Chapter 8

**ARIA**

The car ride home was the longest of my life.

Jade didn't speak. Didn't look at me.

I kept my eyes forward and my mouth shut.

*Still learning her place.*

His voice in my head, smooth and cold and completely indifferent, like I was furniture he'd had to apologize for. Like I was an embarrassing piece of décor.

I pressed my nails into my palms and breathed through my nose.

The car pulled through the gate, up the private road, and stopped in front of the penthouse doors.

I reached for the handle.

"My office." Jade's voice cut through the silence without preamble. "Now."

He didn't wait for a response. He was already out of the car.

I followed.

---

The penthouse was quiet and dark except for the soft ambient lighting that came on automatically when we entered. Jade walked ahead without looking back, expecting me to keep up, and I hated that I did.

His office was at the end of the east corridor, different from the study I'd cleaned today. Bigger. More intimidating. Two walls of floor to ceiling windows showing the city below, a desk that looked like it had been carved from a single slab of black marble, screens embedded into the walls showing data feeds I couldn't parse.

He stood behind the desk, hands braced on the edge, head slightly bowed. Like he was composing himself. Like he needed a moment before he trusted himself to speak.

I stood in the doorway, still in the ridiculous uniform, and waited.

Finally, he looked up.

"Close the door."

I closed it.

"Come here."

I crossed the room slowly, stopping on the opposite side of the desk. Close enough to hear him clearly. Far enough to feel like I still had some territory that was mine.

He studied me for a long moment, gray eyes moving over my face like he was reading something written there.

"You made yourself visible tonight," he said. His voice was quiet, which was somehow worse than shouting. "I told you not to."

"That lady was—"

"I don't care what she was doing," he said. "I gave you one instruction. One. And you couldn't follow it for three hours."

"She called me a decoration." The words came out before I could swallow them. "She compared me to a dead-"

I stopped.

I said too much already.

Something shifted in his expression. Not anger exactly. Something colder.

"You snooped around."

It wasn't a question.

He knew.

I opened my mouth. Then closed it because what did I want to do?

Lie about it?

Hell no.

The way his head stayed bowed told me he didn't even care for my answer.

I heard him heave a sign then look up.

His sharp features were caught in the glinting light, making him look so... handsome. Almost like he was carved out of an anime.

"There are people," Jade said, moving around the desk slowly, "who have been trying to dismantle everything I've built for years. People who would use any crack, any weakness, any uncontrolled variable against me." He stopped a few feet away, close enough that I had to keep my chin up to maintain eye contact. "You are currently an uncontrolled variable."

The words stung in a way I'd thought they could.

"I'm a person," I spat.

"In my world, you're not."

My knees wobbled. I'd almost lost balance.

Yes. I worked for him now.

Yes. My father is indebted to him.

But he can't talk to me that way.

"Selene Frost," he continued, before I could answer him, "the lady you were answering back, does not work for herself. She works for someone who has been watching this place for months, looking for a way in." His jaw tightened fractionally. "Tonight you gave him one."

I stared at him. "I didn't do anything wrong"

The words came out quieter than I intended.

Jade said nothing.

Which was its own kind of answer, and not the one I wanted.

I pushed past it.

"Who is she...Elise?"

The name landed between us like something dropped from a height.

Jade went very still.

"That's none of your concern."

"It is my concern." I kept my voice steady even though my pulse was hammering. "She looks like me. She has my face." I watched him, searching for something behind the wall of his expression. "And Selene knew it. She said her name specifically, in front of everyone."

The silence stretched so long I thought he wouldn't respond.

Then he moved.

Fast. His hand closed around my wrist, not painful but absolute, and he pulled me forward until barely a foot separated us.

"You're here," he said, voice dropping to something low and dangerous, "because your father owes me money. That is all you need to know."

"Let go of my wrist."

He didn't.

"You looked through my files."

"I cleaned your study. I saw a photograph."

"You went through my study."

My heart slammed against my ribs. "I saw a photograph on the desk."

His eyes searched mine, and I forced myself not to look away even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to step back, put distance between us, get some air that didn't smell like his cologne and something underneath it I couldn't name.

Then, without warning, he let go.

He stepped back. Ran one hand through his hair in a gesture so human and unguarded it caught me off guard. He turned away, walked to the window, stood with his back to me looking out at the city sprawled below.

His shoulders were rigid. His hands, fisted at his sides.

I stayed where I was, wrist still tingling from his grip, and waited.

"Go to your room," he said finally. His voice had changed. The cold control was still there but something underneath it had fractured, just slightly, just enough. "Tomorrow your schedule changes. You'll begin accompanying me to meetings, not as decoration but as an observer. You'll learn to watch people, read rooms, recognize threats." He didn't turn around. "If you're going to be a variable in my world, you'll learn to be a controlled one."

"That's not an answer about Elise."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

"But—"

"Goodnight, Aria."

The dismissal was absolute.

I looked at his back for a moment, at the way his hand had come up to press against the window glass like he needed something solid to hold onto.

I thought about pushing. About demanding he turn around and give me something real, something true, something that explained why I was here.

Instead I walked to the door.

"Whatever happened to her," I said quietly, hand on the frame, not looking back, "it wasn't your fault."

I don't know why I said it.

Maybe because I'd seen his face when Selene spoke her name. Maybe because the last entry in that journal was still echoing in my head. 'She was right about everything. And I got her killed for it.'

The silence that followed lasted long enough that I thought he wouldn't respond at all.

Then, barely above a whisper: "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know," I said.

And I left him standing there in the dark, city lights spread out below him like a kingdom he'd won and lost at the same time.

---

My room felt different when I closed the door behind me.

Smaller. Or maybe I was bigger.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

Selene Frost worked for Viktor Kane.

Kane wanted to destroy Jade.

And I had made myself visible to the wrong people by opening my mouth at a dinner table because a beautiful, cruel woman had compared me to a ghost.

I lay back on the silk sheets and stared at the ceiling, the city glow bleeding through the curtains.

*You're here because your father owes me money. That is all you need to know.*

Liar.

I didn't say it out loud. I just thought it at the ceiling until my eyes grew heavy.

I closed my eyes.

Tomorrow, everything changed.

I just didn't know yet how much.