Chapter 5

ARIA’S POV

FIVE YEARS LATER

It’s funny how time can feel like a slow crawl when you’re starving with a crying newborn, and then suddenly feel like a blur once you finally have your feet under you.

I wasn't the scared girl with a backpack and a few hundred dollars anymore. I was Dr. Aria Vale, lead researcher at Thorne-Bio.

I had spent every waking hour of the last half-decade making sure I was indispensable.

"Dr. Vale? The board is ready for you," my assistant, Sarah, said, poking her head into my office.

I stood up, smoothing out my tailored charcoal blazer. I caught my reflection in the glass window.

I looked expensive. I looked powerful. I looked like someone who could never be locked in a room again.

"Tell them I’ll be there in two minutes," I said, my voice steady. "And did the daycare call back about Leo’s field trip?"

"All set. He’s excited about the aquarium," she smiled.

Leo. My five-year-old son with dark, curly hair and eyes that looked exactly like a man I had spent five years trying to forget.

He was the reason I’d fought through the double shifts and the grueling PhD program. He was my whole world, the one good thing that came out of that disaster.

I walked into the boardroom, and the air immediately shifted. My boss, Marcus Thorne, looked up with a relieved expression.

"Aria, thank God. We just got word from the capital. The medical crisis in the southern state—the one involving the water contamination and the viral spike—it’s worse than the news is reporting. The governor’s office is begging for our help. Specifically, they want you to lead the task force."

I stiffened. The southern state. My home. The place where the Vales and the Blackwoods still reigned supreme.

"I told you, Marcus. I don't do field work in that region. Send Miller."

"But he’s desperate now," Marcus noted. "He’s sent fourteen formal requests for a consultation in the last forty-eight hours. He’s offering a blank check."

"I don't want his fucking money." I turned my gaze back to the window.

I didn't want anything from him. 

For five years, I had successfully scrubbed the name 'Blackwood' from my vocabulary. 

I had built a life in the medical world, rising through the ranks of the research facility until I became the only person capable of stabilizing the genetic fallout caused by fucking Adrian.

The reason I was here wasn't because of the blank check or whatever he was promising me. 

It was a phone call from a pediatric clinic three hours ago. 

A secondary strain of the immune collapse had reached the outskirts of the city and this was near the school where Leo was supposed to start his summer program. 

The crisis was no longer a corporate failure; it was a threat to my son.

"Tell the driver to go through the side entrance," I commanded. "I don't want to deal with the press."

"Understood. And Dr. Vale? Mr. Blackwood is waiting in the executive lab. He insisted on meeting you personally."

I felt a momentary tightening in my chest, the ghost of the girl who once lived for his smile was still there but I crushed it instantly. "He can wait. I need to see the patient data first."

~~~~~~~~

I walked through the security scanners with my head held high, the click of my heels echoing on the clean marble floor.

Julian had called me right before I landed. “Aria, you don’t have to do this,” he had said, his voice a steadying anchor. “We can send a team to meet him instead. You don't have to face him.”

“I’m the lead researcher, Julian,” I replied. “If I want the patent for the cure to stay under my control, I have to be the one to dictate the terms. Besides, I’m not that girl anymore. He can’t hurt someone who no longer exists.”

I reached the restricted elevator and swiped my Falcon-Bio credentials. 

The ride up to the 50th floor was silent, the hum of the machine a stark contrast to the thundering of my heart that I refused to acknowledge.

When the doors opened, the atmosphere changed instantly. Lab technicians were scurrying back and forth, their faces pale behind the plastic shields they wore. 

In the center of the room, standing before a wall of monitors displaying crashing vitals, was the silhouette I knew better than my own.

Adrian Blackwood.

He was broader now, his presence more suffocating. His suit was worth more than my mother's house, but his shoulders were stiff with a tension that radiated across the room.

"Where the fuck is she?" Adrian’s voice barked, cutting through the frantic beeping of the monitors. It was deeper, raspier, and laced with a cold authority that once would have made me tremble. "If Falcon-Bio doesn't have a representative here in five minutes, I’m personally calling their board. We are out of fucking time!"

"Your board of directors has no jurisdiction over me, Mr. Blackwood."

The room went dead silent.

Adrian froze. I saw his posture stiffen, his head tilting slightly as if he’d heard the voice of a ghost. He turned slowly, his blue eyes—once my only sanctuary—now clouding with an immediate, sharp hostility.

He didn't look relieved. He didn't look like he’d been searching. He looked like he’d just seen a predator enter his territory.

"Aria?" he whispered, but the name didn't sound like a plea. It sounded like an accusation. His eyes raked over my tailored blazer, my expensive heels, and the way I held my head high. "So the rumors were true. You didn't just crawl into a hole and hide after you did what you did. You actually used the money to buy yourself a new life."

I didn't blink. I didn't let the poison in his words touch me. I just walked past him toward the main terminal. "It’s Dr. Vale to you, sir. And we aren't here for a reunion. We are here because your so-called 'Miracle Serum' is a death sentence."

He stepped toward me, but there was no warmth in the gesture. He moved to block my path, his towering frame casting a shadow over the keyboard. "Dr. Vale? Is that what we’re calling it now? I spent years wondering how much Paschal paid you to vanish, but I see you’ve done well for yourself. Does your new boss know his lead researcher is a professional spy?"

I stopped and looked him dead in the eye. The blue of his gaze was hard as flint, filled with a deep-seated bitterness that confirmed he still believed every lie my stepsister or anyone behind this had fed him.

"You didn't look very hard for the truth five years ago, Mr. Blackwood. I don't expect you to start now," I said, my voice like ice. "I am here on behalf of Falcon-Bio to implement a stabilization protocol. My team will arrive with the synthesis by midnight. Until then, I need the raw data from your Phase 3 trials. Unless you’d rather keep insulting me while your patients die."

"Aria, wait," he said, his hand snapping out to grab my wrist. His grip was firm, his skin burning against mine, but his eyes were narrowed in suspicion. "You think you can just walk back in here after vanishing for five years and act like the hero? Why are you here?"

I pulled my arm away with enough force to make him stumble back half a step. "I am here because the children in the suburban wards are showing symptoms of respiratory failure. I am here because I am a doctor. I don't care about your company, and I certainly don't care about your petty grudges."

He let out a short, harsh laugh. "Petty? You destroyed my trust, you sold our legacy, and you disappeared the second things got hot. And now you’re back, looking like a queen, demanding my secrets again."

He stepped into my personal space, the scent of sandalwood and expensive scotch—the scent that used to mean safety—now feeling like a trap. "What’s the play, Aria? Is Paschal sending you back to finish what you started?"

I paused, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. I turned my head just enough to look at him over my shoulder.

 "Five years tends to change a person, Adrian. I’ve learned that some people aren't worth the breath it takes to explain a lie to. Now, are you going to stand there playing the jilted lover, or are you going to give me the access codes to the bio-vault? Because every second you spend obsessed with the past is a second your patients lose their future."

Adrian’s jaw clenched so hard I thought it might snap. He looked at me with a mixture of raw fury and a dark, twisted fascination. The nerdy girl he could push around was gone, and he clearly hated that he still wanted to look at the woman who replaced her.

"The codes, Adrian," I prompted, my voice flat. "Now."