Aria’s POV
The call ca at 11:47 PM.
I know the exact ti because I’d been watching the clock above the kitchen island, waiting for the kettle to boil, too wired from the day’s happiness to sleep. Noah was down. Damien was in the study answering emails. The penthouse was quiet in that particular way it got when the city below finally exhaled, and I’d been standing there in the dark thinking that this — this — was my life now. A real one. A good one.
Then my phone lit up with an unknown number, and so instinct I’d sharpened over years of surviving made answer before the second ring.
"You forgot about ." The voice was low, asured, and familiar in a way that made my stomach turn cold. "Both of you. The mont you had your happy ending, you forgot I existed."
I said nothing, my hand tightening around the phone."Visits every week for 1 month," Marcus continued, and there was sothing almost worse than rage underneath it — sothing that sounded like grief that had curdled into sothing uglier. "Damien sitting across from , promising we’d fix this. That we were brothers. That it wasn’t too late." A pause. "And then nothing. Weeks of nothing. Because you planned a rger. Because you got engaged. Because you had your life back, and I was just" His voice cracked, just slightly. "A box you’d already ticked. Reconciliation attempt: complete."
"Marcus" I started.
"You took him from ," he said, cutting off. "You and that child and that perfect life you built. You took my brother back and then you took him away again. And I think that’s worse. I think that’s so much worse than if he’d never co at all."
The line went dead. I stood there for three full seconds with the kettle screaming behind , and then I was moving — down the hall, into the study, not even knocking. "Damien." My voice ca out steadier than I felt.
He looked up from his laptop and read my face imdiately, shoving back from the desk before I’d even crossed the room. "What happened?"
I set my phone on the desk between us. "Marcus just called ."
Sothing shifted behind his eyes — not surprise. Sothing closer to dread, the particular dread of a man who’d been half-expecting a bill to arrive and had simply hoped it wouldn’t co tonight. "What did he say?" he asked carefully.
I told him. Every word. When I got to the visits — promises we’d fix this, that we were brothers — Damien went still in the way he did when sothing hit him sowhere he wasn’t defended.
"The visits stopped," I said quietly. "Damien. Why did the visits stop?"
He was quiet for a long mont, long enough that I didn’t push. "The Sterling takeover," he said finally. "Then the rger announcent. Then the gala, Noah’s school evaluation, the press conference" He stopped and exhaled slowly through his nose. "I told myself I’d go the following week. And then the week after that."
"How long?" I asked.
"Around 3 weeks." His jaw tightened. "I sent money to his commissary account. I thought" He stopped again, and I watched him understand in real ti how insufficient that was — how exactly like their father that was, substituting resources for presence, transaction for relationship. "I thought it was enough."
"He doesn’t think so," I said.
"No." Damien stood and moved to the window, one hand bracing against the glass. "No, he doesn’t."
"Is he dangerous?" I asked, even though I already knew. I needed to hear how Damien said it.
He turned to look at . "He was making real progress. Dr. Hale’s reports were" He stopped. "He called you instead of . That ans he wanted to know he’s done trying. That whatever cos next, I don’t get to be surprised."
The word dangerous didn’t need to be said out loud.
"Noah," I said.
We moved at the sa ti. Our son was exactly where we’d left him — sprawled sideways across his pillow, one arm around the stuffed dinosaur Theo had lent him, chest rising and falling in the slow, untroubled rhythm of a child who believed himself completely safe.
We stood in the doorway together and neither of us spoke.
"He’s okay," I said, more for myself than for Damien.
"He’s okay." Damien’s hand found the small of my back. "Co on. We need to make so calls."
Detective Barnes answered on the second ring, which told he’d been waiting for exactly this. The news he delivered was clinical and devastating in equal asure, Marcus Blackwood had escaped during a routine prison transfer earlier that evening. A staged vehicle collision, two guards incapacitated, and Marcus had simply vanished into the city like smoke through a screen. Units had been searching for hours but they had nothing.
"He’s not stupid," Barnes said, his frustration just barely audible beneath the composure. "He planned this. The timing, the thod, none of this was impulsive. Given his background and the ti he had in that cell to think" He paused, choosing his words. "He’s going to be very difficult to find until he wants to be found."
"He already made contact." Damien was still at the window, watching the city below like Marcus might be visible in it sowhere. "Twenty minutes ago, he called my fiancée."
A beat of silence. "What did he say?"
I took the phone and kept my voice even as I repeated it all — the visits, the abandonnt, the accusation wrapped inside grief wrapped inside fury. When I finished, Barnes was quiet for a mont.
"That’s not the profile of soone who simply relapsed," he said carefully. "That’s soone who felt a wound get reopened. Which makes him more volatile, not less, because it isn’t just old anger anymore. It’s fresh."
After I hung up, we sat with that for a long mont.
"He was getting better," I said quietly. I wasn’t accusing — I just needed to say it out loud. "Damien, he was actually getting better."
"I know." His voice was low, heavy with it. "I know he was."
"And then we got busy." I looked down at my hands. "Both of us. I never pushed you to go back. After the engagent, after the rger, I just" I stopped. "I thought the hard part was over."
"We both did." Damien turned from the window and looked at directly. "That’s on us equally. Don’t carry that alone."
It should have felt like comfort, it mostly just felt like truth. By 1 AM, the penthouse had transford in ways that made my chest tight.
Victor Reyes arrived with six people — two at the lobby entrance, one at the elevator bank, one at the stairwell, two rotating the floor. They moved through the space with quiet efficiency, checking windows, reviewing sightlines, installing a secondary keypad on the front door. Noah slept through all of it, undisturbed, and I sat at the kitchen island watching them work and tried to separate the fear from the guilt but it wasn’t easy.
Because under the terror of Marcus being out there — loose and grieving and furious — was a quieter, more uncomfortable thing sitting right alongside it. We had done this, in part. Not the violence. Not the choice to run. But the silence. The weeks of good intentions and missed visits and the assumption that progress, once started, didn’t need tending.
"You need to sleep," Damien said, appearing beside and setting a mug down chamomile, because he’d been paying attention to these things now, all the small details.
"I keep thinking about what he said." I wrapped both hands around the warmth of it. "That it was worse. That Damien coming at all and then stopping was worse than nothing." I paused. "I understand that. I hate that I understand it, but I do."
"So do I," he said quietly, sitting down beside .
"It doesn’t excuse what he’s doing," I said.
"No." He turned to look at , and his expression in the low kitchen light was the version of him I’d co to know best — not the hard composure, not the perford warmth, but the one that lived in between. The man who had learned, slowly and with great difficulty, to sit inside hard truths without flinching. "But it explains it. And I’d rather understand him than not, because n you understand make mistakes you can predict."
"Last ti I talked him down with words and took a bullet for it," I said.
"Last ti you didn’t know him as well as you do now." His hand covered mine on the mug. "And last ti he didn’t have this particular grief underneath the rage. The old approach won’t work. He needs to believe the relationship is still real. That the abandonnt wasn’t a verdict."
I looked at him carefully. "Is it still real? After everything tonight do you still want to try with him?"
He didn’t answer imdiately, and I was glad. I watched him think about it genuinely rather than reaching for the easy answer.
"He’s my brother," Damien said finally. "And I failed him again not the way I did when we were children, but in the way people fail each other when they get comfortable. When they decide the work is done." He t my eyes. "So yes. I want to try. But this ti with the understanding that trying isn’t a mont. It’s a practice. It shows up even when life is good, especially when life is good — because that’s exactly when it’s easiest to forget."
From down the hall ca the small sound of Noah shifting in his sleep, so happy dream-syllable escaping him, the murmur of a child still living entirely inside the safety we were building walls to protect.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I picked it up without thinking. Unknown number. No ssage — just a photograph.
The penthouse lobby, ti-stamped forty minutes ago, and there at the edge of the fra, half-swallowed by shadow, a figure watching the building.
Watching us.
I held the screen out to Damien without a word. His face didn’t change, but sothing in his eyes went very cold and very certain, and he was already reaching for his own phone to call Reyes before I’d drawn my next breath.
"He’s been watching since before we even knew he was out," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"He wanted us to know that." Damien’s voice was grim and quiet. "He sent it to make sure we understand — this isn’t reactive. He’s been planning."
Which ant this wasn’t the beginning of Marcus’s ga.
But this ti, we understood why he was playing it. And understanding, I had learned the hard way, was where you had to start.
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