Aria's POV
The ink bled into the page.
That was the first thing Aria noticed.
It wasn't fresh, but it looked it—stark black script stretched over ivory letterhead like a scar that refused to fade. Her fingers hovered above the folder's edge, afraid to turn the next page even though she already knew she would.
The letter was dated 1960.
Thornewell Holdings.
Subject: Land Use Authorization — Valehart Property
Her heart beat slow and hard, each thud echoing like a gavel in her chest.
It wasn't just land.
It was her father's name, scrawled in solemn cursive at the bottom of a contract written before she was born. His signature was unsteady. Hesitant. As if even then, he knew this wasn't a deal. It was a burial.
Her voice, when it came, cracked like thin glass.
"He never told us."
Across the desk, Elise sat frozen in the chair, eyes wide and full of the same quiet disbelief Aria could no longer afford to feel.
"I found it archived in the foundation's legal ledger," Elise whispered. "Took me hours. It was flagged under 'miscellaneous acquisition,' which—let's be honest—is code for something they don't want anyone to find."
Aria blinked slowly, fingers tracing the emblem embossed on the page—the Thornewell crest, inked in quiet arrogance.
All these years. All the lectures about integrity, about how the Valehart name meant something even if it wasn't gilded with wealth. He told them stories about lineage, about roots. Never once had he mentioned selling their past to men like Elias Thornewell.
"This wasn't a sale," Aria murmured, lips dry. "It was surrender."
She stood abruptly, the leather chair groaning in protest behind her. Her body was too still for the storm brewing in her chest.
"Elise, cancel everything today. No meetings. No walkthroughs. No press calls."
Her assistant didn't argue. Just nodded, eyes scanning Aria's face for cracks.
"And if Damien calls?" Elise asked quietly.
Aria's silence was answer enough.
She grabbed her coat—the red one. The one Damien once said made her look like vengeance—and walked out into the Manhattan cold, heart thudding like war drums in her ribs.
---
Three Hours Later — Thornewell Foundation Archives
The air inside the archives was frigid. Stale with age. The kind of air that clung to secrets.
Aria passed rows of sealed boxes and coded binders, her heels muffled by the industrial carpet. A lone clerk sat behind the desk near the back, sipping coffee from a cup labeled 'World's Okayest Archivist.'
He looked up, startled, as Aria approached.
"I need access to the restricted files on Project Nightingale," she said, voice calm and flat.
The clerk blinked. "Ma'am, I'm not sure—"
She held out her credentials, already printed and signed from the foundation liaison. Damien's name was scrawled in the approval line.
He had given her access.
But not the truth.
The clerk hesitated, then sighed and turned to his terminal. "Storage Room C. You'll want the red-labeled boxes in Row 14."
---
It didn't take long to find the file.
But it took everything in her not to crumble when she opened it.
Maps. Surveys. Letters. Even faded photos—one of a little girl standing barefoot in a wide garden she recognized instantly.
Her childhood home.
But it wasn't the photos that broke her.
It was the memo.
> "Acquire Valehart parcel under historical redevelopment clause. Suppress public visibility. Maintain Thornewell estate buffer zone unobstructed."
It was signed by E. Thornewell. Dated 1978.
Long after the first deal.
They hadn't just bought the land.
They'd bought silence. Isolation. Control.
Her father had been a professor—passionate, ethical, brilliant—but no businessman. He'd been cornered. Maybe even threatened.
And all this time, the house she grew up in—the one she thought her father had fought for—was just a buffer. A forgotten notch on a Thornewell blueprint.
Her throat tightened painfully.
How many lies had her family swallowed whole?
How many things had Damien never said?
---
That Evening — Thornewell Estate
He opened the door before she knocked.
As if he'd known.
As if he'd been waiting for the storm.
Damien stood in the entry, sleeves rolled to his elbows, tie loose, hair disheveled in a way that should've softened him. It didn't.
Not today.
"Aria," he said, but there was no warmth in it. Just worry. Dread, maybe.
She walked past him without permission, the documents in her hand like evidence at a trial neither of them would win.
"Did you know?"
His shoulders tensed. "I need you to be more specific."
She turned, eyes blazing. "My father. The land. The signatures. Did you know that my family's history was reduced to a land buffer for your estate?!"
Damien's mouth opened—then closed. His silence gave her everything she needed.
"You did."
He stepped closer, hands raised slightly. "I didn't know the full scope. Not until recently."
"Then why didn't you say anything?"
"Because I was afraid."
"Of what?" she snapped. "Of telling the truth? Of being the man you promised me you were trying to become?"
He flinched at that.
Good.
"You keep saying you want this—us," she said, voice lower now, trembling. "But you don't let me decide what I'm walking into. You decide for me. You hold back every time it gets uncomfortable. That's not love, Damien. That's manipulation dressed as protection."
He looked stricken.
"I swear to you," he said quietly, "I was going to tell you. I found the files a week ago. I was trying to make sense of them, to figure out how to fix what my grandfather did—what my name did to yours."
Her laugh was sharp and brittle.
"You don't get to fix it. You don't get to rewrite it. You get to own it."
She dropped the folder on the grand piano near the foyer, pages fanning out like feathers—like broken wings.
"I loved my father," she said softly. "Not because he was perfect. But because he believed in truth, even when it cost him. And now I wonder if he died ashamed. If he carried this secret because he thought it would protect us from people like you."
Damien swallowed hard, stepping forward again.
"You are not your grandfather, Damien. But every time you hide something from me, you make yourself him."
They stood in silence for what felt like forever.
Then, finally, his voice—raw, stripped down.
"What do I have to do to earn your trust again?"
Her eyes burned. Not with tears. With fury. With sorrow.
"You don't earn trust with grand gestures. You earn it by telling the truth when it's hardest."
He nodded slowly, like a man being sentenced.
And maybe he was.
---
Later — Aria's Apartment
The city outside her windows pulsed with light, but inside, everything was still.
She hadn't taken off her coat. She hadn't unpacked the files. She sat on the floor, legs folded beneath her, staring at the pendant he'd once given her—the magnolia etched in silver.
She turned it over in her hand.
"I remember the garden."
So did she.
But memory wasn't truth.
And gardens didn't grow in poisoned soil.