Hate Me Closer

Chapter 9: Truth

Chapter 9: Truth

Nadia's office was a converted warehouse in the garment district, all exposed brick and humming servers. She'd cleared the big monitor, and on it, in damning high resolution, lay the truth.

"Look," Nadia said.

Aria looked. And the floor dropped out of her world.

The first document was a loan agreement — Halston & Cole, seven years ago, the debt that had supposedly forced the fire sale. The signatures were clean. Too clean. "The debt was forged," Nadia said quietly. "Forensic accounting confirms it. The paper trail loops back to a shell company controlled by Reginald Vale. He manufactured the crisis, then bought the company at the bottom."

Aria's hands gripped the desk. "Go on."

"Board minutes. The acquisition vote." Nadia pulled up the next file. "Six to one. And here's the one — Dorian Vale, twenty-six years old, voting no. There's a transcript note: 'Mr. D. Vale registers formal objection and threatens resignation.' He was overruled. His father owned the room."

The words blurred. Aria blinked hard. "He told me he tried. I didn't believe him."

"There's more." Nadia opened a scanned letter, handwritten, vicious. Reginald to Dorian, dated a month after the vote: "Sentiment is a luxury, boy. You will learn to live without it, or this company will learn to live without you."

"And this." The last document was a foundation charter — the Halston Foundation's first grant, seven years ago. A full-ride scholarship, awarded annually, in the name of Ellis Cole. Funded by an anonymous donor. "I traced the money," Nadia said softly. "It was Dorian. Every year. Seven years of tuition for kids who remind him of —" She stopped. "Of you, probably. Of what he couldn't fix."

Aria stared at her father's name on the charter until it swam. "He's been paying for it. All this time. While I was planning to destroy him, he was—"

"Try to breathe," Nadia said, but Aria was already moving, grabbing her coat, her keys.

"Where are you going?"

"To find out why the man I tried to ruin never told me any of this."

---

She found him at Vale Tower at nine p.m., in the office with the glass walls. He looked up when she entered, and something in his face — hope, quickly buried — nearly undid her.

"You shouldn't be here," he said. "Ward's people—"

"I know about the forged debt." She dropped Nadia's printouts on his desk. "I know about the vote. Six to one. I know about the scholarship."

He went very still. "How—"

"Does it matter?" Her voice shook. "Why didn't you tell me? That night in the storm, when I told you about my father — why didn't you tell me you'd voted no? That you'd tried?"

"Because trying isn't doing." He stood, and he looked exhausted — truly, deeply exhausted, like a man who'd been carrying something for years and had finally set it down. "I sat in that room, Aria. I said no. And then I cashed the checks and took the office and built my life on top of your father's grave. What was I supposed to say? 'I objected'? It doesn't bring him back. It doesn't change what my name did to your family."

"It changes everything." Tears were running down her face now, and she didn't wipe them. "Do you know what I've done? I leaked lies about you. I stole from you. I stood in that ballroom and watched them tear you apart, and I told myself it was justice — and all along you were the only person who ever tried to make it right."

"Aria—"

"I hated you for seven years." She was crying openly now. "Seven years, and I was hating the wrong man. Your father destroyed my family, Dorian. Not you. And I — God, what I did to you—"

He crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into his arms.

She broke. Really broke — the sobs she'd held back for seven years tearing out of her all at once. He held her like he understood, like he'd been waiting years for someone to grieve with, his hand cradling the back of her head, his cheek pressed to her hair.

"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sorry."

"I know." His voice was rough. "I know, love. I've got you."

The endearment slipped out unguarded — love — and it landed in her chest like a key turning in a lock she hadn't known was there. Seven years of hate, and this was what it had been hiding: not justice, not vengeance, but this. Him. The one person who'd never lied to her about what mattered, even when he'd lied about everything else.

They stood like that for a long time, in the glass office above the glittering city — the avenger and the accused, both finally disarmed. No kisses. No heat. Just grief, shared at last, and the terrible, tender relief of the truth.

When her tears finally slowed, he tilted her face up. "I knew who you were from the first day," he said quietly. "And I kept you close because some broken part of me wanted to be punished. But then — then I just wanted you. Not punishment. You."

She searched his eyes and found no lie in them. Only the same hunger she'd seen in her own mirror, finally named.

"What do we do now?" she whispered.

"Whatever's left," he said. "Together."

Outside, the city glittered on, indifferent. But in the glass office, something shifted — something that had been hate, and then grief, rearranging itself into a shape Aria didn't have a name for yet.

She would. Soon.

---

End of Chapter 9