Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Hero

Mimi stood at the gate in the rain and said she told Ava about Boo.
For a second, nobody moved.
Not me.
Not Emily.
Not the officer on the intercom screen.
Not even Eleanora, pressed against Emily's chest with her tiny fists caught in Emily's jumper, crying like the whole morning had finally become too much for her small body.
Then Emily made a sound.
Not a sob.
Not a word.
Something smaller.
Something worse.
"Mimi," she whispered.
Her sister flinched on the screen.
Even through the grainy intercom camera, I could see she had been crying. Her hair was damp beneath her hood. Her cheeks were red. She had one bag over her shoulder and both hands clenched around the strap like it was the only thing holding her upright.
"I'm sorry," Mimi said again. "Em, I swear, I didn't know."
Emily didn't answer.
Her arms tightened around Eleanora.
Our daughter squirmed and cried harder, overwhelmed by the hallway, the buzzing, the voices, the tension, everything she was too little to understand and too clever not to feel.
I stepped closer to Emily.
Slowly.
"Breathe."
She turned her head.
The look she gave me was lethal.
Good.
Anger meant she was still here.
"Do not tell me to breathe."
"Okay."
"You're saying okay again."
"I'll stop."
"Good."
Eleanora let out a furious little wail.
Emily's face shifted instantly.
Her hand cupped the back of our daughter's head, fingers sinking into soft curls.
"I know," she whispered. "I know. Too much shouting. I'm sorry."
Mimi heard it through the intercom.
Her face crumpled.
The officer at the gate looked up at the camera.
"Ms Dean? Do you want us to bring her in?"
"No," I said immediately.
Emily looked at me.
I held her gaze.
"We don't know what she's walked into."
Her face tightened.
Because it was Mimi.
Because family was supposed to be different.
Because today had proved family could be a doorway as easily as a shield.
Mimi shook her head quickly. "I'm not here to come in. I just need to tell you before Ava does something worse. She knows more than she should, Em. I don't know how much is from me and how much is from someone else, but I think-"
Her voice broke.
Emily pressed the intercom button with the hand not holding Eleanora.
"Think what?"
Mimi looked up at the camera.
"I think she's had someone watching Clara-Bellas."
The hallway went cold.
Beside me, Emily stopped breathing.
I felt it.
The complete stillness of her body.
The way the colour drained from her face.
The way Eleanora's cries seemed suddenly far away.
The officer turned to Mimi. "Watching how?"
Mimi wiped her face roughly with her sleeve.
"I don't know. I don't have proof. Not proper proof. But Ava knew when classes finished. She knew Emily slept upstairs sometimes. She knew Hero still had things there."
My stomach dropped.
Emily's eyes snapped to mine.
Hero still had things there.
The jacket.
The scripts.
The trainers.
The pieces of me that had never left because leaving would have meant admitting it was over in a way neither of us could survive.
"Who told her?" Emily asked.
Mimi's mouth trembled.
"I told her some of it."
Emily went very still.
Her voice lowered.
"What do you mean, some of it?"
Mimi started crying again.
Not pretty crying.
Not manipulation.
Panic.
Shame.
Real fear.
"I was angry."
Emily's face changed.
A sharp flicker.
Recognition.
Mimi swallowed hard. "After court. After everything. You wouldn't talk to me properly. Hero wouldn't answer anyone. Eleanora was with him and his family, and you were here pretending you were fine, and I was just... I was so angry, Em."
Emily's hand tightened around the intercom.
I wanted to reach for Eleanora.
She didn't hand her over.
Good.
Bad.
I didn't know anymore.
Mimi kept talking, words tumbling faster now.
"Ava messaged me through the agency."
Emily closed her eyes.
Of course.
Mimi's husband's agency.
The same place I had modelled.
The same place Ava had modelled.
That glossy, poisonous little world where everyone knew everyone and old rumours never died, they just waited for better lighting.
Mimi's voice shook.
"She still had my number from then. Or she got it from someone there. I don't know. But it didn't feel like a stranger messaging me. That was the mistake. She was Ava from the agency. Ava who knew Hero before. Ava who everyone had stories about."
My jaw clenched.
Ava had always known how to stand close enough to the truth that lies sounded like memory.
Mimi looked straight into the camera.
"She said she understood what it was like watching Hero hurt women and still get treated like the victim. She said she knew about you. About him. About the overlap. About court. About Eleanora."
Emily's mouth tightened.
Mimi's eyes filled again.
"And because of the agency, because she knew names and dates and old things, I believed she knew more than she did."
Emily's voice went flat.
"So you filled in the rest."
Mimi flinched.
"Yes."
The word hit the hallway and stayed there.
Small.
Huge.
Unforgivable and human all at once.
Eleanora cried against Emily's neck. Emily rocked her automatically.
Side to side.
Side to side.
The movement was so instinctive now that it almost hurt to watch.
Mimi wiped her face.
"She said people were twisting what happened to you. She said Hero would make himself look like the good father and you like some monster. She said she knew you weren't like that."
Emily let out a hollow laugh.
"And you believed she cared?"
"No." Mimi shook her head. "Not cared. I just... I thought she was angry at Hero. Like I was. I thought she was trying to prove he'd hurt you too."
My stomach turned.
Too.
That was Ava's favourite word.
Always building a club out of pain.
Always making women feel like if they hated me together, she had finally won something.
Emily's voice trembled.
"And what did you tell her?"
Mimi's lips parted.
Nothing came out.
Emily pressed the intercom button harder.
"What did you tell her, Mimi?"
Mimi sobbed.
"I told her about Boo."
Emily's face went white.
Even though we already knew.
Even though Mimi had said it once.
Hearing it again, clearly, made it worse.
"I told her you called Eleanora Boo before she was born," Mimi whispered. "I told her Brandon knew. That he used to sing to your bump. That he loved her before any of us knew how everything was going to happen."
Brandon's name landed in the hallway like a dropped glass.
Emily's face cracked.
"Mimi."
"I'm sorry."
"You told Ava about Brandon?"
"No. Not everything. I swear. Just that he knew. That he loved the baby. That Boo was what you called her when she was inside you."
Emily made that sound again.
Small.
Destroyed.
Eleanora sobbed against her shoulder, and this time Emily's knees buckled.
I caught her.
Not dramatically.
Not fully.
Just a hand at her waist, a steadying pressure before she hit the wall.
She didn't push me away.
That scared me more than if she had.
"Em," Mimi cried through the speaker. "I didn't know Ava would use it like this. I thought she already knew half of it. I thought she was just angry at Hero. I didn't think she'd go after Eleanora."
Emily laughed.
Quiet.
Hollow.
"You didn't think the woman obsessed with Hero would go after his daughter?"
Mimi flinched.
"Emily," I said softly.
"No." She looked at me then, eyes bright with tears and fury. "No, don't soften this. Everyone keeps using not thinking as an excuse."
I shut my mouth.
She was right.
Jo didn't think.
Mimi didn't think.
I didn't think, years ago, with Ava.
Emily didn't think, when she left my name off Eleanora's first birth certificate because pain was louder than fairness.
None of us had thought until our daughter paid for it.
Emily turned back to the intercom.
"What else did you tell her?"
Mimi's breath shook.
"I told her you kept the nursery."
Emily closed her eyes.
My entire body went cold.
There it was.
Not guessed.
Not watched.
Told.
Mimi gripped the bag strap harder.
"She asked if you really never wanted the baby. She said the papers would say you didn't. I was angry and I said they didn't know anything. I said you had a room. That you bought things. That you kept it locked after. That you used to sit in there when you thought nobody knew."
Emily opened her eyes slowly.
The look on her face gutted me.
Not rage now.
Worse.
Humiliation.
Her most private contradiction, handed to the one person who would know exactly how to sharpen it.
"I trusted you," Emily whispered.
Mimi's face collapsed.
"I know."
"No." Emily's voice shook. "You don't. Because if you did, you would have known that room was not evidence for my defence. It was not proof to wave around because you were angry on my behalf. It was mine."
"I know."
"You don't."
Mimi sobbed.
The officer shifted awkwardly, but he stayed quiet.
Good.
This wasn't his place to interrupt.
Emily's arms trembled around Eleanora. Our daughter had quieted slightly, reduced to hiccuping sobs, her fingers gripping Emily's jumper so tightly the fabric bunched in her tiny fists.
I wanted to take her.
I wanted to take them both.
I did neither.
Emily had asked for our daughter.
So I let her hold.
Mimi sucked in a breath. "There's more."
Emily stiffened.
I stepped forward. "Then say it."
Mimi looked at me properly for the first time.
Fear flashed across her face.
Maybe because I looked like hell.
Maybe because for the first time, she remembered I was not just the man who had hurt her sister.
I was also the father of the baby crying inside these walls.
"Ava asked about the old accident," Mimi said.
My blood ran cold.
Emily's head turned towards me.
The old accident.
The traumatic brain injury.
The days I didn't remember properly and everyone else remembered too well.
"What about it?" I asked.
My voice sounded wrong.
Mimi swallowed.
"She wanted to know who was there. Who had keys. Whether Titan still came round. Whether Emily changed the locks afterwards."
Titan.
My brother.
The only person who had ever made Ava look genuinely small.
I could see him as clearly as if the memory had stepped into the hallway.
Titan standing in the studio doorway after my accident, broad shoulders blocking the stairs to the flat. Ava trying to cry her way past him. Emily pale and shaking, furious and exhausted, because I was upstairs with a head injury that had scared everyone more than we admitted.
Ava saying she had a right to see me.
Titan saying, "No, you don't."
Ava saying I needed her.
Titan saying, "He needs quiet, a doctor, and for you to stop performing grief in a building that isn't yours."
Then the word.
Cold.
Final.
"Out."
Ava had never forgiven humiliation.
Not once.
"She remembers Titan threw her out," I said.
Mimi nodded shakily. "She called him your guard dog."
Despite everything, Emily let out a brittle laugh.
"That sounds like her."
My phone buzzed.
I glanced down.
Titan.
Of course.
Because the universe had apparently decided to stage every ghost at once.
Emily saw the name on my screen.
Her eyes widened slightly.
"Answer it."
I did.
"Titan."
"Tell me where you are."
His voice was not a question.
Rough.
Furious.
Awake.
"Tie-"
"Hero. Where are you?"
"At Clara-Bellas."
"Inside?"
"Yes."
"Emily and the baby?"
"With me."
"Police?"
"At the gate."
"Good. Do not open that gate for anyone except uniformed officers, and even then, make them show ID through the camera. I'm ten minutes away."
"No," Emily and I said together.
Titan went silent.
Then, "Was that Emily?"
I put him on speaker.
Emily looked like she regretted existing.
"Hi, Titan."
There was a pause.
Heavy.
Years of everything we hadn't said to him.
Then his voice changed.
Not softer exactly.
But less like he was about to drive through a wall.
"Emily."
She swallowed. "You can't come here. Lockdown."
"Cute."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"The police are here."
"Lovely. They can watch me arrive."
Hero's mum's voice came through the other phone, still connected on the side table, appalled and somehow not surprised.
"Titan, you cannot just storm across Winchester in the middle of lockdown."
"I can if my brother has been assaulted and my niece is being threatened."
Emily flinched.
Niece.
Eleanora.
Claimed by another person.
Not as evidence.
Not as headline.
Family.
Titan continued, "Ava's been circling that building since the TBI. I told you all she would come back eventually."
I closed my eyes.
Of course he had.
Titan remembered threats the way other people remembered birthdays.
Emily's eyes stayed on the intercom screen.
"She doesn't get to keep doing this," she said suddenly.
Titan paused.
"What?"
"Ava." Her voice shook, but it did not break. "She doesn't get to keep walking into our lives whenever she feels wounded and taking pieces of them with her."
I looked at Emily.
Her jaw was set.
Eyes bright.
Eleanora pressed against her chest.
"She doesn't get Clara-Bellas," Emily said. "She doesn't get the nursery. She doesn't get Boo. She doesn't get my daughter."
Silence.
Then Titan said, "Good."
One word.
Approval from Titan was rare enough to count as a natural disaster.
Emily blinked.
I almost smiled.
Then remembered everything else.
"Titan," I said, "don't come here."
"Too late."
"Turn around."
"No."
"Tie-"
"You have cracked ribs?"
I glanced at Emily.
She glared.
"Maybe."
"Idiot."
"Helpful."
"You should be checked."
"I called 111."
"Miracle."
"Are you coming to lecture me or help?"
"Yes."
Emily's mouth twitched despite herself.
Titan's voice sharpened. "Who's at the gate?"
"Jo with police. Mimi too."
"Mimi?"
Emily's face hardened again.
Mimi sobbed through the intercom, still outside, still waiting in the rain.
Titan must have heard it.
"What did she do?"
Emily answered before I could.
"She told Ava about Boo."
Silence.
Then Titan's voice dropped so low it barely sounded human.
"Put Mimi somewhere separate from Jo. Do not let them talk. Give both phones to police. Tell the officer Ava had prior access knowledge from the TBI incident and that I removed her before she reached the flat properly. I can give a statement."
The officer at the gate, hearing through the intercom, straightened.
"I'll note that, sir."
Titan snapped, "And stop letting people stand at the gate like it's a village meeting. Move them away from the property."
Emily blinked.
The officer actually looked like he might obey.
I should not have enjoyed that.
I did.
Emily pressed the intercom button again.
"Mimi."
Her sister looked up, shaking.
"You need to give the police everything. Messages. Calls. Dates. Every single thing you said to Ava."
"I will."
"And you do not come inside."
Mimi's face crumpled again.
"Em, please-"
"No."
The word was soft.
Final.
Mimi looked like it hit harder because of that.
Emily continued, voice trembling but steady enough.
"I love you. I think I do. I don't know what I feel right now. But you do not come inside the building where my daughter is."
My daughter.
My breath caught.
Titan went silent on the phone.
Mum too.
Everyone heard it.
Mimi nodded, crying too hard to speak.
The officer guided her gently out of the frame.
The screen returned to rain, gate, police.
Emily released the intercom button.
For one second, she stood upright.
Then her whole body seemed to fold.
I moved.
So did Eleanora, startled by the change in Emily's hold.
"I've got you," I said.
Emily shook her head, but she let me guide her into the living room.
Not take Eleanora.
Not yet.
Just guide.
She sat on the sofa with our daughter in her lap. Eleanora had exhausted herself into little hiccups, face blotchy, thumb near her mouth.
Emily stared down at her.
"I said my daughter."
"Yes."
"I meant it."
"I know."
Her eyes lifted to mine.
Raw.
Terrified.
Almost angry.
"What if I keep meaning it?"
My heart cracked.
"Then we deal with that."
"What if I don't know how?"
"Then we learn."
"What if she wants you more?"
"She will sometimes."
Emily flinched.
"And sometimes she'll want you," I said.
"She barely knows me."
"She knew your voice first."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
Her mouth trembled.
Titan was still on speaker in my hand.
For once, he did not interrupt.
Neither did Mum from the other phone.
Maybe everyone understood the room had become too fragile for anything but truth.
Emily looked back at Eleanora.
"I hate that Mimi knew about Boo."
"She loved you."
"That doesn't fix it."
"No."
"She loved me and still handed Ava a knife."
"Yes."
The word hurt her.
I saw it.
But she had asked for truth, and I was done deciding what she could bear.
Emily nodded slowly.
"Okay."
Then she laughed once.
Small and broken.
"Everyone loves everyone very badly in this family."
Titan made a sound through the phone.
"Speak for yourself."
Emily blinked.
Then, unexpectedly, laughed.
A real laugh.
Exhausted and wet, but real.
Titan added, "I love perfectly. Aggressively, but perfectly."
Mum huffed from the other phone. "Titan, this is not the moment."
"It absolutely is."
I rubbed a hand over my face.
"This is why I didn't want you on speaker."
"You put me on speaker because you need adult supervision."
Emily laughed again.
Eleanora startled at the sound, then blinked up at her.
For one impossible second, my daughter looked at Emily's smiling, crying face and smiled back.
Not much.
A tiny, sleepy, gummy thing.
Maybe gas.
Maybe accident.
Maybe nothing.
Emily froze.
Her entire body went still.
"Hero," she whispered.
"I saw."
"She smiled."
"I saw."
"She-"
"I know."
Emily's face crumpled.
This time, when she cried, she did it silently, looking down at Eleanora like something inside her had been handed back in a language she barely remembered.
Titan went quiet.
Mum made a soft sound.
I looked away before my own tears embarrassed everyone.
Then my phone buzzed again.
Not Titan's call.
A message.
From Anna.
Studio just sent legal response. Director is claiming your statement breached contract. They want you on a video call with Jo by noon to "stabilise narrative." Also, Ava's name is in the evidence chain now. Jen says do not respond to anyone.
I read it twice.
Then laughed.
I couldn't help it.
Emily looked up, alarmed.
"What?"
I showed her the message.
She stared at it.
Then her expression changed.
Slowly.
Dangerously.
"The director wants you on a video call with Jo?"
"Yes."
"To stabilise narrative?"
"Apparently."
"After Jo turned up at my gate and admitted she helped leak my baby?"
"Yes."
Emily handed Eleanora to me.
Immediately.
Like instinct.
Like trust.
"Take her."
I took our daughter, startled.
Emily stood.
"What are you doing?"
She walked to the kitchen counter and picked up her phone.
"Calling Jen."
"Emily-"
"No." She turned back to me, eyes blazing. "They wanted a narrative? Fine."
My chest tightened.
"Em."
Her thumb hovered over Jen's contact.
"I'm done letting everyone else write me."
For the first time all morning, she looked less like someone trying not to drown and more like the woman who had built Clara-Bellas out of grief and nerve and steel.
Eleanora tucked her face into my neck, exhausted.
Titan's voice came through the phone, approving and grim.
"Oh, I like this version."
Emily glanced at the phone.
"Don't get comfy, Titan."
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
Then Emily looked at me.
Not asking permission.
Not seeking approval.
Just letting me see the decision before she made it.
"I won't show Eleanora," she said. "I won't give details they don't deserve. But if your director thinks he can use Jo to drag you back into his story while Ava and Hayden and everyone else are circling mine, then he's about to learn my full legal name."
Despite everything, I smiled.
It hurt.
I didn't care.
"Emily Dean."
Her eyes softened for half a second.
Then hardened again.
"Yes," she said. "Emily Dean."
She pressed call.
And as Jen answered, as police moved outside the gates, as Mimi cried in the rain and Jo gave her statement and Ava circled somewhere beyond the back lanes of Winchester, I stood in the living room with my daughter in my arms and watched Emily choose herself.
Not instead of Eleanora.
Not instead of me.
Alongside us.
For once, that felt like the beginning of something.
Not peace.
Not yet.
But power.