All Chapters of LOVE ME OR HATE ME: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

104 Chapters

VIVIENNE MAKES CONTACT

Daniel's POVThe message came at seven forty three in the morning.Unknown number. I almost did not open it. Unknown numbers had a specific category in my life now and the category was not one I engaged with without consideration. But something made me open it. The same something that had been sitting in my chest since Saturday evening. The cold that had not left since dinner.*We need to talk. Alone. Before you do something that hurts my sister.*I read it twice.I put the phone down.I picked it up and read it again.Then I sat with it.The message was careful. That was the first thing I noticed. Every word chosen. The before you do something framing that put the potential damage on my side. The my sister that reminded me of what was at stake. The alone that told me she wanted this contained.Careful and calculated. Same as always.I thought about what she wanted.She was threatening me. No. Threatening would have been direct and Vivienne had never been direct when indirect was avai

THE MEETING

Daniel's POVShe had chosen the café deliberately.Far enough from Cole Enterprises that nobody from the floor would walk past the window. Quiet enough that conversations stayed at the table. The kind of place that existed in cities specifically for people who needed to say things they did not want overheard.She was already there when I arrived.Of course she was.Vivienne had always arrived first. It was one of the things I had once read as confidence and now understood as strategy. The person already seated controlled the space. They watched you walk in. They saw your face before you saw theirs. They had already decided where to look and how to sit and what expression to be wearing when you arrived.She was wearing warmth.The composed unbothered warmth of a woman who had somewhere to be and had chosen to be here and was entirely comfortable with that choice. Her coffee was half finished. Her coat was folded on the chair beside her. She looked like a woman meeting a friend.I stopp

WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS

Daniel's POVWe sat in silence for a moment after she agreed to one week.I watched her drink her coffee. The composed unhurried way she did it. Like we were two people catching up. Like the conversation we had just had was the kind that happened between reasonable adults who had a small misunderstanding to work through and had worked through it.She was good at that.Making things feel smaller than they were.I looked at her across the table and I thought about why she was really here. Not the version she had offered. Not I want my sister's happiness and I just need to know you won't tell her first. The version underneath that one. The real one."You're not here for Aria," I said.She looked at me."Of course I am," she said."You saw the news," I said. "You read about Cole Enterprises. You came back because of what I've built."She was quiet.Not the comfortable quiet. The specific quiet of a person deciding which version of a response to offer when the accurate version was not the

HE COMES HOME TO HER

Aria's POVHe knocked at eight.I had not been expecting him. He had not called ahead the way he usually did. Just the knock at my door on a Tuesday evening with Vivienne out and the apartment quiet and the specific kind of stillness that existed in a space when you had been sitting in it alone thinking too much for too long.I opened the door.He was still in his work clothes. Jacket on. The day still on him in the specific way the day stayed on Daniel when something had been heavy in it. He looked at me and something in his face shifted. Not dramatically. Just the slight loosening of a man who had been holding something tightly for a long time and had just arrived at the place where he did not have to hold it quite as tightly."Where have you been?" I said."Handling something," he said."Daniel."He stepped inside.He did not answer the question.He looked at me in the hallway of my apartment with the evening light behind me and his jacket still on and whatever he had been carrying

Vivienne Turns Up The Heat

Vivienne's POVI sat in Aria's apartment alone and thought about Daniel Cole.Not the way I had thought about him two years ago. Two years ago he had been a calculation. A man with money and ambition and the specific kind of trust that made him useful. I had assessed him the way I assessed most things. Quickly and accurately and without sentiment.I had been right about most of it.I had been wrong about one thing.I had not known what he would become.The man I had left in a car outside a lawyer's office with bankruptcy papers in his hand had been broken in the specific way that people were broken when they had trusted completely and been completely wrong. I had counted on that breaking. I had assumed it would keep him quiet and small and occupied with the hard work of putting himself back together.I had not counted on him actually doing it.Cole Enterprises. The 34th floor. The reputation that had grown into something the financial press tracked with genuine interest. The empire re

The Crack

Aria's POVI noticed it on Wednesday.Not for the first time. I had been noticing it since the Saturday dinner. The specific quality of Daniel present but not fully present. Like a man sitting in a room while most of him was somewhere else entirely.He was good at hiding it.Most people would not have seen it.I was not most people.I had spent six months learning the difference between Daniel working and Daniel carrying something. Between Daniel quiet because he was focused and Daniel quiet because there was something he had not yet decided how to say. I knew the difference now the way you knew the difference between two similar sounds once someone had taught you to listen for what separated them.He came over on Wednesday evening.The kitchen table. The corner place. The jacket on the chair. All the usual things. And him. Physically present and warm when I touched him and attentive when I spoke. All the correct things in all the correct places.And somewhere behind his eyes a door t

The Office Feels Different

Aria's POVHe did not stop at my desk.That was the first thing I noticed on Thursday morning. Small enough that most people would have filed it under nothing significant and moved on with their day. But I was not most people and I had spent enough time learning the specific rhythms of Daniel Cole to know when one of them was missing.Every morning for months he had stopped at my desk.Not always for long. Sometimes just a look. Sometimes a word. Sometimes just the brief warm presence of a man passing on his way to his office who had decided that passing without acknowledging me was no longer something he was willing to do.Thursday morning he walked straight to his office.Door closed.I looked at the closed door for a moment.Then I opened my laptop and told myself he had an early call and early calls happened and one morning without a stop at the desk was not evidence of anything except a busy schedule.I was still telling myself that at nine fifteen when Sloane appeared.She came

The Note

Aria's POVI held it all morning.Not literally. I put it in my desk drawer after the first five minutes because having it on my desk felt like having something exposed that needed to be kept covered until I knew what to do with it. But I held it in every other way. It sat in the back of my mind through the Singapore correspondence and the Henderson amendment and the two calls I took before noon and the coffee I drank without tasting.Four words.Ask him about Vivienne.I thought about who could have written it. Someone on this floor. Someone who had been close enough to my desk in the eleven minutes I was in Daniel's office to place it on my keyboard without being noticed. Thirty seven people. Any one of them. Or someone else entirely. Someone who had access to this floor and a reason to send me in a specific direction.I thought about Sloane.Trouble in paradise. Said with that smile this morning. The casual observation of a woman who had been watching something and had decided to s

The Truth Begins

Daniel's POVShe sat down.Not because I had asked her again. Because her legs made the decision before she did. She sat in the chair across from my desk and looked at me and I looked at her and the note was between us on the desk and the floor outside the glass wall was doing its Thursday afternoon things and none of it mattered.This was the moment.I had been carrying it for two weeks. Turning it over. Finding the right way to say it. Waiting for the right time. And now the right time had been taken from me by four words on a folded piece of paper and I was sitting across from the woman I was going to marry and she was looking at me with steady frightened eyes and I was done waiting.I looked at my hands flat on the desk.Then I looked at her."Two years ago I told you someone hurt me," I said. "Used me. Faked a pregnancy and took everything.""Yes," she said.Her voice was careful. The specific careful of a person who was holding themselves very still because they had understood t

Breaking Apart

Aria's POVI went straight home.I did not stop at Becca's desk. I did not take the long way through the floor the way I sometimes did when I needed the extra minutes to assemble myself before the next thing. I picked up my bag and I walked to the elevator and I stood in it and watched the numbers count down and I held everything I was feeling inside my chest and kept it there until the doors opened.The walk home was twelve minutes.It felt like nothing.I had the key in the door before I had finished deciding what I was going to say.She was in the kitchen.Of course she was.Making something. The comfortable domestic ease of a woman at home in a space that was not hers. She turned when she heard the door and her face arranged itself into the warm familiar smile and she started to say something about dinner.I looked at her."Tell me the truth," I said. "Right now."She went still.The smile staying in place for one second longer than it should have. The specific practiced pause of

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