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Chapter Eleven

WatchedAriaI was halfway through a piece of toast when Caden walked into the kitchen.One look at his face and I put the toast down.He had that expression — not the cold boardroom mask, not the unreadable stillness he wore at dinner. This was something underneath all of that. Something tight and controlled and barely so, the kind of look that meant whatever was coming out of his mouth next was going to rearrange something.“Come with me,” he said quietly.My mother was at the island behind me with her coffee and her phone, scrolling something, half present the way she was most mornings before her second cup. She didn’t look up.“Everything alright?” she asked absently.“Work thing,” Caden said. Smooth. Immediate. “I need Aria’s eyes on a document. She has a business background.”My mother made an approving sound and waved her hand and went back to her phone and just like that we were excused and I was following Caden out of the kitchen and down the corridor to his study with my he

Chapter twelve

The Devil’s BloodCadenMy father’s name on that screen shouldn’t have surprised me.It didn’t.That was the worst part — sitting there at my desk looking at the IP address my security team had traced back to a device registered to Romano Voss, age seventy-one, residing at the Voss estate in Edina, twelve miles from where I was sitting — and feeling nothing except the particular exhaustion of a man who had spent his entire adult life cleaning up after the same source of damage.My father had been a problem since before I knew what problems were.Aria was staring at the screen with her mouth slightly open, putting pieces together behind her eyes, and I watched her get there and waited.“He’s been watching this house,” she said.“Yes.”“Watching me.”“Yes.”“Why.” She looked up. “He doesn’t know about us. He couldn’t — we’ve barely—” She stopped. Started again. “There’s nothing to find. There was nothing to find when he planted that device.”I leaned back in my chair.“He wasn’t lookin

Chapter thirty

Burning Down CleanAriaHe walked through the front door at six and I knew immediately.I’d been sitting on the living room couch for four hours pretending to read, pretending to watch something on my laptop, pretending to be a person who wasn’t counting the minutes since he left. The second I heard his key in the lock I was up, and when he walked in and I saw his face I forgot everything I’d been planning to say.He looked like a man who had just watched something explode in slow motion and was already calculating the rebuild.“What happened,” I said.He set his keys down. Shrugged off his jacket. Didn’t answer immediately, which with Caden meant the answer was complicated enough to require arrangement first.“Where’s your mother,” he said.“Eden Prairie. Client meeting. She won’t be back until eight.”He nodded once. “Come with me.”Study. Door closed. He sat on the edge of the desk instead of behind it, which I’d learned meant whatever this was, it wasn’t a behind-the-desk conversa

Chapter fourteen

Seven ThirtyCadenI heard her car in the driveway at seven twenty-eight.I was in the kitchen. Aria had disappeared upstairs twenty minutes ago — I’d told her to stay up there, give me the conversation first, let me handle the initial impact before she became part of it. She’d argued. I’d held her face in my hands and asked her to trust me one more time and she’d gone upstairs with her jaw tight and her eyes bright and the specific expression of someone doing something difficult because they believed in the person asking.That expression had been living in my chest since she walked up those stairs.I heard the front door. Keys. The particular sound of Diane moving through her own home — heels on marble, bags set down, the small comfortable sounds of a woman returning to a life she’d carefully built.“Caden?” She appeared in the kitchen doorway in her coat, Thai food bags in both hands, hair slightly windblown, smiling. “I got that green curry you like. Where’s Aria? I got her the—”

Chapter fifteen

Kitchen ConfessionalAriaThe kitchen felt smaller than it ever had.My mother was standing at the counter with a glass of white wine and her coat still on and her back to me when I walked in. I closed the door behind me. The Thai food was still in the bags where Caden had left it, completely untouched, and the whole room smelled like lemongrass and something about that detail, that stupid domestic detail, made my chest hurt in a way I wasn’t prepared for.She didn’t turn around immediately.I stood there and let her take her time because Caden had said let her say it all and he was right and I knew he was right and I was still terrified down to my actual bones.“Mom,” I said.“Don’t.” Quiet. Controlled. Not a shout. Somehow worse than a shout. “Give me one moment.”I gave her the moment.She turned around.And that was the part that broke me open completely — not anger, not screaming, just my mother’s face with the wet eyes and the composed jaw and the particular expression of a woma

Chapter sixteen

Front PageCadenI saw it at eight forty-three.My lawyer had sent the link with no commentary because there was nothing to say that the headline didn’t already cover.VOSS INDUSTRIES CEO IN ALLEGED AFFAIR WITH STEPDAUGHTER — Sources Close To Family Confirm RelationshipThe article had three paragraphs, two anonymous sources, the hallway photograph, and my full name in bold at the top like a banner at a funeral. It had been live for eleven minutes and already had four hundred shares.I read it once.Put my phone face down on the desk.Picked it back up and called my PR director.She answered on the first ring which meant she’d already seen it.“I know,” she said before I could speak. “I’m already on it. We need a statement by ten or this becomes the morning news cycle.”“No statement tonight.”“Caden—”“Nothing tonight. Anything we release right now is reactive and reactive looks guilty. We wait until morning, we control the narrative, we release something measured.” I kept my voice

Chapter seventeen

Leah Knows EverythingAriaLeah put a cup of tea in front of me and sat cross legged on her coffee table and looked at me with the expression of a woman who had been patient for approximately as long as she was capable of being patient and had now run out completely.“Start from the beginning,” she said.“Leah—”“From. The. Beginning.”I wrapped both hands around the mug and stared into it like it contained answers and thought about where the beginning even was. The driveway with my suitcases? The first dinner? The kitchen at midnight with his voice telling me to go to bed?“He texted me on my first night,” I said.Her eyes went wide. “He what.”“Unknown number. Told me to wear something decent to breakfast.”“Oh my God.”“It escalated.”“Aria.”“I know.”“He is your mother’s husband.”“I know, Leah.”“He is like twice your age.”“Forty-two. I know.”“He is—”“I know everything you’re about to say,” I said. “I’ve said all of it to myself. Multiple times. Daily. It didn’t help.” I loo

Chapter eighteen

Leah Knows EverythingAriaLeah put a cup of tea in front of me and sat cross legged on her coffee table and looked at me with the expression of a woman who had been patient for approximately as long as she was capable of being patient and had now run out completely.“Start from the beginning,” she said.“Leah—”“From. The. Beginning.”I wrapped both hands around the mug and stared into it like it contained answers and thought about where the beginning even was. The driveway with my suitcases? The first dinner? The kitchen at midnight with his voice telling me to go to bed?“He texted me on my first night,” I said.Her eyes went wide. “He what.”“Unknown number. Told me to wear something decent to breakfast.”“Oh my God.”“It escalated.”“Aria.”“I know.”“He is your mother’s husband.”“I know, Leah.”“He is like twice your age.”“Forty-two. I know.”“He is—”“I know everything you’re about to say,” I said. “I’ve said all of it to myself. Multiple times. Daily. It didn’t help.” I look

Chapter nineteen

Three In The MorningCadenMy phone rang at two fifty-seven.I was still awake. Sitting at my desk in the dark with the folder closed in front of me and a glass of scotch I hadn’t touched since eleven and the particular quality of silence that a house has when everything in it has changed.The number on the screen was Romano’s housekeeper.I answered.“Mr. Voss.” Her voice was tight. Controlled in the way of someone who had been trained to deliver bad news without falling apart. “Your father collapsed approximately forty minutes ago. The paramedics have taken him to Hennepin Healthcare. They’re saying it may be cardiac.”I sat very still.“Is he conscious,” I said.“He was when they took him. Barely.” A pause. “They’re asking for next of kin.”“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”I hung up.Sat there for exactly thirty seconds.Then I stood, put on my jacket, picked up my keys, and drove to Hennepin Healthcare through empty Minnesota streets at three in the morning thinking about a sev

Chapter twenty

NamedAriaLeah saw it before I did.I was in her bathroom brushing my teeth at seven forty-five, still half asleep, still processing the fact that my mother had apparently left for Duluth and I was allowed to go home and trying to figure out how I felt about all of that, when Leah knocked on the bathroom door and said my name in a tone that made me spit toothpaste and open it immediately.She was standing there with her phone and her face was doing something I hadn’t seen it do before. Not the loud, animated Leah face. Not the suspicious Leah face. Something quieter and more careful, like she was trying to work out how to hand me something fragile.“What,” I said.She turned the phone to face me.I read it.Read it again.Civil suit filed against Caden Voss names stepdaughter Aria Cole as alleged victim of emotional manipulation and predatory grooming by stepfather.The toothbrush was still in my hand.Grooming.They used the word grooming.Omg. Omg, omg, omg — Romano had taken every

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