*Aria's POV*
I woke up knowing my name no longer belonged to me.
It was not fear that pulled me from sleep. It was awareness. The kind that settles in your chest when you realize something irreversible has already happened. Before I reached for my phone, before the light shifted across the ceiling, I knew that whatever quiet I had left was gone.
I stayed still, staring upward, letting the realization finish forming. Somewhere in the house, a door opened and closed. Measured. Intentional. Even the smallest sounds now felt deliberate, like they carried consequences.
I reached for my phone anyway.
That was my first mistake.
My name was still there.
Not trending the way his was, not yet, but threaded through speculation like a footnote no one could ignore. Screenshots. Half-questions. Familiar photos cropped into unfamiliar narratives. I scrolled once, twice, then locked the screen and pressed it face down against my chest as if that could make it stop existing.
My quiet life had not shattered.
It had dissolved.
I got out of bed and crossed to the window. The coastline looked the same, endless blue, the horizon cut clean and sharp, but the illusion was gone. I could no longer pretend the world stopped at the gates. Somewhere beyond the cliffs, lenses were waiting. Somewhere, strangers were assembling versions of me they liked better than the truth.
The door behind me opened.
"You're up early," Damian said.
I turned. He stood just inside the threshold, already dressed, already composed. If yesterday had cracked something open, it had not touched his posture. He looked like a man who had slept well inside a war zone.
"Did you sleep at all?" I asked.
"Yes."
I did not believe him.
"Coffee?" he offered.
I nodded, though the thought of swallowing anything made my throat ache.
Downstairs, the house felt different in daylight. Brighter, but less forgiving. The windows no longer framed the ocean. They exposed us to it. Every reflection felt like an eye.
Damian moved through the kitchen with quiet efficiency. Too efficient.
He set a cup down in front of me before I could ask.
I blinked. "Isn't Mara usually the one who—"
"She is," he said, already turning away. "Today, I am."
He did not ask how I took it. He already knew.
That realization landed heavier than it should have.
I watched the steam rise between us and did not ask why.
"You changed the security pattern," I said.
"Yes."
"There are more people."
"Yes."
"And fewer places I can go."
He finally met my eyes. "That's temporary."
Temporary was a word people used when they wanted compliance.
"I didn't agree to this," I said.
"No," he replied evenly. "You agreed to write."
I wrapped my hands around the mug, letting the heat ground me. "Those are not the same thing."
"They became the same thing the moment your name surfaced."
There it was. The unspoken line we had crossed without ceremony.
"I feel like I'm being buried alive," I said quietly. "And everyone keeps telling me it's for my own protection."
Damian did not interrupt. That was worse than if he had.
"The house doesn't feel like a sanctuary anymore," I continued. "It feels like a holding cell."
"A holding cell keeps people in," he said. "This keeps people out."
"For you," I shot back. "Not for me."
Silence stretched between us, taut and brittle.
I stood abruptly, the chair legs scraping too loudly against the floor. The sound echoed, then vanished, swallowed by the house.
"I need air," I said.
"You can have it on the terrace."
"I don't want a designated place to breathe."
"That's not negotiable."
I laughed once, sharp and humorless. "There it is."
"There what is?"
"The truth," I said. "You don't trust the world, and now you don't trust me in it."
"That's not fair."
"It's accurate."
I moved past him toward the hallway. He did not stop me, but I felt his presence shift, alert, tracking, calculating distances that had not mattered before.
Halfway down the corridor, I stopped.
"Do you even want redemption," I asked without turning, "or just revenge?"
The question hung there, suspended between us.
Behind me, the house creaked softly, settling into itself.
Damian did not answer.
I turned slowly, forcing him to meet my eyes. "Because if this is just revenge dressed up as justice, I need to know. I need to know what I'm tying my name to."
His jaw tightened. Just once.
"I want the truth recorded," he said at last. "What people do with it is out of my control."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
The honesty in that unsettled me more than any denial could have.
"I didn't come here to disappear," I said. "I came here to write."
"And you still are."
"At what cost?"
He looked away first.
That was my answer.
The rest of the day passed in fragments. Security checks I was not invited to. Calls I was not meant to overhear. Doors closing softly behind conversations that did not include me anymore.
I tried to work. I really did. I opened my laptop, reread old notes, traced sentences I had written in a different mental climate, when danger had still felt abstract. Now every word carried weight. Every sentence felt like a step closer to a cliff edge I could not see.
By evening, the house was quiet again, but it was not the same quiet as before. This one pulsed. Waited.
I found Damian at the far end of the hallway, standing near the study. Light from the window cut between us, dividing the space cleanly down the middle. Shadow on one side. Brightness on the other.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
It struck me then, not as fear, but as clarity, that we were no longer standing on the same side of the story.
Whatever was coming next would demand a choice.
And the house, with all its walls and locks and silence, would not make it for me.
I tightened my grip on the notebook in my hands.
Outside, the world waited.
Inside, the breaking point had already arrived.