Chapter 184: Chapter 184
Damien point of view
The parking garage opened below me and I heard his voice before I saw them — Charles, mid-sentence, and then Aria’s voice, steady and deliberate and I came around the concrete pillar and saw them and the world narrowed to a single point.
I stopped moving because moving fast was wrong here. Every instinct I had said go to her and every functioning part of my brain said don’t.
Barnes’s team was ninety seconds out. I knew that from the radio chatter in my earpiece. Ninety seconds was a long time.
"Charles." My voice came out calm, although I was not calm. "Look at me."
He turned his head slightly, keeping Aria in his peripheral vision. His eyes found me and I saw what was in them — the particular desperation of a man who had run out of moves and knew it and was looking for someone to blame for that.
"You ruined everything," he said. "You took her back, You"
"I love her," I said. "Whatever you think of me, whatever I’ve done — I love her and that child she’s carrying and the son who is upstairs right now. That is what exists. That is what you are pointing a gun at."
"Damien" Aria’s voice wavered as a small warning.
"I’m not going anywhere." I kept my eyes on Charles. "Neither is she." I took one careful step forward. "You want money. Fine. Name a number — any number — and I’ll wire it to wherever you’re going and you walk away from this country and you never come back. That’s the offer and it stands for the next thirty seconds."
Charles’s gun hand wavered. I watched the calculation move across his face — the trained businessman assessing a deal even in extremis, because some habits ran deeper than desperation. For three seconds I thought he was going to take it but he raised the gun.
The shot cracked through the concrete garage, sharp and enormous, and Aria dropped.
—and my heart stopped.
—and then I was moving, all the control gone, because she was on the ground and Charles was turning and.
The second shot came from behind me. It was the tactical team.
Charles went down, clutching his shoulder, and I crossed the eight feet between us and reached Aria and she was already pushing herself up from where she’d dived behind the nearest car, her palms flat on the concrete, unhurt, entirely unhurt, and I pulled her up and into my arms and held on with everything I had.
"I’m okay," she said into my shoulder, breathless. "I’m okay, Damien."
I couldn’t speak for a moment as I just held her.
"He missed," she said. "He panicked and he missed."
"I know." My voice came out rough and barely functional. "I know."
Behind us, Barnes’s team swarmed the garage, and Charles Monroe who had once been the most powerful man in Aria’s life — lay on the concrete with his shoulder wound.
Aria lifted her head from my shoulder and looked at him as he looked back while she held his gaze for a long moment.
"Get him the help he needs," she told Barnes, who had come beside us. "Medical and otherwise." She paused. "And charge him for everything. All of it."
Barnes nodded and moved away and I stood where I was, a few steps behind Aria, and watched her walk toward Charles Monroe on the concrete floor.
I didn’t follow. She didn’t need me to and I knew it, so I stayed where I was and watched.
She stopped a few feet from him. Two officers flanked him on either side, his gun already bagged and tagged, his shoulder being assessed by a medic who kept having to redirect his attention because Charles kept looking at Aria.
"You could have just walked away," she said. "When the company failed. When the debts got bad, you could have disappeared and I would not have chased you."
Charles said nothing.
"I gave you every reason to leave quietly. I took the company, I removed you from every board, I cut every financial tie. That was your exit. You had one and you chose not to take it." She kept her voice level, no anger in it, just facts laid down one after another. "Instead you looked at a four year old child and decided he was worth thousands of dollars to the right people."
He still said nothing.
"You made your wife treat her own sister’s child like a burden," she continued. "You spent years making sure I knew I was worth less than Vivian, less than everyone in that house. And when I finally built something real without a single thing from you, you tried to take the one person who matters most to me and sell him." She paused. "Catherine Whitmore’s grandchild. Your wife’s sister’s grandchild."
Charles looked at her for a long moment. "Vivian would never have let it get this far," he said.
I saw the corner of Aria’s mouth move. "No," she said. "She would have broken sooner. That was always the difference between us." She looked at him one last time, and what was in her face was not hatred and not satisfaction but something simpler "Vivian needed your approval. I stopped needing it a long time ago. That is why I am standing here and you are on the ground."
She turned and walked back to me. I took her hand the moment she was close enough and I didn’t let go.
Barnes looked at me and said it quietly and directly.
"He pulled the trigger on a pregnant woman," Barnes said. "My team had one directive."
I understood what he was telling me. I looked past Aria toward where Charles Monroe lay on the concrete and I understood that the medic had stopped working and the officers had stepped back. "Good," I said quietly.
Aria heard it. She looked up at me and then past me toward Charles. Then she turned back to the elevator.
"Let’s go inside," she said.
"Yes,"
ARIA’S Point of view
In the elevator I leaned against Damien and felt the shaking start, the delayed physical response my body had been saving for somewhere private.
He put both arms around me without a word.
"It’s over," I said.
"It’s over," he confirmed.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach as the doors opened onto the penthouse level.
It was quiet. Damien had been pulled from his call and had come downstairs and the legal team would be waiting for a callback that wasn’t coming today. The afternoon light came through the floor to ceiling windows the way it always did at this hour, warm and unhurried, completely indifferent to what had just happened two levels below.
"Noah," I said.
"Still asleep," Damien said. "I checked on my way out. He had another forty minutes at least."
I nodded. I walked down the corridor to Noah’s room anyway and stood in the doorway. He was on his side, one arm wrapped around the toy dinosaur he’d named after me, his curls pushed sideways against the pillow, his small chest rising and falling with the deep, unhurried breathing of a child who felt completely safe.
I stood there for a long time as I thought about everything that has happened so far. I pressed my hand to the doorframe and breathed.
Behind me, Damien’s hands came to rest on my shoulders, warm and steady. We stood there together in the doorway and watched our son sleep.
"He doesn’t know," I said quietly. "Any of it. He just had his nap and he’s going to wake up and ask about the LEGO tower."
"Yes," Damien said.
"Good," I said. "That’s exactly how it should be."
Damien pressed his lips to the top of my head and didn’t say anything else and I was glad because there was nothing else to say. Noah’s chest rose and fell. The afternoon light moved slowly across the floor of his room. Somewhere outside, the city continued its business, entirely unaware.
After a while Noah stirred, the small movements of a child surfacing from deep sleep, and then his eyes opened and found us immediately in the doorway.
He blinked,then looked at us both standing there.
"Why are you watching me sleep," he said, with the mild suspicion of someone whose privacy had been encroached upon.
I laughed but it came out slightly wrecked. "Because we wanted to," I said.
He considered this, apparently decided it was acceptable, and sat up and held his arms out. "Mama come hug me"
I crossed the room and picked him up as I hugged him resting my face on his shoulders, as he whimpered.
"Mama," he said into my shoulder. "You’re squeezing."
"I know, buddy. Give me a minute." I said as I buried my face into his shoulders trying to hold myself and not break down In front of my kid.
It’s over I thought to myself, it is really over.
