What My Mother Knew
Aria
I put the call on speaker.
Not because I thought Caden had a right to hear it before I decided whether to let him. Because whatever my mother was about to say, he needed to be in the room for it. We were past the point of managing information separately. We were past the point of a lot of things.
“Talk to me,” I said. “From the beginning.”
My mother exhaled.
“Romano contacted me six months before Caden proposed,” she said. “Not after. Before. Which means he’d already been watching Caden’s life long enough to know the relationship was moving in that direction.” A pause. “He told me he wanted information. Nothing specific, he said — just the texture of things. How Caden was feeling about certain business decisions. Whether he was stressed. Whether he was vulner
