All Chapters of LOVE ME OR HATE ME: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

104 Chapters

The Confession

Aria's POVShe answered eventually.Not immediately. Not cleanly. The way people answered things when the answer had been kept inside for long enough that releasing it required more effort than keeping it had.She looked at her hands on the counter.And she began to talk."I was in trouble," she said. "Financially. I had debts. Real ones. The kind that follow you and get bigger and do not care about your timeline for dealing with them." A pause. "He had money. I made a terrible choice."I looked at her."You faked a pregnancy," I said.She flinched.Small. Brief. The specific flinch of a person hearing something accurate said plainly and finding the plainness harder to receive than they expected."I was desperate," she said."You stole fifty thousand dollars," I said."Aria.""Say it," I said. "Say what you actually did."She was quiet."He went bankrupt Vivienne," I said. "He lost everything. His business. His finances. Everything he had built. He lost it because of what you took."S

She Calls Him

Daniel's POVI had been sitting with my phone in my hand for forty minutes.Not waiting exactly. I had work open on my laptop and I had looked at it periodically and read nothing. I had made coffee I had not drunk. I had stood at the window once and come back to the desk. All of it just filling the time between the moment Aria had left my office and the moment I knew was coming.I knew it was coming.She had walked out of my office three hours ago with everything I had told her sitting inside her and she had gone home to a apartment where Vivienne was waiting and there was only one way that ended.When my phone lit up I picked it up before the screen finished brightening.Her name.I answered immediately."She admitted it." Her voice was unsteady in the specific way that voices were unsteady when a person had been holding something together through effort alone for several hours and the effort was reaching its limit.Something moved through my chest."Where are you?" I said."Outside

The Distance

Aria's POVHe stayed until late.We moved inside eventually. Not back to my apartment. To the small café two streets over that was open late and quiet on Thursday evenings and had the specific quality of a place that did not require anything from the people sitting in it except that they sit.We sat.He ordered tea for me without asking because he knew how I took it. I watched him do it and thought about all the small things he had learned about me over six months and felt the specific weight of what that meant sitting alongside everything else I was carrying.We talked.Not about Vivienne specifically. About what I was feeling. He asked and I told him because he had asked directly and Daniel asking directly was something I had learned to meet with the same directness."I keep thinking about every conversation where I talked about you to her," I said. "Every detail I gave her."He looked at me steadily."She used you too Aria," he said."I know," I said. "But it doesn't feel that way

Vivienne Goes Public

Daniel's POVI found it at six in the morning.Not because I had been looking for it. Because my phone had been doing the specific thing it did when something significant had been published that mentioned Cole Enterprises. The notification alert I had set up two years ago after the bankruptcy when monitoring what was being said about my company had become a necessary part of rebuilding it.I had not expected to need it for this.I sat up in bed and opened my phone and read the notification and then opened the article and read it twice before I put the phone down and sat in the specific quiet of a man who had just understood what he was dealing with.The article was careful.That was the first thing I noticed. Not reckless. Not the blunt instrument of someone who wanted to cause maximum immediate damage. Careful. The specific careful of a piece written by someone who had been given enough information to suggest a story without committing to specifics that could be immediately disproven

The Article Reaches The Office

Aria's POVI knew something was wrong before I reached my desk.Not from anything specific. From the quality of the floor when I stepped off the elevator. The specific way thirty seven people adjusted when someone walked in that they had been talking about. The conversations that did not stop exactly but shifted. The eyes that moved to me and then away with the particular care of people who had decided that looking directly was not the right choice.I had been on this floor for long enough to know what it felt like when the floor knew something.It felt like this.I walked to my desk.I put my bag down.I sat down and opened my laptop and told myself that whatever it was I would handle it the same way I handled everything. Directly and without performance and with the specific steadiness that was the truest thing about me.Becca appeared before my laptop had finished loading.She came around the partition with her phone already in her hand and her expression doing the specific thing i

Vivienne Comes To The Office

Daniel's POVMy assistant called at half past ten."There is a woman in the lobby," she said. "She is asking for Miss Blackwood. Security has approached her but she is not cooperating."I knew before she said the name."I will be down," I said.I closed my laptop.I walked to the elevator with the specific unhurried certainty of a man who had decided how the next ten minutes were going to go and was going to make sure they went that way.I heard her before the elevator doors opened.Her voice carrying across the lobby with the specific projection of a woman who had decided that volume was the instrument she needed right now. Not shouting exactly. Loud enough that the lobby had gone the specific quiet that spaces went when something was happening that everyone could hear and nobody knew how to respond to."I just want to speak to my sister."The security officer beside her was calm and professional and entirely unequipped for Vivienne Blackwood in full performance."Ma'am you need to l

The Sister She Loves

Aria's POVI stood at the mezzanine railing long after she had gone.The lobby below returned to itself. The reception staff at their desk. The security officer back at his post. The glass doors closed and the street beyond them moving with the ordinary midmorning pace of a city that had already forgotten the small scene that had just happened inside one of its buildings.I stood there until Daniel came up the stairs.He stopped beside me.He did not say anything immediately. He stood with me the way he had learned to stand with me when something needed space before it needed words. I had taught him that without meaning to. Just by being the kind of person who sometimes needed the space before the words and showing him what that looked like until he understood it.He understood it now.We stood at the railing together for a moment.Then I went back to my desk.....Becca found me at noon.I was eating lunch at my desk which I did not usually do but going to the break room felt like mo

Daniel Starts To Close

Aria's POVI noticed it first on Tuesday.Small things. The kind that did not announce themselves. The kind you only caught if you had been paying close enough attention for long enough that you knew the difference between a pattern and a deviation from it.He cancelled dinner.Not the first time. He had rescheduled once the week before. That happened. Lawyers and board matters and the specific unpredictable demands of running something the size of Cole Enterprises happened. I knew that. I had worked beside this man for the better part of a year and I understood that his calendar was not always his own.But this was twice in a week.And the calls were shorter.Not cold. Not unkind. Just shorter. The specific shortness of a man who was managing a great deal and had started managing the people around him along with everything else. The eleven minute drives had become five minute check ins. The kitchen table evenings had become rescheduled kitchen table evenings.Small things.The way a

The Fraud Inquiry

Daniel's POVMy lawyer called at four.I had been expecting the call. Not today specifically but soon. Since Vivienne had walked into Cole Enterprises lobby and made herself visible to thirty seven witnesses and a security camera system that recorded everything that happened in that building the legal situation had shifted.She was no longer a name with no face.She was a woman on camera. Identified by name. Present in the city. Living in the apartment of my fiancée.The investigation that had found nothing two years ago had somewhere to look now.I picked up on the second ring."She is identifiable now," my lawyer said. "We can proceed with the fraud case."I sat back in my chair."What does that mean practically?" I said."It means we can file. The fifty thousand dollars is documented. The fabricated pregnancy is on record from the original complaint. The fake name is provable now that we have a real identity attached to it. We have a strong case.""What does that mean for Aria?" I

She Notices The Wall

Aria's POVI gave it one more week.Not because I was unsure of what I was seeing. I was sure. I had been sure since Thursday evening when he stood in my kitchen in his jacket with the documents and the short visit and the cold silence that had followed me all the way to my car and sat with me on the drive home.I gave it one more week because I understood Daniel Cole well enough to know that naming something before he was ready to hear it named produced a door closing rather than a door opening. I had learned that early. The difference between pushing and waiting. Between the moment a conversation could happen and the moment before that moment when pushing only made the next moment harder to reach.I waited.He came over on Friday evening.The corner place was on the table. His jacket was on the chair. All the usual things in all the usual places. And him. Present and warm and attentive in all the ways he had always been.And the distance. Still there. Smaller than it had been on Tue

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