Aria's POV
"Say something," Damon's voice brushed against my ear, low, urgent. His hand tightened around mine beneath the table, his grip anchoring me when the ground felt like it was splitting open.
I couldn't. My lips parted, but the words refused to come. My father's—no, Marcus's—toast still rang in the air, sharp as broken glass.
"To the daughter I almost lost, and the empire she's about to inherit."
Daughter.
Empire.
Inheritance.
The words tangled in my head, jagged, wrong. I wanted to scream that it wasn't true. That it couldn't be true. But the way the room had shifted—the silence, the hushed gasps, the darting eyes—told me one thing.
Everyone else believed it.
I could feel their stares pressing into my skin like heat. The board members, the investors, the reporters—waiting for me to confirm or deny.
Marcus had dropped a bomb, and now the shrapnel was tearing through every corner of the room.
