The envelope was slim. Deceptively so.
Emily stared at it as if it were a loaded gun placed gently on the kitchen counter. The paper was creamy, formal, the kind used for things that couldn't be undone. She hadn't touched it. She couldn't. But Victoria had no such qualms — she had sliced it open with a nail so manicured it gleamed like a weapon.
"Would you look at that? Adrian," Victoria had said, voice silk-wrapped poison. "It's him. Julian… he's yours."
Adrian had to call the hospital to confirm. The doctor confirmed that to be the result.
And with that, Victoria Monroe was no longer a ghost. She was flesh and bone. Satin-lipped, high-heeled, and living in their house.
Their house.
Emily's world tilted, but she didn't scream. She didn't cry. She simply blinked. Once. Twice. And walked away before her knees gave out.
It had been three days since the results.
Three days of watching Victoria reinsert herself into Adrian's life like she had never left. She didn't just stay,she nested. She waltzed through their kitchen in robes and left red lipstick prints on champagne flutes. She used Emily's favorite mug without asking, as if it were a dare. Victoria even started slipping into conversations with Margaret, baking smiles into her sentences and calling her Mother like the words didn't curdle in her mouth.
And worst of all, she took up residence across the hall from Emily.
Emily couldn't breathe in her own space anymore. The hallway smelled of Victoria's perfume. Every time she left her room, she half-expected to find a dagger in her back, or worse, a smile on Victoria's lips.
"Please tell me you haven't murdered her yet," Sophia said, voice tinny through the speaker.
Emily sat curled up in a corner of the balcony, hoodie pulled over her head, eyes rimmed with sleeplessness. The stars were out, blinking like confused witnesses.
"Not yet," she murmured. "But only because I haven't figured out where to hide the body."
There was a pause. Then Sophia's rich, melodic laughter spilled through the line like wine. "That's my girl. But… jokes aside, I hope you've been resting? Don't forget who's expecting."
Sophia Bennett was her sanity. Her anchor in a world tilting off-axis. They had met during those blissful five years —a colleague turned best friend. Sophia, with her fire-red hair and curve-hugging dresses, had become family. The kind that chose you even when you didn't feel worth choosing.
Now, she was the only person Emily could truly talk to.
"She's got him wrapped around her finger again," Emily said, eyes trained on the city lights below. "Not completely. Not yet. But… she's moving in. Every damn day she's moving in."
"And what's Adrian doing?" Sophia asked. Her voice was laced with that no-nonsense tone Emily had learned to both fear and treasure.
"He's..." She exhaled, chest tight. "He's trying. I see it in his eyes. He doesn't love her. He's just... scared. Trying to be the man he thinks Julian needs."
Sophia scoffed. "Let me get this straight. He's bending over backwards for a woman who ghosted him for five years—and now expects to just waltz back into his life with a child, and no receipts?"
"There's a paternity test."
Sophia was silent. Then: "You believe it?"
Emily hesitated. Her gut didn't. But her logic whispered cruel possibilities in the dark.
"I don't know what to believe anymore."
Sophia sighed. "Babe. Men are replaceable. Your dignity is not. I'm not saying he's the villain here, but if he lets her gaslight her way back into his life and yours, then he's just... not your man."
Emily flinched, but couldn't hold back the urge to disagree. "You can't expect me to do exactly what she did, do you?"
Sophia continued, voice softer. "You deserve someone who fights for you without needing a war to start first."
The house, once Emily's fragile sanctuary, now felt like enemy territory.
Victoria had unpacked in more ways than one. She laughed too loudly at dinners. She inserted herself into bedtime routines with Julian like she had never left. And Julian, poor thing, was confused. Emily could see it in his eyes. The boy was bright and gentle, but warily so. He had Adrian's smile, but none of Victoria's venom.
That only made it worse.
Because what if it was true?
What if this boy, this sweet, awkward boy, really was Adrian's son? Then Victoria had rights. She had leverage. She had permanence.
Emily and Adrian still had moments.
Quiet, stolen ones in the middle of the night, when Julian was asleep and the house had stopped pretending it wasn't bleeding from the inside. They'd sit on the stairs, not quite touching, trading memories like bandages.
One night, she asked him, "Do you ever wish she'd never come back?"
He didn't answer right away.
"I wish a lot of things," he finally said. That wasn't good enough. And it wasn't the first time he'd fallen short.
On the fourth morning, Emily found Victoria in the kitchen again, wearing Adrian's old sweatshirt like a trophy. She was humming, flipping pancakes. Emily stood in the doorway, stomach churning.
"Morning," Victoria said, without turning. "Hope you don't mind, I used the last of your blueberries." Emily said nothing. Just turned and walked out.
Outside, she found Sophia sitting on the patio, sunglasses perched atop her head, legs crossed elegantly.
She raised an eyebrow. "If looks could kill, she'd be fertilizing my mom's garden."
Emily cracked a smile for the first time that day.
"Come on," Sophia said, rising. "Let's go for a drive. And maybe look at new apartments. You know, just in case the queen decides to burn the castle." But Emily wasn't ready to walk away. Not yet.
Even as Victoria's claws sunk deeper into their lives, even as Adrian flinched every time she brought up the test again, even as her own heart warned her that love wasn't supposed to feel this lonely, she wasn't ready.
Because beneath it all, she wanted to believe that Adrian would choose her. That love, real love, would cut through manipulation and guilt and secrets.
She wasn't ready to give up. She was ready to fight smart.