The Billionaire I Was Meant To Hate

Chapter 11: Two Names

POV: Aria

I was still in the elevator when my phone buzzed with Marcus's message, and I stared at it for the entire ride up

without answering, the same way you stare at a door you're not ready to open yet.

This is Marcus. I have something you need to see. Not here. Somewhere neither of us can be overheard.

I didn't know what to do with it. Trust had become the most expensive thing in my life over the last five weeks, and

I wasn't in the habit of spending it on a man I'd met twice and already half-suspected.

Damian was still at his desk when I walked in, and whatever he saw on my face made him stand immediately.

"Aria. What happened?"

"I need to ask you something, and I need you to just answer it. No deciding what I can handle first."

"All right."

"Your father's first name." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "What was it?"

Something in his expression shifted — not offense, more like he was trying to understand where the question had

come from before he answered it. "Nathaniel."

The air went out of me in a rush I hadn't planned for.

"Not Martin, not Michael, not — " I stopped myself. "Nathaniel."

"Yes. Why?"

I pulled out my phone and showed him the subpoena response, the account holder field, the two letters that had

rearranged my entire understanding of this case over the last hour. "The mailbox for Halcyon Advisory Group is

registered to M. Blackwood. I thought — " I shook my head. "I thought it might be your father. I needed to rule that out

before I let myself trust anything else you've told me."

Damian read the screen carefully, and I watched him do the math I'd already done, his jaw setting the way it did

when something had just clicked into a shape he didn't want it to have.

"It's not my father," he said quietly. "But there's someone else with those initials."

"I know." I met his eyes. "Marcus."

He didn't confirm it out loud, which was, by now, its own kind of confirmation between us.

"There's more," I said, and told him about the message.

Damian went very still. "He reached out to you directly."

"Ten minutes ago."

"Don't answer it yet."

"Damian, if he actually has something—"

"I'm not saying don't answer it. I'm saying let's think about how, so neither of us walks into something we can't walk

back out of." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, the calm façade cracking just slightly at the edges for the first time since I'd

known him. "If it is him — if he's been part of this the whole time — reaching out to you could mean he's finally ready

to tell the truth. Or it could mean he knows we're close, and this is a way to control what we find instead of losing

control of it."

"You think your own cousin would do that to you."

"I think I don't know anymore what he'd do, and that's the part that scares me." He said it plainly, no performance in it,

and something about the honesty of it steadied me more than any reassurance could have. "I've spent five years

assuming the worst thing that ever happened to this family was something my father did. I'm not ready to find out it

was someone I grew up calling my brother instead."

I sat down across from him, the fight going out of me all at once. "Then we do this carefully.

Together."

"Together," he agreed, and it was the first time either of us had used the word without qualifying it. ---

I texted Marcus back twenty minutes later, with Damian reading over my shoulder.

Tomorrow. Public place. I'm bringing Damian.

The reply came fast.

No. Just you. If he's there, my father will know within the hour — he has people everywhere in that building, more

than Damian realizes. I'll explain everything. But it has to be just us.

I looked up at Damian, and for a long moment neither of us said anything.

"I don't like it," he said finally.

"I don't either." I set the phone down. "But if he's telling the truth about his father having people inside Blackwood

Tower, then bringing you might be exactly what gets both of us hurt."

Damian's expression didn't soften, but something in it settled into a decision. "Then I'm not far. Wherever you meet

him, I'm two minutes away, the whole time, and you check in every fifteen minutes whether you think you need to or

not."

"Deal."

"And Aria." He caught my hand before I could pick the phone back up, his fingers warm and steadier than I expected

them to feel. "If anything about it feels wrong — anything — you leave.

You don't stay to be polite. You don't stay to get one more answer. You leave."

"I know how to take care of myself, Damian."

"I know you do." His thumb moved once, absently, over my knuckles before he seemed to realize he was still holding my

hand and let go, a little too fast. "That's not what I'm worried about."

I didn't have an answer for that. I wasn't sure I wanted one yet — not with everything else already sitting too heavy

in my chest to make room for whatever this was.

I picked up my phone instead and sent the last message before I could talk myself out of it.

Fine. Just me. Where?

The reply took almost a full minute to arrive.

The old Bennett Technologies building. Tomorrow, 7 a.m., before anyone else gets there. There's something in that

building neither of us has looked for yet, and I think it's the only thing that's going to make either of us believe the

other.

I read it twice, and felt the last of my certainty about how this story was supposed to end quietly slip away.