Chapter 2: Do or die

Aria’s POV

My phone buzzed against the desk for the third time in ten minutes.

I didn't bother to see who it was.

Not when I had six designers waiting for approvals and a client who was coming in twenty minutes.

"Aria, the Hensley account, wants final mockups by Saturday." My creative director, Priya, leaned into my office doorway with a tablet in her hand. "Think we can push it?"

"We can push it." I signed off the last invoice without looking up. "Tell them Monday. Give the team the weekend to rest."

"She smiled. “You’re the only CEO I know who actually protects her team’s weekends.”

“Then you’ve been working for the wrong CEOs.”

Priya laughed and disappeared back down the hall, and I let myself lean back in my chair to rest from all the chaos for a while.

Instinctively, my fingers drifted up to the thin gold necklace around my neck, the one I never took off.

Jason had given it to me six years ago.

Back then, I was a dancer with a stack of bills I couldn't pay. Then Victoria Cross offered a huge sum to make her son, Jason, fall in love with me.

At first, it was a job, but I fell for Jason, and it stopped being one.

When I got pregnant, thinking we'd have a family, Victoria forced me to leave and forced me to lie to Jason, saying I'd had an abortion.

Still, I couldn't make myself forget about Jason after all those years.

“Aria,” Priya called out, pulling me from my thoughts. “Can I schedule the meeting with the Cross Group for tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I responded flatly.

Maybe because I didn't know how the hell I was gonna face seeing Jason Cross at the Cross Group meeting tomorrow.

“Are you okay?” She asked, her brows furrowed in concern.

I let out a nervous laugh. “I'm good, I'm just wondering how the hell I'm gonna finish this paperwork.”

She glanced at the paperwork on my desk. “Uhff…I'll leave you to it then.”

When she left, I got back to the paperwork, and as usual, my day was stressful. By six o'clock, I was already at the entrance of the house, trying to remove my heels.

“Mama!” Noah, my four-year-old son, yelled excitedly, colliding with my legs.

"Hey, buddy." I looked down at him. "Mrs Harris said you drew me a picture."

"Yes, I drew you with a cape." He said. "Because you're strong like a superhero."

"Strongest superhero in the whole world," Mrs Harris, the nanny, called from the kitchen, where the smell of garlic and butter was already filling the house.

She'd been our nanny longer than anyone, and we were so close to the point that I saw her as a mother figure in my life.

A few seconds later, she came into the hall, wiping her hands on a tea towel and gave me that look that said she knew more than I said.

"How was your day, Aria?" she asked, her voice warm as always.

I let out a breath. "Busy and stressful as usual."

“Oh, sorry, you don't have to always overwork yourself. Lemme go get you something to eat,” she said, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

I scooped Noah into my arms. "Ready for Mama-saurus to give you a ride?" I asked.

He grinned and bounced in my hold. “Nooo!”

"Here comes Mama-saurus!" I yelled playfully, making a roaring sound. "Roar, Mama-saurus is coming!"

Noah screamed with laughter, wriggling as I carried him to the couch. I set him down, and he immediately climbed into my lap, still giggling. His small hand slid into mine like it always did.

"Mama?"

"Yeah?"

"Does everybody have a daddy?"

My chest tightened, the way it always did whenever this question surfaced.

"Most people do," I said carefully.

"Do I have a daddy?"

I'd rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in my head over the years, always certain I'd know exactly what to say when the moment actually came that he asked. But I never did.

"You have me," I said instead, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, breathing in the smell of his shampoo. "And Grandma. And Uncle Ethan, and we love you more than the whole world.”

He seemed to accept my answer just the way four-year-olds accept most things.

A few minutes later, he wriggled off the couch to go play with his toys.

My phone lit up on the coffee table.

I didn't want to respond to the call, but when I checked the caller ID and realized it was Ethan, my brother, I answered the call.

"Hey Ethan," I answered.

"You haven't called me back in three days." My brother's voice carried the particular edge it got whenever he thought I was too stressed from work. "I heard through a mutual friend that Cross Group is trying to acquire Lumina. Please tell me that's not true."

"It's complicated."

"Aria." He said my name softly, just the way mum used to do when she was alive. "I heard Cross Group is going after Lumina.”

I closed my eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

“Does it matter? Is it true?”

“…Yes.”

There was a long pause in the line before he spoke.

“It’s Jason, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.

"Yes." My voice came out smaller than I intended.

“Aria,” he said, his voice softer now. “You can’t keep carrying this forever. You have to tell him.”

“He won’t believe me.”

“You’re right, but you still need to tell him, before things get worse.”

I didn't have an answer for that, because he was right. But if I told Jason what really happened his mother was going to come after me and Noah.

"I have to go," I said instead, watching Noah stack his dinosaurs into some battle formation on the living room floor. "I'll call you tomorrow."

I hung up before he could argue further, and sat there, with the phone still warm in my hands and my brother's warning still ringing in my ears.

I stayed on the couch for a long time, listening to Noah play, until Mrs Harris called us for dinner. Later, after Noah was asleep and the house was quiet, I finally went to bed.

But one thing that stuck with my mind was that whatever was coming for Lumina, whatever Jason Cross wanted from me in the meeting tomorrow, I told myself I would face it the way I'd faced everything for four years.