Chapter 205: Chapter 206: She Felt Violated
"Your mother is physically fine," Damien said carefully. "But something has happened that we need to discuss with her in person."
"What happened? Tell me right now...."
"Aria." He took her hand, held it firmly. "She’s physically safe. I promise. But we need to go to her apartment."
She searched his face for a moment, then nodded. The frown didn’t leave.
The drive to her mother’s apartment took another fifteen minutes. Aria held Damien’s hand tightly the entire way, not speaking but radiating controlled anxiety that he recognized as her version of worry.....contained, focused, preparing herself for whatever was coming.
He didn’t tell her about the photographs. Didn’t tell her that Alexander Wei had spent three days watching her from a distance, learning when she arrived at work and when she left. That felt like information that should come from her mother. That belonged to Mei to share.
When the car pulled up to the familiar apartment building, Aria was out the door before it had fully stopped, moving with the focused urgency of someone who’d learned to act quickly in crisis situations.
Damien followed close behind.
***
ARIA’S POV
The elevator ride to the fourth floor felt like the longest of Aria’s life.
Something was wrong. She could see it in Damien’s carefully controlled expression, could feel it in the way Marcus had positioned himself near the building entrance like he was expecting a threat. Could sense it in the general atmosphere of contained urgency that surrounded everyone in Damien’s world when something serious was happening.
Her mother was physically fine....Damien had said so, and she believed him. But physically fine didn’t mean everything was alright.
The elevator opened and Aria was already moving down the familiar corridor to apartment 4C. She knocked once, then used her key without waiting for an answer.
"Mama?"
The apartment was full of flowers. She’d known about the flowers....had been worried about them since the first delivery. But seeing them now, filling every surface, their fragrance overwhelming in the small space, made her stomach clench with unease.
"Mama, where are you?"
"In here." Her mother’s voice came from the living room, quiet and strange in a way that made Aria move faster.
She found Mei sitting in her favorite armchair....the worn one by the window that had been in this apartment as long as Aria could remember. Sitting very still, her hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing.
She looked small. That was the first thing Aria noticed. Her mother, who had always seemed so strong, so capable, so steady.....looked small in a way she never had, even during the worst of her illness.
"Mama." Aria crossed the room in three quick steps and crouched in front of the chair, taking her mother’s folded hands in both of hers. "Mama, look at me. What happened?"
Mei looked at her daughter, and the careful composure she’d been holding collapsed completely.
"Aria," she said, and then she was crying.....not gentle tears but deep, wrenching sobs that shook her entire small body.
Aria stood and pulled her mother into her arms, and Mei came up from the chair and held on with a fierceness that said everything about how frightened she’d been.
"It’s okay," Aria murmured, rubbing her mother’s back in slow circles the way Mei had done for her during every nightmare and heartbreak of her childhood. "It’s okay, Mama. I’m here. Whatever it is, I’m here."
Mei pulled back enough to look at Aria’s face, her own face wet with tears she didn’t bother to wipe away.
"He’s back, Aria," she said, her voice raw. "He’s back. He’s been watching you. He sent me.....he sent me a photograph...."
"Who has?" Aria asked, though she already knew. Could see it in her mother’s eyes, in the particular quality of her fear.
"Your father." The words came out as barely a whisper. "Alexander. He’s in New York. He’s been watching you for days, and he sent me a photograph of you leaving the hospital to prove it."
The words landed like physical blows. Aria absorbed them slowly, her arms still around her mother, her mind processing the information with the clinical detachment that she sometimes retreated to when emotion felt too overwhelming.
Her father. The man her mother had fled from twenty-five years ago. The man whose name she’d only learned weeks ago, whose existence had been hidden from her for her entire life. The man who’d apparently spent decades searching for them.
Was here.
Had been watching her.
Had photographs.
"Show me," Aria said quietly.
Mei pulled her phone from her cardigan pocket with shaking hands and handed it to Aria. Aria looked at the photograph.....herself, walking out of the hospital’s main entrance, white coat still on, completely unaware she was being observed. The photo was sharp and taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, the kind of equipment that serious surveillance required.
She looked at her own face in the photograph.....animated, slightly smiling, mid-conversation with Dr. Reyes.....and felt a complicated mixture of emotions that she couldn’t immediately untangle.
Violated. Someone had been watching her without her knowledge, following her, documenting her movements. That felt like a violation regardless of who was doing it or why.
Frightened. Not for herself...she was aware of her own capability, aware of the protection Damien’s security team provided....but for her mother, who had been sitting with this fear alone for days, who had been receiving these escalating contacts and carrying the weight of them in isolation.
And underneath both of those feelings, something else. Something harder to name.
Curiosity. Against her better judgment, against every rational instinct that was telling her this man was a threat, she was curious about the person who had taken this photograph. About what he’d felt when he looked at her through a telephoto lens for three days. About what he’d seen.
She handed the phone back to her mother and stood up straight. Damien was standing in the doorway of the living room—she hadn’t heard him come in, but she felt his presence like a physical thing, steady and solid at her back.
"He’s been watching me for three days," she said, not to anyone in particular. Just stating the fact, making it real by speaking it aloud.
"Yes." Damien’s voice was calm. "Marcus is already working on locating him. We’ll know his exact whereabouts within the hour."
