Chapter 2 - THE NAME I STOPPED USING SIX YEARS AGO
“Emma?”
Liam knocked again.
I shoved the pregnancy test beneath a stack of towels like two pink lines could become less real if I covered them.
“I’m fine.”
“You just threw up loud enough to scare the coffee machine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You also sound like you’re crying.”
I wiped my face.
“I’m not crying.”
“Elizabeth.”
Every muscle in my body froze.
Liam almost never used that name.
Not anymore.
Not unless he wanted me to stop lying.
I unlocked the door.
He stood in the hallway wearing sweatpants, an old Northwestern hoodie, and an expression that told me there was no version of this morning where I escaped questions.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
He looked at the toilet.
Then at me.
Then at the towel pile.
Liam had known me since we were eight.
He knew where I hid Christmas presents.
He knew which cabinet held emergency cash.
He knew I folded towels instead of stacking them.
His eyes narrowed.
“What’s under there?”
“Liam.”
He reached.
I grabbed his wrist.
Too late.
The pregnancy test fell onto the floor between us.
Silence.
He stared at it.
Then at me.
“No.”
I crossed my arms around myself.
“That was my reaction.”
“How many?”
“One test.”
“I mean how many weeks?”
“Probably six.”
His face changed.
Six weeks.
He understood exactly what that meant.
“The gala.”
I nodded.
Liam walked backward until his shoulders hit the hallway wall.
“Alessandro Vitali?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“We live in a second-floor apartment above a laundromat.”
“Still.”
He looked furious.
Not at me.
At the universe.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Elizabeth.”
“I used Emma.”
“That man owns half the commercial property between here and Lake Michigan. You think a first name protects you?”
“I didn’t tell him my address.”
“You told him about nursing school.”
“I told him things.”
“Exactly.”
I looked away.
That was the part that still hurt.
I had gone to room 1520 because I wanted answers.
Instead, I had found Alessandro.
Not the public version.
Not the billionaire from magazine covers.
A man who asked why emergency nursing appealed to me.
A man who listened when I said my parents died six years earlier.
A man who admitted he hated waking up to a silent apartment after traveling for weeks.
For five hours, I forgot why I had entered the Obsidian Hotel at all.
Liam saw my face.
“You liked him.”
“That is irrelevant.”
“No.”
“It has to be.”
He crouched and picked up the pregnancy test.
“Because of your parents?”
“Yes.”
Six years earlier, my name was Elizabeth Rowan.
I was nineteen.
My father, Thomas Rowan, worked as a forensic accountant.
My mother, Claire, was a surgical nurse.
We lived in a narrow brick house in Bridgeport where nothing expensive ever happened except my college tuition arguments.
Then my father took a consulting contract connected to the Vitali Renewal Foundation.
A charity that supposedly financed housing rehabilitation on Chicago’s South Side.
For three months, Dad started coming home late.
He stopped leaving his laptop unattended.
He began checking the street before unlocking our front door.
Then one night, he told me:
“If anyone ever asks whether I’ve been talking about the Vitalis, you say no.”
I had laughed.
“Which Vitali?”
His face did not change.
“All of them.”
Two weeks later, my parents died in a house fire.
Official cause:
Electrical fault.
Except our wiring had been replaced eight months earlier.
And my father’s work laptop disappeared from the ashes.
Three days after the funeral, a man followed me from campus.
That was when Liam’s family took me in.
I stopped using Elizabeth publicly.
Emma was my middle name.
Rowan disappeared from job applications that did not require legal identification.
I became Emma wherever I could.
Less because it was a perfect disguise.
More because hearing “Elizabeth Rowan” made me feel like someone had found me.
For years, I tried to forget.
Then Liam found an old bank envelope hidden inside a box that had belonged to my father.
Inside:
a hotel security access card.
Expired.
A handwritten date.
And three words.
OBSIDIAN. VITALI GALA.
The gala happened every year.
Same hotel.
Same week.
I took the catering shift because I wanted inside.
My plan had been simple.
Get close enough to the executive hospitality floor to photograph the donor registry and find the name my father had circled in an old foundation report.
MATTEO VITALI.
Alessandro’s uncle.
I never made it.
Because Alessandro caught my elbow.
Then handed me a glass of champagne.
Then invited me upstairs.
Liam sat on the edge of the bathtub.
“You went there looking for Matteo.”
“Yes.”
“And slept with Alessandro.”
“I am aware of the sequence.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“God.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
I looked toward the pregnancy test.
“I don’t know.”
“Tell him.”
“No.”
“Emma—Elizabeth—whatever name we’re using for this disaster.”
“No.”
“You can’t hide a baby forever.”
“I don’t need forever.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to know whether his family killed my parents.”
That silenced him.
I continued.
“If Matteo had anything to do with the fire, I cannot tell Alessandro I’m pregnant until I know whose side he’s on.”
“He might not know.”
“That’s what scares me.”
Liam looked at me carefully.
“You think he’d hurt you?”
I remembered amber eyes.
The way Alessandro had asked before touching me.
The way he sent no money afterward, no strange gift, just one handwritten card left beneath the hotel coffee cup.
If you ever want the conversation again, you know where to find me.
“No.”
My answer came too fast.
Liam noticed.
“You trust him.”
“No.”
“You want to.”
Worse.
Before I could answer, his phone buzzed.
He checked it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
Building camera.
Our landlord had installed one after packages started disappearing.
A black sedan was parked across the street.
Same car that had been there yesterday.
And the day before.
Liam stood.
“Do you know it?”
“No.”
“Stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
He looked at me.
“You’re pregnant.”
“I am six weeks pregnant, not made of antique glass.”
He ignored that and walked to the window.
The sedan’s engine started.
Then drove away.
I looked at him.
“Could be nothing.”
“Three days?”
My stomach tightened.
Liam reached into the cabinet above the refrigerator.
He pulled down the metal box containing my father’s remaining papers.
“Maybe someone knows you were at the gala.”
“How?”
“You were staff.”
“Under Emma.”
“Your employment records still have legal tax information.”
Damn.
I opened the box.
Old reports.
Dad’s handwriting.
A photograph of my parents.
Then the envelope from the bank.
I turned it over.
Something felt wrong.
“Liam.”
“What?”
“This was sealed when we found it.”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t now.”
He stared.
The flap had been cut.
Not torn.
Cut.
Neither of us had done that.
My blood went cold.
Someone had been inside the apartment.
I searched the box.
The Obsidian access card was gone.
So was my father’s handwritten list of Vitali Foundation directors.
Liam swore.
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One message.
ELIZABETH ROWAN SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD.
I stopped breathing.
Liam read it over my shoulder.
His face went white.
Then another message arrived.
TELL NO ONE ABOUT THE CHILD.
The bathroom seemed to tilt beneath me.
I had taken the pregnancy test twenty minutes earlier.
Only Liam knew.
Unless someone had been watching more closely than either of us realized.
May you like
And suddenly hiding the baby from Alessandro was no longer my biggest problem.
Someone else already knew.
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