Chapter 3 - The Search for Emily
The digital file Eleanor sent to my encrypted email took less than three minutes to download, but those three minutes felt like an eternity.
As I sat at my executive desk in the home study, staring at the glowing monitor, the stark reality of Emily’s life unspooled before my eyes. Her full name was Emily Carter. She was twenty-four years old. She lived in a cramped, working-class apartment complex off industrial avenue on the rougher west side of Chicago—an area I wouldn't have even driven my car through after dark under normal circumstances.
According to her employment history, she had graduated top of her class with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from a state university, but had been forced to drop out of her master’s program and take domestic work to support her younger sister after their parents died in a devastating car crash three years ago.
And me? I had treated her like an illiterate peasant because she dared to wash my son in a kitchen sink.
I didn't bother changing my clothes. I grabbed my car keys, strode out of the house, and pointed the Maybach toward the west side.
The drive took forty-five minutes through increasingly desolate neighborhoods where the streetlights flickered yellow and broken glass glittered like cheap diamonds on the cracked asphalt. When I finally pulled up in front of the apartment complex—a peeling, three-story brick building with rusted fire escapes and flickering neon signs—it looked like a war zone compared to the manicured lawns of Winnetka.
It was 4:15 AM.
I parked the half-million-dollar vehicle right under a sputtering streetlamp, stepped out onto the damp pavement, and walked up the concrete steps of 404 Maple Street. The front security door was jammed open with a rusted wedge, allowing a draft of stale air carrying the scent of old cooking oil and damp concrete to wash over me.
Apartment 3B.
I climbed the narrow, creaking wooden stairs, my expensive shoes echoing loudly in the enclosed stairwell. When I reached the third floor, I found the door with a peeling brass number 3B stamped onto the surface.
I hesitated for a fraction of a second, my fist hovering inches from the scarred wood.
What was I going to say? “I’m sorry I fired you, screamed at you, and treated you like garbage, but my son almost died because of my other employee, and I need you to come back and fix my life”?
Before I could talk myself out of it, I knocked.
Knock. Knock.
Silence.
I waited ten seconds, then knocked again, harder this time.
Inside, I heard the faint rustle of bedsheets, followed by the cautious click of a deadbolt turning over. The door swung open about four inches, held in place by a heavy steel security chain.
A pair of tired, swollen brown eyes peered out at me through the narrow gap.
Emily looked exhausted. Her hair was down, falling in soft waves around her shoulders, and she was wearing an oversized flannel pajama shirt. When she recognized my face under the dim hallway bulb, the blood drained entirely from her features, and she instinctively tried to slam the door shut.
I jammed my palm against the edge of the wood, stopping it instantly.
“Emily, wait,” I said, my voice breathy and desperate. “Please. Don't close the door.”
“Mr. Whitaker?” she whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and lingering anger. “What are you doing here? How did you find me? If you think you can harass me at my home just because you fired me—”
“I’m not here to harass you,” I interrupted, stepping closer, ignoring the grime on the floorboards. “I’m here to beg.”
She froze, staring at me through the gap in the chain. The absurdity of a billionaire begging a twenty-four-year-old housemaid in a rundown tenement hallway wasn't lost on either of us.
“Beg?” she repeated bitterly. “A man like Marcus Whitaker doesn't beg. You give orders. Now take your hand off my door before I call the police.”
“Zion is in the hospital,” I blurted out, the words tumbling over each other in a frantic rush.
The hostility vanished from her face in a single heartbeat, replaced by a look of profound, chilling shock.
“What... what did you say?”
“He’s in the pediatric ICU at Saint Jude,” I said, my voice breaking. “Ten minutes after you left my house, his throat closed up. He stopped breathing. His lips turned blue. The doctors said a deteriorating textile fiber—a fragment from a cheap washcloth—lodged in his windpipe. They told me... they told me that if someone hadn't been watching him with absolute vigilance during that bath, rinsing him and keeping him calm, he wouldn't have made it.”
Emily’s fingers tightened around the edge of the door. Her lower lip trembled slightly, and I could see the sudden, overwhelming swell of tears in her eyes.
“Is... is he okay?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Is my baby—is Zion going to be okay?”
“He’s stable,” I breathed, closing my eyes in agony. “For now. But he’s terrified. And I’m terrified. I fired Margaret tonight—found out she was neglecting him while hiding in the linen closet. Emily... I was a blind, arrogant fool. I treated you with unforgivable cruelty when you were the only person in that house actually protecting my son.”
May you like
She stood there in the dim light, staring at me through the security chain for what felt like a lifetime. The silence in the hallway was so absolute I could hear the distant hum of a refrigerator inside her apartment.
Then, slowly, with a soft metallic click, she slid the security chain out of its bracket and pulled the door wide open.
