other… the other was intercepted by your father’s men before the ambulance even left the county line.”
Julian’s knees buckled. He caught himself against the pillar, his chest heaving as a terrifying realization began to form in his mind.
“He took one,” Julian whispered, horror dawning in his eyes.
“He told me she died on impact,” Emma wept. “He looked me in the eye while I was recovering from emergency surgery and told me my baby girl was in the second white casket lowered into the frozen ground. He forced me to sign a non-disclosure agreement, faked my death certificate, and threatened to kill you if I ever came back.”
Julian stared at Emma, his mind racing through the horrific architecture of his father’s lies. The closed casket. The grief counselors hired by the corporation. The impenetrable wall of silence that had kept him isolated in a mansion built on a foundation of lies.
Then, slowly, agonizingly, Julian’s gaze shifted downward.
He looked past Emma. He looked straight at three-year-old Nora, who was standing in the doorway, clutching her stuffed rabbit with one missing ear.
He looked at the exact shape of her nose. The exact curl of her blonde hair. The birthmark shaped like a tiny crescent moon just behind her left ear—the exact same birthmark that had run in the Mercer family for four generations.
Julian dropped to his knees on the wooden porch.
The billionaire CEO, the man who hadn't cried in 694 days, collapsed into the dust at the feet of his own daughter.
“Nora…” Julian whispered, his voice breaking completely.
The little girl stepped forward, ignoring her mother’s restraining hand. She walked right up to the kneeling giant, reached out her tiny hand, and gently touched his wet cheek.
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“Don't cry, Mr. Julian,” Nora whispered softly. “My mommy hugs me when my heart hurts. Now I can hug you, too.”
Julian wrapped his arms around his daughter, burying his face in her small shoulder as he broke down in racking, uncontrollable sobs. Emma sank to her knees beside them, wrapping her arms around both of them as the walls of the mansion behind them felt like they were finally tumbling down.
