CHAPTER 2: The Non-Answer

FLYNN'S POV

The conference call ended at 6:15. I should have left then.

Instead I sat at my desk and stared at my phone. Sienna had texted an hour ago. *Baby's kicking like crazy. Doctor says everything looks good. Thank you for everything.*

I'd read it three times. Each time the weight in my chest got a little heavier.

I pulled up her contact and stared at it. What I knew about Sienna's situation sat in my chest like a stone I couldn't put down. Marcus Hale's family lawyer had made one thing very clear when Sienna first told me everything: the moment my name became publicly connected to Sienna's, they would use it. Flynn Thornfield, wealthy, connected, sending money to a pregnant woman carrying a Hale family secret. They would build a story around that and they had the money and the lawyers to make it stick. Conspiracy to extort. Coordinated scheme. Whatever language hurt most.

And it wouldn't stop at Sienna.

If they came after me, they'd pull Aria in too. My wife. Her name. Her gallery job. Everything she'd worked for dragged into a legal fight she had nothing to do with. The Hale family lawyer had been very specific about that. Very calm. The way people are calm when they want you to understand they are not making idle threats.

It's not like I can't handle the legal battle but Sienna thought this was best, wait till the baby is born and I respected that.

So I'd told no one. Not Harrison. Not my own lawyer. Not Aria.

Just five more weeks. That was all. Once the baby was born and Sienna's lawyer filed first to establish paternity, the Hale family's entire strategy collapsed. You can't claim a scheme is in motion once the legal record already exists. But until then, the fewer people who knew, the safer everyone was.

Including Aria.

I typed *I'll stop by tomorrow* to Sienna. Deleted it. Typed *Let me know if you need anything*. Deleted that too. Sent a thumbs up instead and hated myself for it.

I needed to tell Aria something. Not everything, not yet, but something. I'd been saying that for eight months and finding reasons not to. The truth was that every version of the conversation I rehearsed ended the same way. With Aria asking questions I couldn't answer without putting her directly in the path of something dangerous. And the more I explained, the more she'd want to know. That was who she was. Thorough. She wouldn't accept half a story.

So I'd given her nothing. Which turned out to be worse.

Traffic was light. I made it home in twenty minutes. The lights were on upstairs. I unlocked the door.

"Aria?" The house felt wrong immediately. A specific kind of quiet. "Sorry I'm late. Conference call ran over."

Nothing.

I dropped my briefcase and went upstairs. The third step creaked the way it always did.

She was in the office. Papers everywhere.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Bank statements. All of them, printed and laid out in order across the desk like a case file. Aria sat in the middle of it holding February's statement with the transfers circled in red pen, looking at me the way you look at someone you're realizing you don't know.

"Hey, I was thinking we could order from that Thai place you—"

The words just stopped.

Tell her. Right now. You have to tell her something.

"What are you doing?" I said instead.

The second it came out I wanted to take it back.

"Eight months." Her voice was flat. "You've been sending money to someone for eight months."

My hand went to my watch. Old habit. Aria's eyes caught it immediately. She always caught everything.

"Aria, I—"

"Who is Sienna Thornfield? Why is she getting five thousand dollars a month from you?"

The name in our house. In our space. I'd kept those two worlds completely separate and now they were colliding and I was standing in the middle of it completely empty of words.

Tell her she's your sister. Tell her about Marcus Hale. Tell her why you can't say more right now.

"I can explain," I said.

"Then explain. Right now."

Her eyes. That was the part that undid me. Not the anger. The specific way she was looking at me, like she was watching something she'd trusted her whole life turn into something she didn't recognize.

I'd run the calculation a hundred times. If I told Aria everything, she would want to help. She would ask questions, maybe talk to someone, maybe mention it to Jordan. She wouldn't mean any harm. But one conversation in the wrong direction and the Hale family lawyer would have exactly what he needed. I'd watched what that family had done to others. I wasn't going to let them do it to my wife.

"It's complicated," I said.

Wrong. Completely wrong. I knew it before the words finished leaving my mouth.

"Complicated." She stood up and the chair rolled back and hit the wall. "That's what you're going with?"

"I need you to trust me."

"Trust you?" Her voice cracked on the word. "You've been hiding this since last summer. Eight months, Flynn."

"I didn't lie-."

"What would you call it?"

I had no answer that didn't require telling her everything. And telling her everything was the one thing I couldn't do. Not yet. Not for five more weeks.

"It's not what you think," I said.

"What do I think, Flynn? Change my mind please"

I couldn't give her real without giving her all of it. And all of it put her in a position I'd promised myself she'd never be in. The Hale family had resources and no conscience and a lawyer who made quiet threats for a living. Aria was not part of this. Keeping her out of it was the only thing I was sure I was doing right.

"I can't," I said.

"Can't or won't?"

"Both." The word came out broken. "You have to trust me. I know how that sounds right now. I know. But I need you to trust me for a little longer."

She laughed. It came out sharp and wrong. "I trusted you. Past tense."

I stepped toward her. She stepped back. That single step back hit me harder than anything she'd said. This was Aria. The woman who'd held my hand through my father's funeral and hadn't let go once. Who'd said yes in the rain because I couldn't wait for a better moment.

"Please," I said. "Just… give me time."

"Time for what? To come up with a better lie?!"

"To protect you."

"I didn't ask for protection!" The words came out louder than I meant. "I asked for a partner. Someone who tells me the truth."

"I am your partner."

"Then who is she? Your sister? Because if she is, why have I never heard her name?"

I opened my mouth. Her words landed exactly where they were aimed. I could feel the answer sitting right behind my teeth. She's my sister. Half-sister. Our father's secret. She's in trouble and so is her baby and the people threatening her will come for you too if I say the wrong thing to the wrong person right now.

But i said nothing.

"Is she something else?" Aria's voice dropped. "Are you married to her?"

The pain in her eyes was the kind that comes before someone shuts down completely. She didn't want to believe it. I could see that clearly. She was asking and hoping I would stop her from believing the worst thing.

I couldn't stop her without explaining. And I couldn't explain.

"SAY SOMETHING DAMMIT!."

First time in four years she'd raised her voice at me. It bounced off the walls of the office and I stood there and took it because I deserved it and more.

I am so stupid. I had one job. One job for eight months: protect Sienna's secret and keep Aria safe. Now I was losing Aria in order to keep her safe and there was no version of that sentence that wasn't completely broken.

She looked at me for a long moment. Something closed in her face. Final and quiet. She walked past me, her shoulder brushing mine, jasmine lotion, the smell I'd been waking up to for three years.

The bedroom door slammed. The frame shook.

I stood in the office surrounded by eight months of paper. Every statement a record of what I'd been doing and why I'd had to do it quietly. A reason so serious I'd let my wife think the worst possible thing rather than risk putting her in the path of it.

I protected her tonight.

I just didn't know yet what that protection was going to cost me.