JAKE

The courthouse sat across the street, all gray stone and glass, a fortress that had decided the fates of a thousand lives before Emma's. And now, it was her turn...

I sat in my car, engine off, windows cracked just enough to hear the city bleed through. Honks, footsteps, the dull hum of traffic. It all sounded distant, muffled, like someone had stuffed cotton into the world. My hands were still locked around the steering wheel, knuckles white, as if I let go, I would fall apart.

Her sentencing hearing was happening inside those walls, sealed off from the world. The judge had ordered it private. No press and no public gallery allowed. Just Emma, her defense attorney, the prosecutors, and the judge. That was the deal, apparently, because of the "sensitive" information she had bartered.

Information. That word had been circling me for weeks like a vulture. I didn't know what she had given them, what secrets she had played like cards she and Eric had been stockpiling for years. But I had heard whispers. It was big, so big it could break open cases that had gathered dust for decades, lead to arrests that would make headlines, and even recover antiquities worth billions that had been written off as lost forever.

Classic Emma. Even behind bars, even stripped of freedom, she was still outplaying the system. Still pulling strings. Still making moves in a game she was too damn good at. And knowing her, it hadn't been improvisation. No, this had been a contingency plan, tucked away for a rainy day. A rainy day that came the moment I put cuffs on her wrists.

Well played. I had to give her that.

Yet, that was the part that twisted in my gut, made me feel like someone was grinding glass into my chest, because I didn't know what the hell I wanted anymore.

Part of me wanted her to pay for everything—for the lies, the manipulation, the way she had pulled me into her orbit knowing it would all collapse eventually. That part of me wanted her future buried under decades, wanted to know that the gavel had fallen like iron and believe, if only for a moment, that justice had finally been served.

But another part of me—the part I hated, the part that refused to die—couldn't stomach the thought of Emma rotting away in a cell. Couldn't stomach imagining her turning into some ghost of herself, stripped of color, of light, of the warmth that had made me believe in love for the first damn time.

The last eight months had been hell, both for her and for me.

I had arrested the woman I loved, dragged her out of her apartment in cuffs, handed her off like evidence, then locked her up and walked away.

But that wasn't all, because the Bureau had turned me inside out, too. I had been pulled off the field the second she was processed into MCC, slapped with "temporary leave pending review."

The Office of Professional Responsibility had its teeth in me before I could even process what had happened. And then came the endless questions and interrogations, where I was the one under the light.

When did you first suspect? Should you have suspected sooner? Did your relationship compromise the investigation? Did you fail to report a conflict of interest?

They wanted to know if I had looked the other way. If I had been too blinded by her to do my job. I hadn't. God help me, I hadn't. But try proving that when every ounce of your personal life was Exhibit A.

I got my badge back eventually, but not the case. I was off it permanently, shunted sideways to quieter assignments, the kind they give to people they don't trust with the crown jewels anymore.

And just like that, Jake Parker, the Bureau's golden boy, the one who always delivered, the one they could always count on, wasn't untouchable anymore. Now, I was the guy who fell for a thief, the guy who slept with the enemy.

I blew out a breath, leaning forward, my forehead brushing the cool leather of the steering wheel. The wheel creaked under the force of my grip.

All I had left to do now was wait. Wait for her to walk out those doors in shackles again. Wait to hear how many years the judge had carved out of her life.

And maybe, in some broken part of me, wait for the sound of my own heart cracking open all over again.

I looked up when the passenger door creaked open. Luke slid in, balancing two cups of coffee like it was any other morning.

"Brought fuel," he said casually, like that could disguise the fact that he had been hovering over me for eight months straight.

He hadn't left my side once through the fallout, through the whispers in the Bureau hallways, through the endless questions and interrogations. I had tried pushing him away—hard—but Luke never budged.

He and Chloe had stayed close, even with a newborn. My mouth twitched at the thought of Lia, my goddaughter. She was the only thing that made me hold strong these past months. The only times I had genuinely smiled were when I held her, when her tiny fists wrapped around my fingers, and when I heard her sleepy sighs. She was the kind of innocence that didn't belong in the same world as mine anymore.

My parents and my sister had tried too. But they were still shocked. They couldn't reconcile the woman they had welcomed into their home, the girl they had loved instantly, with the criminal who had blown a hole through my life.

Luke sipped his coffee, leaned back, and tried small talk—heat, traffic, even a cheap joke about Mets fans. Anything to keep my mind off the weight pressing down on me. But I wasn't in the mood.

And Luke knew me too well, and I knew him. That was why I caught the way he shifted in his seat, like whatever he was holding back was burning a hole in his tongue.

He swallowed hard, sighed, and finally said it. "There's something... something I should've given you a long time ago. Since... well, since after the arrest. But I didn't. Not with the chaos that followed. Not with you so angry."

I frowned and turned my head slowly, giving him a look that said, spit it out.

Luke reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a plain envelope that was creased at the edges. My eyes widened a fraction when I noticed it was addressed to me in a handwriting I would recognize anywhere.

My chest tightened. "What the hell is this, Luke?"

He didn't flinch. "I found it when we searched her apartment and figured it was meant for you."

I just stared at him while my pulse thundered in my ears. "This should be in evidence."

Luke rolled his eyes. "She confessed, Jake. She gave us everything. Nobody's going to miss a damn letter."

I didn't move. Couldn't.

He exhaled, softer this time. "Look, you can burn it. Tear it up. Pretend it never existed. That's up to you. But if you ask me..." He hesitated, then met my gaze. "I think you should read it."

He set the letter on the console between us, like it was radioactive, and then, without another word, he opened the door, got out, and walked across the street toward a bodega, leaving me alone with it. With her.

I stared at the envelope. My name was scrawled across the front in Emma's familiar hand. It sat there, heavy, like it carried not just words but every fracture, every ghost, every piece of the life we almost had.

I didn't want to touch it, didn't want to open it, yet my hand was already moving. I tore the envelope carefully and slid the letter free. For a moment, I just closed my eyes, drew in a breath, and braced myself before reading.

Jake,

I don't even know why I'm writing this. You don't owe me your eyes on these pages. You don't owe me a second more. I don't even know if this will ever reach you. And maybe if it ever does, you'll burn it. Maybe you'll never forgive me enough to even open it. I wouldn't blame you.

But if, by some chance, these words reach you, then at least you'll know the things I never got to say when it mattered.

I loved you.

God, I loved you more than I ever thought I could love anyone. And I know that means nothing now, not after what I did. But it's the only truth I have left. You made me believe in something I didn't think I deserved. You steadied me when all I had ever known was chaos. You were calm where I was fire, steady where I was reckless.

I had never known what it was like to be held without motive, to be looked at without suspicion, to laugh without waiting for the ground to vanish beneath me. Then you came and crushed the doubt from my head.

I saw it in those early days when we painted together in that retirement home and wandered Central Park while I was supposed to be calculating every move. But you smiled at me, and for a moment, I forgot the rules of my own game. You reached in with a hand made of light, and all my carefully built walls crumbled to dust.

Loving you was like finding the missing half of a locket I didn't know I carried. Nights with you—under the stars, by the lake, your heartbeat steady beneath my cheek—those weren't tricks. They weren't cons. They were the only moments I ever lived without lying.

And I've lived long enough to know that what we had, I could never replicate. I know I could travel the world, the seven seas, and I'd still have to come right back here if I wanted to feel alive again.

I need you to know one more thing. I was many things to many people—thief, liar, ghost in the night—but I was never a monster. I never had blood on my hands. My crimes left paper trails, not graves. It doesn't absolve me; I know. But I don't want you to think you fell in love with someone capable of worse than I was. My sins are enough. They're heavy enough.

Speaking of sins... If I could go back, I'd change everything. I'd never walk into that coffee shop. Never sit across from you. Not because I didn't want you, but because I did. Too much. Because wanting you was the most dangerous thing I've ever done.

You were the one person I wish I'd met in another life. The one I would've painted a thousand times if I still believed I deserved beauty. You were my anchor, my calm, my reminder that maybe love wasn't something reserved for other people. And I ruined it. I ruined us.

I don't ask for your forgiveness. I don't even hope for it. All I want is for you to know the truth. That I loved you with every broken piece of me. And if I had a thousand lives, I would choose you in all of them.

Even in this one, where I lost you.

Always,

Emma

By the time I reached the last line, the words blurred. I blinked hard, but it didn't stop the burn in my throat, didn't stop the ache that spread like fire in my chest.

Her voice was in every curve of the letters. Fragments of her, fragments of us, woven between the ink and the regret. Because this was Emma. My Emma.

The woman who betrayed me. The woman who loved me. The woman who was both, all at once.

The silence inside the car pressed in on me. I folded the letter carefully, almost reverently, and laid it back in the envelope. My hands stayed on it longer than they should have, as if holding it meant holding her.

I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to feel. Anger. Grief. Relief. Love. They all tangled together until I couldn't separate one from the other. Until all that was left was the hollow certainty that nothing I felt would ever be enough.

"Dammit, Emma," I muttered, the words catching on the rawness in my throat.

My eyes lifted, drawn past the windshield to the courthouse. Its gray stone façade loomed against the sky, cold and indifferent. Somewhere in there, Emma was about to hear the shape of the rest of her life.

And all I could do was sit here, waiting to see how much of her they were going to take away.