Dangling her son in front of her

All the free space in the study had shrunk with his presence. The small curve of his lips hooked Aria’s stomach and his eyes pinned her to the corner.

She took a step back. He took one forward. She took another. He closed the gap. Till her back was pressed against the shelf behind her and the ridges dug into her spine. His small smile hadn’t fallen.

Badump. Badump.

All Aria could hear was the steady hard thumping of her heart. All she could see was him. She swallowed and pressed her nails against her palm hard enough to sting and get her out of the strange ensnarement.

They hadn’t broke eye contact.

“What? You think you can intimidate me? I’m going to…tell my grandfather exactly what you are”, Aria , pausing slightly in the middle of her sentence as she fully expected to be interrupted, but, he was still silent.

“You’re a person. Not a pet to intimidate”, he said after a beat of silence, his voice reverberating in her stomach, the bass tone of it feeling like silk and satin over gravel. It was not low and hoarse like Liam’s. Rather, it echoed, all over her body, washing over her with his fake words. Her brows furrowed. His words said one thing but his proximity, his body, his eyes, they all said something else.

“Then get away from me!”, she snapped, her hand darting out to pluck the file from his hand. Again, it was a foolish decision to make. What if he really decided to kill her?

He simply stretched the file behind him, his long arms too far behind for Aria to reach.

She was even closer to him now.

“Be patient. We don’t want to wake our son”, he said simply, raising an eyebrow like he was a school teacher and she was an unruly child.

A sharp hit that felt like lightening to her heart stopped the loud thumping of her heart. Asher.

That was a threat, plain and simple.

Aston’s study was in the left wing upstairs, alongside his room. She and Asher had their rooms in the right wing, downstairs. There was no way in hell any noise they made in here could wake Asher up.

It felt like she was dancing along the edge of a cliff blindfolded with a sniper behind her. She was trapped.

The coils of hatred rapidly shot up her gut, through her blood vessels and into her heart. He was threatening her son. Her most precious baby.

Bastard.

“You think you’ll get away with it? I have the Griffin guards watching my every move”, she said, her voice and words suddenly laced with venom. She was no longer facing a stranger that she happened to be married to. No. Now she was facing her enemy.

“Of course. My guards will provide you the best protection. I trained them myself”, he replied, sitting on his desk and setting a free path for Aria if she wanted to run out of the room.

He called them his guards.

She swallowed as subtly as she could. She would not show weakness. She had spent five full years getting rid of her weakness, but ugh! Why did her grandfather trust this man so much?

He practically had control over everything important. She couldn’t tell her grandfather.

“If you think threatening me is going to do anything–“

He raised his hand.

He shut Aria up by raising his hand. It was a gesture so completely like her grandfather that she automatically kept silent, even though her brain knew logically that this was not Arthur, this was Aston.

“I’m not threatening you. I want to have a…peaceful life. And I’ve heard that a happy wife means a happy life”, he said, dropping his hand and splaying his fingers on the desk. His long, elegant fingers. Aria had to do a double take, they looked so graceful, so unlike her own short fingers.

‘Focus, Aria. The enemy is right in front of you’

“A man that wants a peaceful life wouldn’t threaten my son! You’ve started a war you can’t end!”

Aston’s lips curved again, faint, almost lazy, as if her fury was nothing more than a toddler’s tantrum to him.