After all these years, after all that anger, he had still kept her.
Next to the photograph was a notebook labeled Important Papers.
Aerys knew she should not open it.
She opened it.
Inside were hospital bills, prescriptions, old reports, payment reminders, handwritten calculations, names of clinics, notes about working extra shifts. Some pages were stamped PAID. Others were not. Some had been folded and unfolded so many times the paper was soft at the edges.
Her eyes burned.
While she had been sitting in boardrooms and buying buildings, Emeka had been paying off medical debt one small amount at a time.
Near the back was an envelope.
She slid out a report and scanned the page. Head trauma. Fractured ribs. Severe burns to left arm. Respiratory damage from smoke inhalation.
Date: the same month he had “died.”
Aerys sank onto the edge of the bed.
He had been alive. Injured. Hiding. Suffering.
She put her hand over her mouth.
“How could you not tell me?” she whispered to the room, but the question was wrong the second it left her lips.
Maybe the real question was not why he had stayed away.
Maybe it was why someone had made him.
She heard the front door open.
Her whole body stiffened.
Footsteps. Quick. Then closer.
Emeka appeared in the doorway and stopped dead when he saw her sitting on his bed with papers in her hand.
The look on his face was pure betrayal.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
Aerys stood immediately. “I still had the key. Emeka, I know this is wrong. I’m sorry. I just—”
“You broke into my home.”
The word home landed heavily between them.
“You don’t get to do that,” he said, voice trembling. “You don’t get to disappear for years and then walk in here like you own my life.”
“I own the property, not your life,” she said, then hated herself for how businesslike it sounded. “No. Forget that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in without permission. I just needed answers.”
“You have no right to answers.”
“I have every right when the man I buried is standing in front of me.”
He closed his eyes for one second, like pain physically moved through him. “Get out.”
“Please.” She took one careful step toward him. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. Five minutes and then I’ll leave if you still want me gone.”
He laughed bitterly. “I don’t want your pity, Aerys.”
“This is not pity.”
He looked at the papers in her hand. “You went through my things.”
Her shame deepened. “I know.”
His voice cracked. “Do you know what it feels like to have nothing private left? To have everything stripped away?”
Aerys swallowed hard. “No. But I know what it feels like to lose you.”
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