THE DEVIL I LOVE

Chapter Two — The Morning After

Chapter Two — The Morning After

Aria woke up to three missed calls from her mother.

She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom while morning light pressed through the curtains in thin gold strips. The events of the previous night settled over her slowly — the ballroom, the chandeliers, the champagne she never drank.

Damien.

She turned her head. The small white card sat on her bedside table where she had placed it before falling asleep, as though she had wanted it close without fully admitting why. She stared at it for a moment, then reached for her phone instead.

Her mother picked up on the first ring.

"You disappeared last night," Helena Sinclair said. Not accusatory. Just observant, which was somehow worse.

"I was in the ballroom the entire time, Mother."

"You were in the corner of the ballroom for over an hour talking to someone I didn't recognize." A pause, precise and deliberate. "Your father noticed."

Aria sat up slowly. "It was just conversation."

"At an event like last night's, there is no such thing as just conversation, Aria." Her mother's voice was not unkind, but it carried the weight of a thousand unspoken lessons. "Who was he?"

"Someone interesting," Aria said carefully. "I didn't catch his last name."

The silence on the other end lasted exactly three seconds.

"Come for breakfast," her mother said finally. "Your father wants to see you."

The call ended.

Aria set the phone down and pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes. Sunday breakfasts at the Sinclair estate were rarely about food. They were about alignment — making sure every member of the family was moving in the same direction, saying the same things, presenting the same face to the world.

She showered and dressed simply, choosing a cream blouse and tailored trousers, her dark hair pulled back in a low knot. She picked up the white card from the bedside table and stood holding it for a moment before sliding it into the inner pocket of her handbag.

She told herself it was nothing.

She almost believed it.

The Sinclair estate sat behind iron gates on the quietest street in the most expensive part of the city. Aria had grown up inside those gates, and sometimes she still wasn't sure whether they were meant to keep danger out or keep the family in.

Her father was already at the head of the table when she arrived, reading something on his tablet with the focused expression he wore when he wanted people to know he was busy. Richard Sinclair was sixty-one years old and looked fifty, built like a man who had spent decades refusing to let anything defeat him. He had kind eyes when he chose to use them. That morning he was not choosing.

"Sit," he said without looking up.

Aria sat.

Her younger sister Lydia was already halfway through her eggs, blissfully unbothered by the atmosphere in the way that only younger siblings could be. She shot Aria a sympathetic glance and said nothing.

Richard set his tablet down.

"The Hartwell merger closes next Friday," he said. "I need you present at the signing dinner Thursday evening. Full family attendance."

"Of course," Aria said.

"And I need you focused." He looked at her then, direct and measured. "No distractions."

Aria held his gaze steadily. "I'm always focused, Dad."

He studied her for a moment in the way he studied balance sheets — looking for the number that didn't add up. Then he picked his tablet back up and the conversation was, apparently, over.

Lydia leaned toward her under the pretense of reaching for the juice.

"He asked Gerald Hartwell about the man you were talking to," she murmured. "Nobody knew who he was."

Aria kept her expression composed.

"Nobody?" she said quietly.

Lydia shook her head, eyes wide with the particular delight of someone who sensed a story forming. "Not a single person. And you know Dad — that bothers him more than anything."

Aria reached for her coffee.

An unknown man at an exclusive event. No last name. No traceable presence. Just a number on a plain white card sitting in her handbag.

Her father was bothered.

She understood why.

She was beginning to be bothered too — though for entirely different reasons.