Part 4 — My friends sent me jokingly to Boston’s most dangerous man, but after my first words his smile disappeared

Daniel ended the call, but his last words still remained in the room.

Your father.

I stood up from the chair, and my knees trembled so much that I grabbed the table. Candle wax spilled onto the plate, and a white drop fell onto my hand.

“This is impossible,” I said.

“I thought so too,” Daniel replied.

Olivia ran toward the door.

Two security officers blocked her way.

“Let me through!” she shouted. “You have no idea whom you are fighting!”

“That is exactly why I will not let you through,” Daniel told her.

His voice was calm, but in this calmness I heard weariness for the first time.

Daniel called his lawyer.

“Leo, prepare everything. The video, correspondence, and letter will be handed over to the police.”

A strict male voice came from the phone:

“At this stage my advice is not to hurry. If the material was obtained illegally, the case will have problems.”

“Then find a legal way.”

“Daniel, these are your friends.”

“No. They were trying to accuse an innocent woman by using my name.”

Leo remained silent for several seconds.

“If you do this, there will be no way back for you.”

“That is exactly what I want.”

The call ended.

Olivia stood pale.

“Emily, I swear, I did not want to hurt you.”

“But you knew there was a camera.”

“Only at the beginning. Then the others frightened me.”

“Who others?”

Olivia looked at Daniel.

“Your uncle, William.”

Daniel’s face hardened.

“My uncle has been out of the country for ten years.”

“No,” Olivia said. “He was here. He paid us. He said that if you brought Emily here, everything would be arranged against her.”

At that moment the large screen mounted on the wall of the hall flashed. The security officer turned on a recording.

Olivia and I, several minutes earlier, were sitting at the same table. The sound could be heard clearly.

“If Emily comes, Daniel will think that she took the key,” Olivia was saying.

The voice of another woman laughed.

“No one will protect her. Even Jason left her.”

Something collapsed inside my heart. I knew these words, but hearing them from someone else’s mouth was still a different pain.

Olivia stared at the screen.

“Turn it off.”

“You said it,” I told her. “That is your voice.”

She bit her lips.

“I only wanted you to be scared.”

“No. You wanted me to be guilty.”

Daniel called the police. Half an hour later, two investigators came to the restaurant. Olivia and her friends were taken out separately. A case was opened against them for fraud, falsification of evidence, and deliberately involving a person.

But my father was still alive somewhere.

Daniel called that number again. This time the man answered immediately.

“Emily is with me,” Daniel said.

A hoarse breath could be heard from the other side of the line.

“I know.”

“Where are you, Richard?”

“Where your family cannot find me.”

“They considered you dead for ten years.”

“Because if I had remained alive, Emily would have died.”

I took the phone from him.

“Dad?”

Nothing was said for a long time.

Then he answered me quietly:

“Little bird, do you still carry that bag with the ink stain?”

My breath caught. Only my father knew that nickname.

“Yes.”

“Then you are still the girl whose protection I could not provide.”

“Why did you leave me?”

“Because William planned to kill you too. I took the documents, hid, and saw you every year, but I did not dare come to you.”

The words entered my heart like a knife. I wanted to scream. I wanted to say that being protected in loneliness had turned out to be more painful than any danger.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Near the old harbor, by the abandoned lighthouse.”

Daniel looked at me.

“You will not go there alone.”

“I don’t want to.”

Two hours later, the police, Daniel, and I were heading toward the harbor. The night was wet, the wooden piers creaked beneath our feet. We found a small shed by the lighthouse.

The door opened.

A man came out whom I would not have recognized from the photographs. His hair had turned completely white, and an old leather bag hung from his shoulder.

But his eyes were the same.

“Emily,” he said.

I ran toward him and pressed myself against his chest.

At first he did not raise his arms. It was as if he was afraid that if he touched me, this dream would disappear.

Then he hugged me.

“Forgive me,” he whispered.

“Not yet,” I told him. “But maybe someday.”

It was the most honest answer I could give.

In the following weeks everything became tangled in court and police matters. William Brooks was hiding in another country, but his bank transfers were found. Olivia and her friends offered a settlement, but I testified against them.

In the courtroom Olivia looked at me for the first time as if I were a person and not part of a joke.

“Emily, please, do not destroy my life.”

I answered calmly:

“I did not start destroying it.”

The judge confirmed the guilt. Olivia was sentenced to imprisonment, while her friends received suspended sentences and large fines. I felt no joy from their punishment.

I felt only emptiness, which was slowly filling with calmness.

Daniel no longer tried to use his connections. He officially handed over all the evidence. Part of his business was examined by an audit, and it turned out that he managed legal companies, not a criminal network. The secret of the Brooks family was connected to crimes committed by William over the years.

Daniel once told me:

“If you had not come that evening, they would still have found a way to reach you.”

“But I came to you as a joke.”

“And I did not laugh for the first time in a long time.”

Several weeks later my father rented a small house on the outskirts of the city. We did not talk every day. Sometimes we only drank coffee. Sometimes we sat silently for hours.

One morning he asked me:

“Will you ever forgive me?”

The first snow was falling outside the window.

“Coming back to you does not mean that the past did not happen,” I answered. “But it may mean that in the future we will no longer hide.”

That same winter I started a new job in the bookstore. I had a small table by the window, where every morning I drank coffee and recommended books to children. Daniel sometimes came, always sat in the same place, and never asked me whether I was ready to go to dinner with him.

One day a six-year-old girl left me a drawing while buying a book. Two people stood on it, and between them a large yellow sun was drawn.

“Is this you and your father?” I asked.

“No,” she told me. “These are two people who found each other.”

In the evening my father called me. Daniel also wrote to me. And Olivia sent me a letter from prison.

“Maybe someday we can be friends again?” it said.

I held the letter in my hands for a long time. Then I folded it and put it in a drawer.

I did not answer.

Some doors are opened by forgiveness. And some are closed by peace.

That night I took my old bag out of the closet. The ink stain near the zipper was still visible. For years I thought this stain was a sign of poverty and carelessness.

Now it looked like a small trace of survival in my life.

I put the bag over my shoulder, opened the window, and looked at the snow.

The past remained behind.

And for the first time no one was waiting for me in the shadows.

I was going home.