By morning, the night's fragile calm was gone.
The estate's front gates were half-hidden behind a thicket of cameras, microphones, and flashing bulbs. Word had spread — not just about the charity gala, but about Damien Blackwood's wife, who'd managed to intrigue the gossip circuit simply by existing in his orbit.
From the upstairs window, Aria could see them — strangers yelling her name as if they had any right to it, some waving printed photos that looked zoomed-in from grainy long lenses. She stepped back from the curtain, the skin between her shoulder blades prickling.
She could hear Marianne downstairs directing the staff to keep all deliveries and pickups at the service entrance. But even that would only do so much. Reporters were relentless when they scented blood.
Noah, thankfully, was still asleep, his door closed to the noise. Aria padded toward her own room, needing the small bubble of solitude before the day pulled her into its current.
Her phone buzzed on the dresser. Unknown number again.
She hesitated, then swiped it open.
> The gala will be fun. Wear the blue dress. He likes you in blue.
Aria's stomach churned. The blue dress. She'd worn it once — the night Damien had taken her to a quiet dinner away from the city, a rare moment when his guard had slipped and he'd looked at her like she was more than a contract.
She deleted the message immediately, but the ghost of it lingered.
By midmorning, Damien's voice carried through the halls — low, clipped, unmistakably angry. Aria found him in the front study with Lydia, his head of security. Papers and photographs were spread across the desk, some marked with red pen.
He looked up the moment she entered. His gaze caught hers and held it.
"Close the door, Aria."
She obeyed, her heart picking up.
Lydia shifted her stance, then tapped the photo in her hand. "One of the patrols found this wedged under the east gate this morning. It's from last week."
She handed it to Aria.
The photo was glossy, clear. She and Noah were at the park — Noah on the swing, her leaning down to tie his shoe. It was candid, intimate, the kind of moment only someone watching closely could have captured.
And in the background, almost out of frame, a figure in a charcoal suit stood just beyond the playground fence. The angle cut off most of his face, but Aria didn't need to see it. She knew the set of those shoulders, the casual slant of the stance.
Victor.
She forced her fingers not to tremble. "Where did you get this?"
Damien's eyes were unreadable. "I told you — Lydia found it at the gate. With a note."
He pushed a folded slip of paper across the desk.
She didn't need to open it. She already knew whose handwriting it would be.
> Beautiful family. Shame if it fell apart.
Her throat went dry.
Lydia's gaze was steady. "Mrs. Blackwood, I'm going to be direct. Do you know this man?"
Aria's instinct was to lie. To deflect. But Damien was watching her like a hawk, and she could feel the weight of every half-truth she'd told him pressing in on her.
"He's… someone from my past," she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. "Someone I haven't spoken to in years."
Damien's jaw tightened. "And yet he's here. Watching you. Watching Noah."
She flinched at the sound of her son's name.
"I didn't want to involve you," she said quickly. "Victor — he's… complicated. He likes to twist things, make them seem worse than they are. If I told you everything—"
"Worse than they are?" Damien cut in, his voice sharp. "Aria, this man has been following you. Taking pictures of you with our son. Leaving them at my gate. How much worse does it need to get before you consider it serious?"
Lydia cleared her throat softly, a tactful reminder that she was still in the room. "We can increase surveillance and have someone on Noah whenever he's outside the house. But I need to know if this man has any history of violence or stalking charges. That changes how we handle him."
Aria hesitated. "No… not that I know of. But he doesn't need to be violent to be dangerous."
Damien's gaze sharpened. "Explain."
Her lips parted, then closed again. Every explanation felt like peeling away skin — and if she bled too much here, she didn't know if she could stop.
Lydia's phone buzzed. She stepped aside to take the call, leaving Aria and Damien in a silence that was almost worse than his anger.
"Aria," Damien said, softer now but no less intense, "you've been looking over your shoulder for days. You've lied to me about where you were, who you were with. And now this man shows up at our home. If you think you're protecting me by keeping this to yourself, you're wrong. You're just making it harder for me to protect you."
She felt the truth of it hit like a stone in her chest. But before she could respond, Lydia returned, her expression grim.
"That was one of the patrol units. The same man in the photo was seen parked two blocks from Noah's school earlier this week. They thought it was a coincidence at the time. Now…" She let the implication hang.
Damien's gaze turned to steel. "Then it stops being a coincidence. I want a full report on his movements for the last month. Every sighting, every camera hit."
Lydia nodded, already typing as she left.
The room felt smaller once they were alone.
"I'll handle it," Damien said finally, voice low. "But you need to trust me enough to tell me everything."
Her pulse pounded in her ears. She wanted to. She almost did. But the memory of Victor's threats, the quiet menace of his smile, rooted her to silence.
"I'll try," she said instead.
Damien's jaw worked, but he didn't push. Not yet.
That night, the house felt like it was holding its breath.
Aria tucked Noah into bed, lingering to watch the steady rise and fall of his chest. She closed his door quietly and started down the hall — and froze.
From the landing, she could see the front door. A small, square of white was visible beneath it.
She didn't call for Damien. She didn't want him seeing whatever it was before she could.
The envelope was unsealed. Inside was another photograph — this time of her alone, in the kitchen that morning, pouring milk for Noah. The angle was from outside the window.
On the back, in the same looping script:
> See you tomorrow night.
Her blood ran cold.