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Home / Romance / LOVE ME OR HATE ME / Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

All Chapters of LOVE ME OR HATE ME: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

104 Chapters

The Decision About The Case

Daniel's POVI called my lawyer on Monday morning.Not because the decision had arrived cleanly or suddenly. It had not. I had sat with it through the weekend. Through Friday evening and Aria's hand holding mine across the kitchen table after I had touched her face and she had said hurt me with the truth instead of the silence. Through Saturday morning at my window with my coffee. Through Sunday when I had done nothing productive and had not pretended otherwise.The decision had arrived slowly.The way the right decisions sometimes arrived. Not with the specific decisive clarity of a business choice where the numbers either worked or they did not. More like something settling. The specific quiet of a thing that had been moving for a long time finding the place it was always going to land.I called at eight thirty.He answered on the second ring."Drop the formal case," I said.A pause."Daniel," he said."I know what I am asking," I said."After everything she did," he said. The speci

Vivienne Miscalculates

Aria's POVShe called at noon.I saw her name on my screen and I sat with it for two rings before I answered. Not because I did not want to talk to her. Because I had learned over the past two weeks that conversations with Vivienne required a specific kind of preparation. The kind that involved deciding beforehand what you were willing to give and what you were keeping and making sure the line between those two things was clear before she started talking.I answered on the third ring."He dropped the case," she said.No greeting. Just that. The specific directness of a woman who had received information and had been waiting to discuss it."I know," I said."That means he still has feelings for me."I stopped.Just stopped. The specific full stop of a person whose mind has received something it needs a moment to process because the thing received is so far from anything they had been expecting that the distance between expectation and reality needs a moment to close."That is not what

She Goes To Him

Daniel's POVThe knock came at nine forty three.I know the exact time because I had been sitting at my desk at home with the Singapore documentation finally receiving the attention it had been waiting for all week and I had looked at the clock when the knock arrived because unexpected knocks at nine forty three on a Wednesday evening were not something my building produced regularly.I was not expecting anyone.I got up.I looked through the door viewer.I stood there for a moment.Then I opened the door.She was standing in my hallway in a coat I had not seen before with her hair down and her eyes doing the specific thing she did when she needed someone to believe something about what she was feeling. The tears were present. Not streaming. The careful kind. The amount that communicated distress without tipping into the specific excess that made people uncomfortable rather than sympathetic.Calculated to the correct level.I looked at her."I just want to make things right," she said

The Photo That Breaks The Surface

Aria's POVIt came at seven thirty in the morning.No sender name. Just a number I did not recognize and one image attached. I opened it the way you opened things that arrived without context. Carefully. With the specific caution of a person who had learned over the past few weeks that unexpected things arriving without explanation were rarely good news.The photo was clear.Vivienne standing at the entrance of a building I did not recognize immediately and then did. The specific architecture of it. The door. The residential quality of it. A building I had been to twice. A building whose address I had stored in my phone under Daniel home because labeling it anything else had felt unnecessary once we were engaged.His building.Vivienne at his building.At night. The timestamp on the photo read nine fifty one. Wednesday evening. Last night.I sat on the edge of my bed and I looked at the photo for a long time.I thought about all the things I could feel right now and I sorted through t

Sloane

Daniel's POVI had asked IT to run the trace on Tuesday.Not because I was certain. Because certainty required evidence and I had learned a long time ago that acting on instinct without evidence was the specific kind of mistake that created new problems while trying to solve old ones. I had a name in my head and I had the specific pattern of small events that pointed toward that name and I needed the evidence before I did anything with either.The IT manager came to my office on Thursday morning.He was careful the way people who handled sensitive information were careful. He closed the door behind him. He sat in the chair across from my desk and he put a single printed page on the desk between us and he looked at me with the expression of a man who had found something he had been hoping not to find.I looked at the page."The anonymous messages to the journalist and the photo sent to Miss Blackwood both trace to a device registered to Sloane Whitfield," he said.I went completely sti

Telling Aria About Sloane

Aria's POVHe told me at lunch.Not at the office. He called at eleven and said meet me outside at twelve thirty and the specific quality of his voice told me it was not a lunch invitation. It was a conversation that needed to happen away from the floor and he had chosen midday because midday was the time when the 34th floor was least likely to be paying attention to where either of us went.I met him on the street outside the building.We walked to the small place two blocks over. The one with the corner table that was far enough from the other tables that conversation stayed at the table. He had been there before me and had the corner table and two coffees and the specific composed stillness of a man who had already made peace with what he was about to say and was waiting for me to arrive so he could say it.I sat down.I looked at him."Tell me," I said.He told me.The IT trace. The device registered to her name. The journalist messages and the photo sent to my phone and the times

Aria Finds Her Strength

Aria's POVI called her on Friday morning.Not because I was ready exactly. Because ready was not the right word for what this required. Ready implied comfort and this was not going to be comfortable. It implied preparation and there was no version of preparation that made this easier. What I had was something different from ready.Clarity.I had clarity about what needed to be said and who needed to say it and when. And the when was now. Before the civil suit her lawyer had apparently filed landed in Daniel's office. Before another week passed with Vivienne somewhere in this city making her next calculation. Before I lost the specific quiet furious determination I had found at the corner table on Thursday lunchtime and let it become something softer and less useful.I called her.She answered on the first ring.We met at the café near my apartment. Neutral ground. Not my kitchen where she had made tea and asked careful questions. Not anywhere that belonged to either of us. Just a tab

The Calm Before

Daniel's POVThree days of quiet.Not the silence that had edges. Not the cold silence of the past few weeks that had carried weight and temperature and the specific pressure of things unresolved pressing against the inside of it. Just quiet. The ordinary comfortable kind that existed between two people who had been through something and had come out the other side of it and were simply glad to be on the other side.Sloane was gone.Vivienne had gone silent.The article had been addressed by the communications team with a brief statement that said nothing specific and communicated everything necessary. The civil suit her lawyer had filed had been received by my legal team and was being handled through the appropriate channels without urgency because without Sloane feeding information from the inside and without the fraud case to leverage it had considerably less force than Vivienne had apparently believed it would.Three days of the floor doing its normal things.Of the Singapore corr

The Final Move

Aria's POVI showed Becca the message at seven fifty in the morning.Not because I had planned to. Because Becca was already at her desk when I arrived and she looked up and saw my face and said what happened before I had put my bag down and I had learned a long time ago that lying to Becca was both impossible and pointless.I handed her my phone.She read the message.One sentence. No signature. The unknown number I had stared at until midnight and then stared at again at six in the morning when I woke up and checked my phone with the specific hope that it had been a dream and the specific disappointment of finding it still there.*Before you walk down that aisle you should know what your sister told him about your family.*Becca read it twice.Then she looked up at me."Who sent this?" she said."Unknown number," I said. "Prepaid most likely. Can you find out anything about it?"Becca had a brother who worked in telecommunications. This was something I had learned eight months ago a

Aria Finds Her Strength

Aria's POVI called her on Friday morning.Not because I was ready exactly. Because ready was not the right word for what this required. Ready implied comfort and this was not going to be comfortable. It implied preparation and there was no version of preparation that made this easier. What I had was something different from ready.Clarity.I had clarity about what needed to be said and who needed to say it and when. And the when was now. Before the civil suit her lawyer had apparently filed landed in Daniel's office. Before another week passed with Vivienne somewhere in this city making her next calculation. Before I lost the specific quiet furious determination I had found at the corner table on Thursday lunchtime and let it become something softer and less useful.I called her.She answered on the first ring.We met at the café near my apartment. Neutral ground. Not my kitchen where she had made tea and asked careful questions. Not anywhere that belonged to either of us. Just a tab

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