Chapter 180: Chapter 180 – The Attempt
Aria’s POV
The call came at eleven forty-three on a Wednesday morning, It was Noah’s school. Ms. Pearce, his classroom teacher, her voice careful and controlled.
"Mrs. Blackwood," she said. "Noah is completely safe, i want to say that first."
The world went very still around me. "Tell me," I said.
I was in the car before she’d finished explaining, my security detail moving without me having to ask, the driver already pulling out of the Monroe Global parking structure while I sat in the back with my phone pressed to my ear and my other hand flat against my stomach — not thinking about it, just doing it, the instinctive gesture of a woman protecting two children at once.
Ms. Pearce had noticed him at eleven-fifteen.
A man she didn’t recognize, wearing the lanyard and pale blue polo of the school’s after-care staff, moving through the corridor toward the younger classrooms. She’d almost let it go, almost told herself she just didn’t recognize him from her end of the building, except that she did know all the after-care staff, had worked alongside them for years, and something about the way this man moved was wrong in a way she couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore.
She’d stepped into the corridor and asked him directly: "Can I help you find something?"
He’d said he was looking for the Year One reading room.
She’d said she’d walk him there.
He’d left. Quickly, back the way he came, through the side exit that opened onto the car park, and by the time the school’s security guard reached the door he was gone — dark jacket, medium build, the camera footage showing a man who had kept his face angled away from every lens in the building as though he’d studied the layout in advance. Because he had.
Noah had been in Ms. Pearce’s classroom the entire time, sitting on the reading rug with four other children.
When I arrived, he was still on the rug. He looked up when I walked in and said, "Mama, we’re in the middle of the story," with the mild reproach of someone whose schedule had been interrupted, and I crossed the room and pulled him into my arms and held on with everything I had.
He tolerated it for approximately four seconds before squirming. "Mama. The story."
"I know, baby." I pressed my face into his hair and breathed. "I know."
Damien arrived a few minutes after me, which meant he’d been moving before I’d called him, which meant Barnes had already been in contact, which meant the security apparatus we’d built around our family had been running silently in the background this entire morning and had done exactly what it was built to do.
He walked into the school office where I sat with Ms. Pearce and the principal, and the first thing he did was look at me — a full, direct look, the kind he used when he needed to confirm something with his own eyes rather than someone else’s report.
I nodded once. I’m fine.
His shoulders dropped a fraction. Then he sat beside me, took my hand on the table, and turned to the principal with the controlled intensity of a man who was very angry and managing it carefully.
"Walk me through the camera coverage of every entrance," he said.
Barnes met us at the penthouse a few hours later, Noah installed in the living room with Mrs. Dora and a city’s worth of LEGO, far enough away that the conversation in Damien’s office wouldn’t reach him.
"The lanyard was a replica," Barnes said, setting a photograph on the desk — the school’s official after-care ID beside a near-match, slightly wrong in the font, the colour marginally off. "Good quality. Someone who either had access to the original or a very clear photograph of one." He paused. "The school posts staff photos on their parent portal. Including lanyard shots."
I closed my eyes briefly then opened them.
"Charles gave him portal access," Damien said.
"Working assumption. We’re pulling the login records now." Barnes reached into his folder again. "He left in a hurry and hurrying makes people careless."
He set down a second photograph: a mobile phone with a cracked screen, sealed in an evidence bag.
"Dropped it in the car park. Pay-as-you-go, unregistered. But it hadn’t been fully wiped when we recovered it." Barnes looked between us. "There are partial texts. Two numbers — one almost certainly Charles and the other we’re running now."
"The second number," Damien said. "Who?"
"We don’t know yet. The texts suggest it’s whoever fed Charles the school layout. Someone with inside access." Barnes closed the folder. "Twenty-four hours and we’ll have a name."
The office was quiet. Through the door, Noah’s voice drifted in — he was explaining something to Mrs. Dora about structural load-bearing in LEGO, with the authority of someone who had been watching Damien review building plans and absorbed considerably more than anyone realized.
"He was a few metres from Noah’s classroom," I said.
"I know." Barnes’s voice was steady.
"If Ms. Pearce hadn’t trusted her instinct"
"She did," Damien said quietly beside me, his hand finding mine under the desk. "She did, Aria."
I pressed my lips together as I nodded.
"Noah’s out of school until this is resolved," Damien said, turning back to Barnes. "Home tutoring, Mrs. Dora’s oversight, no external movement without a two-car detail. Penthouse access codes rotated today. Eyes on every known associate of Charles’s — every one." He paused, and something moved through his expression, "And I want him found, Barnes. Not monitored. Found."
Barnes held his gaze. "Understood."
Barnes gathered his folder and left the office quietly, the door clicking shut behind him.
The room stayed quiet for a moment. Just the two of us and the low sound of Noah explaining structural integrity to Mrs. Dora through the wall, his voice serious and unhurried, completely unbothered by the world.
I stared at the photograph of the lanyard still sitting on the desk.
"He studied the school," I said. "The camera angles. The staff photos. He planned this carefully."
"Yes."
"Which means it wasn’t impulsive. He sat somewhere and thought about our son and made a plan." I pushed the photograph away. "That’s what I keep coming back to. The planning of it."
Damien reached over and turned the photograph face down on the desk without saying anything. It was such a small gesture and it helped more than it should have.
"Come here," he said.
I looked at him.
"Aria. Come here."
I moved my chair closer and he put his arm around me and I let myself lean into him for just a moment.
********
That evening, after Noah had been bathed and read to and had extracted a solemn promise from Damien that tomorrow they would construct the tallest LEGO structure in penthouse history, after Mrs. Dora had retired and the apartment had gone quiet, I stood at the bedroom window and looked at Ravenwood below.
I had spent years understanding that my family saw me as a resource. My entire marriage to Damien the first time had been a transaction my father arranged for his own benefit. I had rebuilt myself from that knowledge, had turned it into fuel, had made peace with what he was.
But this was different.
This was Noah.
Noah who still climbed into our bed on weekend mornings and demanded pancakes. Noah, who had named his toy dinosaur after me when I was in hospital. Noah who had announced our pregnancy to an entire rooftop because his father had trusted him with a secret and he had found it too important to contain.
Charles had looked at that child and thought about money.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach in the dark, the gesture that had become instinctive since the wedding morning, and I thought about the baby who didn’t know yet what kind of world they were coming into, and I thought about Noah asleep in the next room, and I made myself a promise that was quiet and absolute and required no words.
Not him. Not either of them. Not ever.
"He is not going to touch him," Damien said behind me.
"No," I agreed. "He is not."
Damien’s hands came to rest on my shoulders from behind, warm and certain. "How are you?"
"Angry," I said. "I keep reaching for the fear underneath and finding more anger."
"That’s not a bad thing."
"I know it’s not." I leaned back into him. "He was going to take him."
Damien’s arms tightened around me. "He is not going to touch him,"
"Tomorrow," I said. "Whatever Barnes finds on that phone — we go on the offensive."
"Tomorrow," Damien agreed, and turned me gently from the window and drew me toward the bed, and I let him.
I lay with my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow and steady beneath my ear, and I thought about Ms. Pearce stepping into a corridor because something felt wrong. One ordinary act of courage and my son was asleep in the next room dreaming about LEGO towers instead of — I stopped the thought there. Didn’t let it finish.
"Sleep," Damien said quietly, his hand moving slowly through my hair.
"I’m trying."
"I know." He pressed his lips to my forehead. "I’ve got you. Both of you. I’ve got us."
