Hate Me Closer

Chapter 18: The Message

It came on Thursday morning, while Aria was choosing between peonies and garden roses.

The text arrived from an unknown number — no name, no photo, just eleven digits and five words:

I know what you did.

Aria stared at her phone. The florist kept talking — something about seasonal availability — and the words washed over her like static.

"Ms. Cole? Peonies or roses?"

"Roses," Aria said automatically. "Garden roses. I'll — I'll call you back about the quantities."

She walked out of the flower shop and stood on the sidewalk with her heart hammering against her ribs, and typed: Who is this?

The reply came in under a minute. A photo. Her breath stopped.

It was a screenshot of a wire transfer — routed through two relays, the exact relays Nadia had set up two years ago. The memo line read: LEDGER. Below it, three more words:

The expense reports too.

Her hands went numb. She called Nadia.

"Tell me you're seeing this," she said the moment Nadia picked up.

"Seeing what? Aria, what's wrong?"

Aria forwarded the messages. The silence on the other end lasted a full ten seconds.

"That's my relay architecture," Nadia said finally, very quietly. "Those are my relays. Somebody traced them — somebody good. Aria, I built those to be untraceable."

"Obviously not untraceable enough." Aria's voice was shaking. "What do they want?"

As if on cue, another text arrived.

$200,000. Seventy-two hours. Or Simone Park gets everything — the forgeries, the relays, your confession in your own words.

"They want money," Aria whispered.

"They want a lot of money." Nadia was typing — Aria could hear it. "Okay. Okay. Don't reply. Don't do anything. I'm going to tear this apart — the number, the photo metadata, all of it. Seventy-two hours is a long time in my world."

"What if Park publishes?"

"Park publishes gossip, not felonies. She'd need proof, and proof means the blackmailer burns their own leverage." A pause. "Aria — did you tell Dorian?"

"Not yet."

"Tell him. Today. No more secrets — that's what got you here."

Aria closed her eyes. Two years ago, she'd stood in Dorian's penthouse at midnight and confessed everything — the forgeries, the leaks, the sabotage. He'd forgiven her. Loved her anyway. But that confession had been between them, in the dark, with no one else listening.

This was different. This was her crimes, itemized, in a stranger's hands.

"I'll tell him tonight," she said.

She spent the afternoon at the loft in a daze, approving linen samples she didn't see, nodding at Jess's updates without hearing them. Twice she caught herself checking the locks on the office door. Seventy-two hours. The number pulsed behind everything like a second heartbeat.

At five, Margot found her staring at nothing. "Go home," Margot said gently. "Whatever it is — it'll keep till tomorrow."

"It won't," Aria said. But she went.

She told him at dinner, the words coming out flat and fast, like ripping off a bandage. She showed him the texts. She watched his face go through the stages — shock, fury, and then something she hadn't expected: calculation.

"Two hundred thousand," he said. "We could pay it."

"No." The word came out sharper than she intended. "No — you don't negotiate with this. You pay once, you pay forever. That's not justice, that's a subscription."

"Then we go to the police."

"And tell them what? That I committed forgery and computer fraud, and now someone's blackmailing me about it?" She laughed, a brittle sound. "Dorian, I'd be confessing to felonies."

"To protect yourself from a worse one." He reached across the table and took her hand. "Aria. Listen to me. What you did — you did it for your father. You were grieving and angry and nineteen years of hurt. I'm not saying it was right. I'm saying it was human. And I will not let some parasite bleed you for it."

Tears stung her eyes. "What do we do?"

"We find them first." His gray eyes were cold in a way she hadn't seen in a year — the old Dorian, the one who'd run a company with an iron hand. "Nadia traces the number. I hire the best white-collar defense attorney in the city — quietly, today — so we know exactly where we stand legally. And we do not pay a cent."

"And Caleb?" The name felt strange in her mouth. The plane had landed that afternoon. Somewhere out there, Reginald Vale's secret son was in Manhattan. "Nadia thinks it's all connected."

"Then we assume it is until proven otherwise." Dorian's thumb traced circles on her knuckles. "Hey. We survived your revenge plot and my resignation and a gala scandal. We'll survive this."

"You're very calm for a man whose fiancée just got blackmailed."

"I'm furious. I'm just — organized about it." A ghost of a smile. "It's the grant administrator in me. I've changed."

She laughed through the tears, and he came around the table and held her, and she let herself be held.

But that night, lying awake while Dorian slept, Aria did the math she'd been avoiding. Two hundred thousand dollars. Seventy-two hours. The wedding was ten weeks away. The Lake Como contract was signed. Her firm's new office, her team, her reputation — everything she'd built from the wreckage — all of it balanced on a secret she'd thought was buried.

She'd spent two years trying to destroy Dorian Vale with lies.

Now someone was going to destroy her with the truth.