Chapter 6

ADRIAN’S POV

"The codes, Adrian. Now."

I stared at her for a long, agonizing beat. My jaw was clamped so tight my teeth felt like they were going to crack. Five years. I’d spent eighteen hundred nights wondering if the girl who broke my heart was even alive, and now here she was, standing in the middle of my lab, commanding me like I was her subordinate.

"One-zero-four-two-nine," I rasped. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears, hollow and jagged.

Aria didn't even look at me as she punched the digits into the terminal. The girl who used to blush if I brushed against her shoulder in the library was dead. This woman was made of obsidian.

I walked over to the coffee station, not because I wanted a drink, but because my hands were shaking and I couldn’t let her see. 

Every instinct in my body was screaming. I wanted to grab her, to shake her, to demand to know why she was back. But mostly, the dark, ugly part of my mind kept telling me that this was all a performance.

*She’s a spy, son.* My father’s voice echoed in my head, a ghost from five years ago. *She’s been feeding our research data to Paschal for months.*

I looked at her through the glass reflection of the coffee maker. She was brilliant, efficient, and cold. To the rest of the world, she was the savior from Thorne-Bio. To me, she was the girl who had shared my bed and then tried to sell my soul.

I remembered that morning after graduation like it was burned into my retinas. I’d woken up in that hotel room feeling invincible. I’d looked at Aria’s sleeping face and decided right then that I was going to defy my father. I was going to choose her.

But then came the folder. The photos of her meeting with the head of Paschal’s firm. 

The transcripts of messages where she mocked my weakness for her. My father had handed me her diary—a notebook I recognized—filled with cold calculations on how to drain the Blackwood accounts. 

I had been so young, so blinded by the sudden agony of betrayal, that I didn't ask questions. I reacted. I let my father whisk me to London, burying my head in spreadsheets and scotch to forget the girl who had turned my love into a weapon.

Then she’d shown up at my penthouse weeks later. She looked like a ghost, trembling and pale, claiming she was pregnant. All I saw was a final, desperate play for a payout. 

I had said things that night I knew were unforgivable, but I had wanted her to bleed the way I was bleeding. I had wanted to hurt the spy who thought she could trap me with a lie.

"The Phase 3 data is corrupted," Aria’s voice cut through the silence.

I shook myself out of the past and walked back to the terminal. I stood close catching the scent of her hair. It didn't smell like the cheap vanilla shampoo she used in college. It was something expensive, sharp, and distant.

"What do you mean, corrupted?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave.

"I mean your scientists were so focused on profit margins that they ignored the cellular breakdown in the younger subjects," she said, spinning her chair to face me. Her green eyes were hard, boring into mine with a look that said I was the one who was pathetic. "Adrian, if we don't start the synthesis now, the children in the ward won't make it through the night. Is your ego more important than their lives?"

"Do whatever you need to do," I snapped, leaning over her to look at the screen. I waited for her breath to hitch. I waited for that familiar spark of connection we used to have, the gravity that always pulled us together.

Nothing. She didn't even move an inch away. She just looked through me as if I were a piece of office furniture. "The entire Blackwood resource pool is yours. Just save them."

The next few hours were a blur. Aria commanded the room with a terrifying authority. My staff, men twice her age, were scurrying to obey her every word. She wasn't mine anymore; she was her own sun, and everyone else was just caught in her orbit.

By midnight, the tension in the lab finally broke as the first batch of the synthesis was loaded into transport vans. 

"I'm going to the ward to oversee the first injections," she said, grabbing her tailored coat.

"I'll drive you," I said, already reaching for my keys.

"I have my own security, Mr. Blackwood. And quite frankly, I’ve had enough of your presence for one night."

"Aria, for God's sake, talk to me," I stepped in front of her, blocking the exit. The frustration I’d been suppressed for hours finally boiled over. "You vanish for five years and then walk back in here acting like I’m the villain? You’re the one who was meeting with Paschal! You’re the one who was selling our secrets!"

She stopped. The ice in her eyes didn't melt, but a jagged, raw shadow of something else flickered there for a second. "Paschal? I didn't even know who that was until your father’s lawyers started throwing the name at me. But go ahead, Adrian. Keep believing the folders and the lies. It’s easier than admitting you were too weak to trust the one person who actually gave a damn about you."

"I saw the photos, Aria! I saw the messages!" I grabbed her arm, my pulse racing. I wanted to drag the truth out of her, or maybe I just wanted to feel her heart beating against mine again.

"You saw what you wanted to see," she whispered, her voice lethal. She pulled her arm away like my touch was toxic. "You chose to believe I was a monster because it gave you an excuse to be a coward. You left me when I was nineteen, pregnant, and terrified. You told me to get lost. Well, I got lost, Adrian. I got so lost that I found a version of myself that doesn't need you."

She started to walk away, her heels clicking sharply against the marble. But at the door, she paused. She didn't turn around.

"And about the baby... stop looking at me with those suspicious eyes. You don't need to worry about a DNA test. Because that child doesn't have a father. He only has me. He will never know your name, and he will never know your face. That is the only mercy I’m giving you."

She walked out, the heavy security door hissing shut behind her.

I stood in the center of the empty lab, the silence ringing in my ears. 

He.

 She had a son. A son that could only belong to the man she’d replaced me with.

I looked at the monitors, at the data she had fixed, and felt a cold, hard resolve settle in my gut. 

She thought I was a jerk? Fine. She thought I was the villain of her story? Maybe I was. But I wasn't the boy who ran to Europe anymore.

If she thought she could just walk back into my city, save my company, and keep her son a secret, she was wrong. 

I still believed she’d betrayed me back then—the evidence was too clear to ignore—and I was going to prove it. 

I didn't care if she was a spy. I didn't care if she hated me.

I was going to uncover every secret she’d buried in Seattle. I was going to find out who Julian was, where he came from, and exactly what role he played in the life she’d built without me. Even though I don't want to have anything to do with her.

I’d spent five years losing her, and I was done being a coward. I was going to get my answers. And I was going to find out if she’d lied about my heir.