CHAPTER 9: THE CONSPIRACY

Damian showed her everything.

Files. Photographs. Documents from five years ago. They sat in his private office, and he laid it all out like he was giving her a map to his own destruction.

"Marcus was investigating something," he said, pointing to a date on a document.

"Money. Where it was going. Who was taking it."

The photograph was old. The colors were faded. It showed two men. Similar features. Same dark eyes. The man on the left looked younger. Softer. Less like a weapon.

"That's my brother," Damian said.

"That's Marcus."

Aria looked at the photo. At the face that looked so much like Damian's. But the eyes were different. Gentler.

"He was going to expose what he found," Damian continued.

"He was going to go to the authorities. But before he could, he died. Car accident. Official ruling was mechanical failure."

He pulled out another photograph. A car. Crumpled like someone had stepped on it. Metal twisted. Glass shattered.

"Brake lines were cut," Damian said.

"I had an independent engineer look at the wreckage. He confirmed it. Someone cut his brake lines. Someone made it look like an accident."

Aria's stomach twisted. "Who?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Damian gathered the papers.

"That's what I need to find out. And that's where you come in."

"What do you need me to do?"

"My family is having a dinner this weekend. All of them. My uncle. My mother. My cousin. I need you to be there. I need you to be charming. Beautiful. In love with me. And I need you to listen to every conversation. Every word. Every lie."

"You want me to spy on your family."

"Yes."

"If they find out—"

"They won't."

"But if they do—"

"Then I protect you," he said. "No matter what. That's the deal."

She studied his face. Trying to figure out if he was lying. If this was just another manipulation.

"I need something from you," she said.

"What?"

"I need your actual word. Not the legal word. Your real word. That if this goes wrong, if we get caught, you don't use me as a scapegoat."

He was quiet for a very long time.

"I give you my word," he finally said.

"If we go down, we go down together."

The dinner was at his mother's house. An estate in the Hamptons. Stone and old money and the kind of cold that no amount of wealth could warm up.

Victoria was waiting at the door. She looked at Aria the way she looked at the art on her walls. Trying to determine if it was valuable.

"Aria," she said, kissing her cheek without warmth.

"How lovely to see you again."

"You too, Victoria."

"Please. Call me Mother."

The word landed wrong. Aria heard the test in it.

The dining room was huge. The table

could have seated fifty people. But there were only seven of them.

Damian's uncle Richard sat at the right side of his mother. He was smiling like a man who knew a joke nobody else understood. His cousin David was there—a younger man with Damian's eyes but none of his control.

Elena was there. And Damian's mother.

"So," Richard said, gesturing at Aria with his wine glass.

"Tell us about yourself. Where are you from?"

"Manhattan originally," Aria said.

"Grew up in Brooklyn."

"Brooklyn?" His mother looked like she'd just tasted something bad.

"How interesting."

"My father was a professor at Columbia," Aria said. She didn't break.

"My mother was a nurse. We lived near the university."

It was half-true. She'd learned that the best lies were built on truth.

"Ah," Richard said. "Intellectual family. That explains your interest in Damian. He values intelligence."

"Does he?" Aria turned to Damian. "I thought he valued control."

A pause. The table went very quiet.

Then Damian laughed. Actually laughed. He took her hand under the table.

"She's right," he said. "I do value control. But I also value intelligence. Lucky for me, my wife has both."

The rest of the evening wore on. Aria listened. Watched. Paid attention to the way Richard's eyes landed on Damian's face. Like he was looking for weaknesses. The way her mother-in-law made small digs about the wedding being rushed. The way Damian's cousin kept drinking and getting quieter.

And then, near dessert, she heard something.

Richard was telling a story about a business deal. An acquisition that went wrong.

"The man who was supposed to handle it couldn't," Richard said.

"He got in too deep with the wrong people. Made mistakes. Bad ones."

"What happened to him?" Aria asked. She didn't look up from her plate.

"He had an accident," Richard said smoothly. "Car trouble. Very tragic. Completely unexpected."

Aria's fork froze.

Richard was looking at her now. Seeing if she understood. If she was paying attention.

Damian's hand tightened on hers under the table.

"How tragic," Aria said lightly.

"Accidents are so unpredictable. You can never see them coming."

"Indeed," Richard said. His smile didn't change. "You never can."

Later, in the car ride home, Damian pulled over to the side of the road.

He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Did you hear what I heard?" Aria asked.

"Yes."

"He was confessing. He was telling you that he did it."

"I know."

"But why would he—"

"Because he's arrogant," Damian said. His voice was ice.

"Because he thinks I'm too distracted to do anything about it. Because he's never faced consequences for anything in his entire life."

His hands shook on the steering wheel.

"What are you going to do?" Aria asked quietly.

Damian turned to look at her. His eyes were cold. Lethal. Like looking into the eyes of something dangerous.

"I'm going to prove it," he said. "And then I'm going to make him pay.”