Chapter 1 - THE EDGE
The wheelchair hit the marble lip, and Adrian Blackwood saw thirty feet of empty staircase beneath his shoes.
"Adrian!" Emma screamed.
She came from his left so fast her shoulder struck the chair. Her hands caught the side frame. Rubber squealed against marble. One of her shoes slipped, and her knee slammed into the floor, but she held on until the front wheels stopped an inch from the first step.
Behind them, music floated from the ballroom. Someone laughed at a joke. Nobody there knew how close the man hosting the charity gala had come to dying.
Emma set the brake with shaking fingers. "What is wrong with you?" she demanded, turning on the woman in burgundy. "You pushed him!"
Vanessa Vale, who had insisted on being called Vanessa Blackwood during their engagement, folded her arms. She had once worn Adrian's engagement ring. Tonight she wore a diamond necklace he had paid for and an expression that said everyone else was overreacting.
"I barely touched the chair. He shouldn't have been parked there."
"It was moving," Emma said. "I watched you let go."
Vanessa looked at Adrian. "Tell your little nurse to stop making a scene."
"She's not my nurse," he said.
Emma was his personal assistant, the person who had driven him to therapy, argued with insurance companies, and stayed through nights when phantom pain kept him awake. For seven months, she had never once called him a burden.
Now her palm covered his. "You okay?"
He could have told her the truth weeks ago. He had chosen silence instead. Looking at her scraped knee, he hated himself for it.
Adrian pulled the plaid blanket away. His feet touched the floor. He leaned on the armrests and rose slowly, legs trembling but steady enough.
Emma's hand fell away.
Vanessa backed into the wall. "You can walk?"
"For three months," Adrian answered.
Emma stared at him as though the staircase had opened between them after all. "You let me believe you couldn't?"
"I had to know who caused my accident."
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Adrian watched Vanessa's face lose its color. Before she could speak, the ballroom doors swung open, and his head of security approached with a phone in his hand.
"Sir," Caleb Ward said, "someone just deleted the staircase footage."
