The Billionaire I Was Meant To Hate

POV: Aria The email hit my inbox at 6:52 a.m., before I'd even finished my first cup of coffee: Carter wants to see you. This morning. Don't be late. I read it twice, standing at my floor-to-ceiling windows with the city waking up below me — horns, sirens, the low constant drone that meant New York had never actually gone to sleep. William Carter didn't summon associates before eight unless something had landed on his desk that mattered. I had a feeling, even then, that I wasn't going to like what it was. Five years ago, my family lost everything, and it happened fast enough that I still catch myself flinching at things that shouldn't matter anymore: a headline with the wrong name in it, a stock ticker, the particular shade of navy blue that Blackwood Holdings used on every piece of letterhead they'd ever printed. Bennett Technologies had been my father's company — twenty-two years of work, a firm he'd built out of a two- room office in Queens into one of the fastest-growing data infrastructure companies on the East Coast. I grew up watching him close deals at our kitchen table. I grew up believing he was untouchable. Then Blackwood Holdings came in with an investment offer that was supposed to save us from a rough quarter, and within eight months there was no company left to save. The terms of the deal changed. The money moved somewhere none of us could trace. My father lost controlling interest in the business he'd built, then lost the business entirely, then lost the version of himself that used to laugh at our kitchen table. I was twenty-three. I watched it happen and didn't understand half of what I was looking at, only that the name on the paperwork, over and over, was Blackwood. I've spent five years understanding it better. I've spent five years hating them for it. My phone buzzed against the counter — my mother, right on schedule. "Morning, Mom”. "Good morning, sweetheart, " Claire Bennett said, and I could hear the smile in it, the one she'd worked hard to keep in her voice these last five years. "You're up early." "Aren't I always?" "Just like your father. " A small pause, the kind she always let sit for a beat too long. yesterday." "I saw him” "How is he?" "Better, " she said, and I recognized the lie because I'd heard her tell it a hundred times before. My father hadn't been better since the day the company was gone. He'd been quiet instead of angry, and distrustful instead of confident, and neither of us had figured out how to bring the other version of him back. "I'll stop by after work, I said” "He'd like that." I hung up, rinsed my mug, and got dressed the way I always did — a cream blouse, a black skirt, pearl earrings that had been my grandmother's. I didn't dress like the other associates at Carter & Hughes, the ones who treated every court appearance like a runway. Every dollar I made went out the door as fast as it came in, most of it toward my parents' mortgage. I said the same thing to my reflection that I'd been saying for five years now, since the week I decided who I was going to become. Never let anyone have the power to ruin your life again. --- Carter's office looked out over Central Park, a view he never let anyone forget he had. He was standing at the window when I walked in, and he turned with the kind of grin that meant he already knew I wasn't going to like what came next. "There she is, " he said. "My favorite person who never takes a day off." "You didn't call me in at seven a.m. to compliment my work ethic. " "No. " He gestured for me to sit, then slid a file across the desk. corporate account of the year." "We just landed the biggest "Who?" He didn't answer right away, which told me everything. I flipped the folder open. The silver Blackwood Holdings emblem stared back at me, and for a second the room went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with sound."You have to be joking." "I'm not." "I can't take this case." "Aria—" "You know why." Carter's expression softened, but it didn't move. "I know what happened to your family. I also know it was five years ago, and I know this firm doesn't get to choose its biggest client based on one associate's history with them. " "It's not just history." "It's the biggest litigation this firm has seen in a decade. Nine figures on the line. And— " he hesitated in a way I didn't like " —they asked for you by name. I went still. "What?" "Blackwood Holdings specified you as lead counsel. Not the firm. You." There was only one person at Blackwood Holdings with the authority to make a request like that, and I hadn't spoken his name out loud in five years if I could help it. "If I say no?" Carter's face didn't give me anything easy. "Then you're turning down the case that would make your career here — and I'll be honest with you, Aria, I don't know that I can protect your position if you do." My stomach dropped. Not because I was afraid of losing my job. Because some small, furious part of me understood, instantly, that Damian Blackwood had just found a way to put me back in a room with him whether I wanted to be there or not. "You have until noon, " Carter said. By eleven forty, I'd made my decision — not because I wanted to represent the company that had destroyed my father, but because walking away from it felt like letting Damian Blackwood win twice. If he wanted a lawyer, I'd give him one who remembered exactly what his company had cost me.--- Blackwood Tower rose forty-eight stories above Park Avenue, all glass and steel and quiet, expensive confidence. I hated it on sight, the way you hate anything built entirely on money you know isn't clean. The private elevator opened onto dark marble and floor-to-ceiling windows, and for the first time in five years, my pulse spiked hard enough that I had to breathe through it before the doors to the boardroom opened. He was already standing when I walked in. I'd seen photographs — a stiff headshot on the company website, grainy shots in business journals — but nothing had prepared me for Damian Blackwood in person. Tall, dark-haired, grey eyes that didn't so much look at you as measure you. He was older than the pictures, harder around the edges, and somehow exactly as intimidating as five years of imagining this moment had built him up to be. The other executives in the room went quiet and filed out at a single look from him, until it was just the two of us and a conference table the size of my apartment. "Miss Bennett. " He didn't offer his hand. "Mr. Blackwood." "It's been a long time." "For you, maybe. " The words came out sharper than I meant them to, though I didn't regret them. He studied me for a moment longer than was comfortable. "You've changed." "So have you." Neither of us said anything else for a second too long. "I hope you're not expecting an apology, " I said finally. "I wasn't." "You took my family's company." "No, I didn't. "You ruined my father." "No, I didn't." "You destroyed our lives." "No, " he said again, quieter this time, "I didn’t " His calm made me angrier than shouting would have. I stepped closer. "Then explain it to me. " Something shifted behind his eyes — not guilt, exactly. Something closer to exhaustion. been waiting five years for this conversation." "I've "What is that supposed to mean?" He didn't answer. Instead he turned toward the window, jaw tight, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped low enough that I almost missed it. "You don't know the whole story." Before I could push, the door opened and an assistant stepped in with news about a board meeting being moved up. Damian nodded, already turning away from me, already back inside the version of himself the rest of the world got to see. "This conversation isn't over, " he said, on his way past me. "Good, " I said. "Because it never really started." I turned and left before he could see that my hands weren't quite steady. In the elevator, I watched the floor numbers fall, and only one thought stayed with me the whole way down. If there really was a version of this story I didn't know — then for five years, had I been hating the wrong person