Damien POV
I stood frozen in the hallway as she disappeared into the crowd.
Aria.
My wife.
The woman I'd thrown out four years ago.
"Mr. Blackwood?" My assistant's voice cut through the chaos in my head, tentative and concerned. "The investors are waiting in Conference Room A."
I couldn't move.
She'd looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was a stranger she'd just met at a business summit.
"Mr. Blackwood?" she repeated, louder this time.
"Cancel it," I said, my voice coming out rough and strangled. "Cancel everything for the rest of the day."
"But sir" she started, confusion in her tone.
"I said cancel it." I turned to her with wild eyes, and she stepped back at whatever she saw in my face. "Now."
She fled.
I made it back to my suite on the top floor before my carefully constructed control shattered completely.
The door slammed behind me with a sound that rattled the frame. I stood there, breathing hard, my hands shaking like I'd been electrocuted.
Aria Monroe. CEO of Monroe Global.
The same woman who'd looked at me with those eyes full of hope I'd deliberately crushed.
I yanked my phone from my pocket with trembling fingers. Dialed the number I'd called a thousand times over three years.
"Morrison," the private investigator answered on the second ring, his voice gravelly from cigarettes and late nights.
"She's here." I paced to the window, my reflection harsh in the glass, it felt like stranger's face staring back was staring back at me. "She's in Ravenwood."
A pause stretched between us. "Who?"
"Aria. My wife." I ran a hand through my hair, destroying the perfect style with violent strokes. "She just gave a presentation at the business summit. Her company is Monroe Global."
"That's impossible," Morrison said slowly. "We searched everywhere. Europe, Asia, South America. There was no trace"
"Well you missed something," I snapped, my voice turning vicious and sharp. "Because she was just on stage looking like she owns the world."
Another pause. "I'll look into it."
"You do that." I ended the call and threw the phone onto the couch, watching it bounce against the leather cushions.
Four years. Four years of searching. Of guilt eating me alive.
Six months after she left, the truth had started coming out.
I'd been in my office late one night when Richard, one of Charles's business partners, had gotten drunk at a company dinner. Started talking about how Charles had "handled" his disappointing daughter. How Vivian had been promised a bonus for "taking care of the problem."
Problem. They'd called her a problem.
I'd dug deeper after that. Found text messages between Charles and Vivian plotting. Found payments made to hospital staff to lie about paternity tests that were never taken. Found proof that the pregnancy had been actually real, that Aria had never tried to trap me.
The day she confronted me about the pregnancy I was drunk on anger about everything that happened, how her parents were trying to drain me dry. It seemed only Vivian understood me.
I'd told my pregnant wife to get rid of our child.
The memory made me sick even now.
I'd thrown her out based on anger and my own desperate need to feel nothing. To be the ice king my father had trained me to be.
I walked to my desk and pulled open the bottom. Inside was a single folder I kept locked away.
Photos from our wedding day.
I pulled out the first one with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Aria in her wedding dress, standing alone in the mansion's garden before the ceremony. She wasn't smiling. She looked lost.
God. I'd slept with her sister on our wedding day.
The guilt was a living thing in my chest, clawing its way up my throat.
I'd been so convinced marriage was just business. That feelings were weakness. That I was incapable of love anyway, so why pretend?
I'd destroyed her for it.
I pulled out another photo, this one even more damning. The official wedding portrait. We stood side by side, not touching. I looked cold and distant. She looked like she was trying to disappear.
Then I opened the file on my computer. The one I'd created yesterday after hearing Monroe Global was attending the summit.
Recent photos of Aria Monroe, CEO.
She was transformed.
Power suits that hugged her curves, hair styled perfectly. Face sharp with authority and confidence. She stood in boardrooms like she owned them. No trace of the broken woman I'd thrown away.
"What did I do to you?" I whispered to her image on the screen, my voice cracking on the last word.
My phone buzzed against the couch cushions. A text from Marcus, of all people.
Saw your wife at the summit. Looking good. Bet you regret that divorce now.
I stared at the message, rage building in my chest.
Marcus. My bastard brother who'd crawled out of whatever hole Father had buried him in. Who'd been circling my company for months looking for weaknesses.
If he went near Aria.
Another text, this time from my head of security.
Monroe Global just secured the Riverside Development deal. That was supposed to be ours.
I pulled up the details with fingers that had gone numb. Sure enough, Aria had outmaneuvered me. Offered better terms, faster turnaround and more innovative approach.
She'd stolen it right out from under me.
A laugh escaped me, echoing off the walls of my empty office.
She wasn't just surviving. She was destroying me in the market I'd once dominated.
God, she was magnificent.
And she hated me.
I watched the recording of her presentation again, obsessive and desperate. Studied her face as she spoke those pointed words.
"We believe that what's discarded, abandoned, thrown away—can become more powerful than anything that tried to destroy it," her recorded voice said, each word was like a punch to my gut..
She'd been talking about herself.
About what I'd done to her.
I closed my laptop and stood at the window, watching the city lights flicker to life below me. The sunset painted everything in shades of hue.
Years of searching, years of guilt and regret and wondering if she'd kept the baby. If I had a child out there somewhere.
A child I'd told her to abort.
The shame was suffocating, pressing down on my chest until I couldn't breathe.
My phone rang, the sound jarring in the silence it was Marcus again.
I answered on the third ring. "What do you want?" I demanded.
"Just checking in, little brother," he said. "Heard you had quite the shock at the summit today."
"Stay away from her,"
He laughed. "From who? Your ex-wife? The one you threw out like garbage?"
"Marcus" I started, warning lacing my tone.
"Relax. I'm not interested in your castoffs," he interrupted, amusement evident in his tone. A pause. "Although Monroe Global would make an interesting acquisition target."
I gripped the phone so hard the case creaked under the pressure. "Touch her company and I'll destroy you."
"Protective now? Little late for that," he said mockingly, then hung up before I could respond.
I stood there, shaking with rage and something darker.
Fear.
Aria was here, powerful and untouchable. And I had no idea how to fix what I'd broken.
My assistant knocked on the door. "Mr. Blackwood? The rescheduled investor meeting"
"I said cancel everything," I cut her off without turning from the window. "And get me everything on Monroe Global. Every financial report, every business deal, every article written about Aria Monroe in the last three years."
"Yes sir," she said quickly, relief evident in her voice. She hesitated at the door. "Should I also schedule a meeting with Ms. Monroe?"
"No." The word came out barely audible."She made it clear she doesn't want to see me."
When she left, closing the door with a soft click, I pulled out my phone and opened my contacts with shaking hands.
Aria's old number was still there. I'd never deleted it.
My fingers hovered over the screen, trembling.
Then I typed: We need to talk. Please.
I stared at the message for a long moment, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Then I hit send.
Three dots appeared immediately. She'd seen it.
They disappeared.
No response.
I watched the screen for ten minutes. Twenty. An hour. My eyes burned from staring at the bright display in the darkening room.
Nothing.
She'd read it and ignored me.
I deserved that.
I deserved everything she threw at me.
But I needed to talk to her. Needed to know if
If the baby had survived.
If I had a child.
The thought made my chest tight, fear and hope warring inside me.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the image, my voice breaking completely. "God, Aria. I'm so sorry."
The city glittered below, indifferent to my pain. Somewhere in those buildings, in those lights, she was living her life. Maybe she was in her own office right now, working late. Back then, I'd ignored her presence. Now I'd give anything to be in the same room.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the window, my breath fogging the surface.