ARIA'S POV
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my phone screen through blurred vision.
I scrolled through my mum's message history, searching for clues I'd missed, every text felt different now, tainted with suspicion. Had she been planning this all along? Had the illness been fake? Had she raised me for twenty-three years just to use me?
My fingers trembled as I opened our photo gallery, pictures of us through the years—Mum and me at my high school graduation, at my first job, Sunday dinners at home. In every photo, she smiled....In every photo, I looked happy.
But now, looking closer, I could see something else in her eyes. Something I'd been too blind to notice before. A calculation, a distance. Like she was always watching me, studying me, waiting for the perfect moment to...
The front door downstairs slammed shut.
My heart jumped. I quickly locked my phone and stood up, my whole body going rigid.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the foyer. Tom was home, and from the sound of it, he wasn't in a forgiving mood.
I'd been gone all day searching for Mum—the hospital, her empty house, neighbors who knew nothing. I'd left without telling him, without asking permission, and now I'd have to face the consequences.
The footsteps stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
"Aria." His voice carried up to my room, cold and controlled in a way that made my skin prickle. "Come down here. Now."
I walked to my bedroom door on shaking legs, my mind still tangled in thoughts of Mum. Who was she really? The woman who raised me, who taught me to be pure and obedient, who collapsed in the kitchen three days before my wedding—had any of it been real?
When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw him.
Tom stood at the bottom, arms crossed, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping. His eyes tracked my every movement like a predator watching prey. The smell of whiskey drifted up from where he stood.
He'd been drinking, again.
"Where were you?" His voice was dangerously quiet.
I descended slowly, gripping the railing for support, my whole body aching from exhaustion, from hours of searching, from the weight of questions I couldn't answer.
"I went to look for my mother,"
"He took a step toward me, and I instinctively backed up until my shoulders hit the front door. "You left this house without my permission, without telling me where you were going, without answering any of my calls."
"My phone died—"
"I don't care about your excuses." Another step closer, and now he was right in front of me, his body blocking any escape. "Do you have any idea what this looks like?"
"I'm not a prisoner," I whispered, even though the words felt like a lie.
"Aren't you?" His gaze burned into mine. "You signed a contract. You agreed to be my wife for one year. That means I need to know where you are at all times."
This wasn't a concern for my safety. This was control, pure and suffocating, wrapping around me like chains I couldn't see but could definitely feel.
"My mother is missing," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady even as my heart hammered against my ribs. "The hospital discharged her three days ago without telling me. Her house is locked and empty and she's not answering her phone....I had to find out what happened to her."
Something flickered in his eyes, but it wasn't sympathy or understanding. It was suspicion, cold and calculating.
"Or maybe you went to meet someone," he said slowly, each word deliberate. "The man from the photos, the one who had you before me."
"What? No!" Panic surged through my chest. "Tom, I'm telling you the truth. My mother is gone and something is very wrong—"
"Everything about you is wrong." He slammed his hand against the door beside my head, and I flinched. His face was inches from mine now, his whiskey-laced breath hot against my skin. "Your story doesn't add up. Nothing you say makes sense and now you disappear for hours and expect me to just believe you?"
I forced myself to meet his eyes, to push down the fear crawling up my throat. "I went to the hospital. Ask them. I spoke to the nurses and they told me Mum was discharged three days ago—the day after our wedding, the same day you paid the money."
His eyes narrowed dangerously. "So she got the money and disappeared."
"She was dying!" My voice cracked despite my effort to stay strong. "Stage four cancer. She wouldn't just leave me like this, not without saying goodbye, not without—"
"Unless the cancer was never real." Tom pushed away from the door and walked to the bar in the corner, pouring himself another drink. "Unless this whole thing was a setup from the beginning."
The words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.
I'd been thinking the same thing all day, wondering the same terrible possibility, but hearing it out loud from him made it real in a way I wasn't ready to face.
"You think she lied?" I whispered. "About being sick?"
"I think fifteen million dollars is a powerful motivation for people to lie about a lot of things." He downed his drink in one gulp and poured another. "Just like it motivated you to lie about being a virgin."
There it was, always back to that, to his obsession with what he thought I'd stolen from him.
"I didn't lie," I said quietly, my hands curling into fists at my sides. "I don't know who that man in the photos is. I don't know what happened seven years ago but I swear to you, I'm not lying."
Tom stared at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable then he turned away, his shoulders tense.
"I'm hiring a private investigator."
My stomach dropped to the floor. "What?"
"To investigate you. Your past. Your mother. Everything." He didn't look at me as he spoke, just stared into his glass like it held answers neither of us had. "If you're telling the truth, you have nothing to worry about. But if you're lying to me, Aria..." His voice went cold. "I will find out."
An investigator would dig into everything—my childhood, my records, the blank spaces in my memory that I'd never questioned before. They'd uncover things even I didn't fully understand about myself.
"You can't," I breathed.
"I can do whatever I want. You're my wife. My property for the next year." He finally looked at me, and the emptiness in his eyes made me feel more alone than I'd ever been. "Or did you forget what you signed?"
Property. The word settled over me like a death sentence.
Before I could respond, his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and something shifted in his expression—not quite softening, but close to it.
"What?" he answered, his tone clipped.
I couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, but Tom's face grew even darker as he listened.
"I don't care what he wants. I'm busy." A pause. "Fine. Put him through."
He covered the phone and looked at me with those cold, empty eyes. "Go to your room. We'll finish this conversation later."
"Tom, please—"
"Now, Aria."
The finality in his voice stopped me cold. I turned and climbed the stairs on shaking legs, my mind spinning with everything that had just happened.
Behind me, I heard Tom's voice again, softer this time. "Bryan. This better be important."
Bryan. Tom's best friend. The man who'd looked at me during our brief meeting like he'd seen a ghost, like I was someone he should know but couldn't quite place.
I paused at the top of the stairs, hidden in shadow, and listened.
"No, everything's not fine," Tom was saying. "My wife disappeared for the day without permission, her mother vanished with my fifteen million dollars and I'm starting to think this whole marriage was a con from the beginning."
The words stung even though I'd expected them.
"I don't need a lecture," Tom continued after a pause. "I need Marcus Chen. I already sent him a message."
Another pause, longer this time.
"I don't care what it costs. I want everything—background checks, financial records, hospital records, all of it. If Aria Summer is hiding something, I want to know what it is."
My hands curled into fists, he was really doing this, really treating me like a criminal, like someone who'd orchestrated all of this instead of someone who was just as lost and confused as he was.
"I know," Tom said, his voice softening briefly. "I just need answers, Bryan. I need to know if she lied about everything or if something else is going on. Because if someone's playing me..." His tone hardened again. "They're going to regret it."
I couldn't listen anymore.
I went into my room and shut the door, pressing my back against it as my legs finally gave out. I slid to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest as everything crashed over me at once.
Mum was gone. Tom had hired an investigator. And I was trapped in a marriage to a man who saw me as nothing more than a liar and a thief.
Someone was already digging into a past I couldn't even remember.
My phone buzzed on the bed where I'd dropped it.
Unknown number.
With trembling hands, I picked it up and read the message.
"Stop asking questions Aria. Some secrets are buried for a reason. If you dig too deep, you'll regret it. Trust me when I say: you don't want to know the truth about who you really are."
My hands went numb.
Who was sending these messages?
And what truth were they so desperate to keep hidden?