Chapter 178
Aria pov
I lowered my voice even though he was too far to hear. “Let’s just say… I’ve been riding him like it’s my job. Multiple times a day. He tried to call a truce last night—said his ’sperm bank was on fumes’ and if he kept going he’d faint and end up in the headlines as ’CEO collapses from exhaustion and too much sex.’ I had to let him sleep for like fifteen minutes before I was climbing on him again p>
Olivia let out a loud, delighted scream that made me pull the phone away from my ear. “LET THAT MAN LIVE, ARIA p>
I laughed so hard I almost slipped off the railing. “I’m trying! He’s the one who keeps looking at me like he wants round five even when he’s half-dead p>
“He’s probably terrified and thrilled at the same time,” she said, still cackling. “You finally got your hands on him without all the baggage, and now you’re making up for the lost weeks in six days. I respect it. But maybe feed him some electrolytes or something. The man needs to survive the honeymoon to enjoy the baby p>
“I’ll consider it,” I said, grinning. “He’s coming over now, so I have to go p>
“Tell him I said hi, and tell him to hydrate,” she called. “And Aria p>
“Yeah p>
“I’m really happy for you. Like, stupid happy. You deserve this p>
My throat tightened a little. “Thanks, Liv p>
“Call me tomorrow. I want updates on whether he makes it to day four p>
I have to go,” I told Olivia “Dinner’s ready p>
“Good. Eat something. You’re growing a person,” she’d said right before we hung up.
I hung up still smiling, just as Damien stepped out onto the deck, two glasses of sparkling water in hand—no alcohol for me, and he’d switched too without me asking.
“Everything okay?” he asked, handing me one.
“Olivia says hi. And she says you need to hydrate p>
He raised an eyebrow, lips twitching. “She knows about the… truce negotiations p>
“She knows enough.” I took a sip, watching him over the rim. “She screamed ’let that man live’ when I told her how many times I’ve tried to kill you with sex p>
He laughed—low, tired, but real—and sat beside me on the railing, our thighs touching. “She’s not wrong. But I’m not complaining p>
“Good.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Because I’m not done yet p>
He wrapped an arm around me, hand settling warm over my stomach like always. “Noted p>
We stayed like that for a minute, the lanterns flickering, dinner cooling behind us on the table. The water lapped softly below, steady and calm, but I could feel the post-call tension still humming under my skin—Olivia’s words, the update about Charles, all of it lingering on my tongue.
Damien must have felt it too. He shifted slightly, his thumb pausing its slow circles on my belly as he studied my face in that quiet, accurate way of his—the one that still caught me off guard sometimes.
“Barnes?” he asked, voice low, almost gentle.
“Charles moved.” I felt his arm tighten. “Olivia said Barnes has it covered p>
“He does.” His voice was steady. “We have two more days here. I’d like to give you those two days p>
I looked up at him. The lantern light moved across his face, warm and shifting.
“He can’t take everything,” I said. “He took enough years. He doesn’t get the Maldives p>
Something shifted in Damien’s expression — relief, maybe, or the particular satisfaction of watching someone he loves choose themselves.
“He absolutely doesn’t,” he agreed, and kissed my temple and drew me toward the table where dinner was waiting, two plates arranged with the kind of care that the villa staff brought to everything, candles burning low, the water dark and starred below us.
I sat across from my husband and picked up my fork and decided, deliberately, that tonight Charles Monroe could wait.
The last morning, I woke before Damien again and lay still for a while just watching him sleep — the specific unfamiliar luxury of it, this man who contained so much history and had chosen, eventually, to lay it down. The morning light came through the woven panels in soft bars across the bed. Water sounds, always the water sounds.
I pressed one hand flat against my stomach, still entirely flat, nothing showing yet, and thought about the person inside — the one who would have Damien’s eyes, maybe, or my hair, or Noah’s particular gravity, or some combination of all three that we couldn’t predict yet.
You are so wanted, I thought quietly, to whoever was in there. You have no idea how wanted you are.
Damien’s voice came low and unhurried beside me: “You’re doing it again p>
“Doing what p>
“Thinking loudly.” He didn’t open his eyes.
“I’m thinking quietly for once,” I said.
“Not to me.” He opened one eye. “What is it p>
I moved his hand and placed it over mine on my stomach. He went very still.
“Just saying hello,” I said.
He opened both eyes then, and looked at me across the pillow, and his face was completely open — no control, no management, just Damien at his most essential, the man under all of it.
“Hello,” he said softly, to both of us.
Damien’s POV
A week later
The package arrived on a Tuesday. We’d been back from the Maldives for six days — long enough for the rhythm of the penthouse to reassert itself, Noah’s morning chaos, Aria’s early conference calls, the particular domestic ease we’d built that still occasionally surprised me with its ordinariness, its warmth, the fact that I had come home to this — and I’d begun to allow myself the thought that Barnes had it contained.
I should have known better than to allow myself that thought.
Mrs. Dora brought it to me in the kitchen, her face set in the careful neutral she reserved for situations she’d assessed and found concerning but wasn’t sure how to name. “This came to the front desk,” she said, setting it on the counter. “The concierge signed for it. No sender listed p>
It was a padded envelope, standard brown, unremarkable. My name in print and no return address.
I waited until Aria had taken Noah to his room for the morning routine, then opened it at the kitchen counter with the deliberate calm of someone who had learned that your response to a threat was itself information you couldn’t afford to give away.
Inside: photographs.
Eight of them, printed on standard paper, the kind of quality that came from a long-range lens operated by someone who knew what they were doing.
Noah outside the school gates, laughing at something his teacher had said, his small face entirely unguarded in the way four-year-olds were always unguarded. Noah at the park three blocks away, climbing the structure he’d recently decided was Mount Everest. Aria at the Monroe Global offices, getting out of the car, walking into the building, at her desk through the glass of the lobby window.
Aria at the OB-GYN clinic we’d visited on Thursday, entering through the front door.