Harold had asked about Aria before they put him in the car.
It was not a smart thing to ask. He knew that the moment the words left his mouth. But he asked anyway, and Marcus had looked at him the way a man looks at someone who has already lost and just hasn't accepted it yet, and said she was alive. That was all. She was alive.
Harold got in the car.
He didn't say anything else after that. There were two guards with him in the backseat and a driver in front and tinted windows on all sides, and fourteen hours of road between wherever they were and wherever they were going, and he sat with his hands in his lap and thought about those two words.
She was alive.
He had spent six weeks in that motel room in Nevada waiting for the opposite. Had paid for the opposite. Had built an entire plan around the opposite. Aria Chen was supposed to be dead and Damien Blackwood was supposed to be broken and Harold was supposed to have his revenge and then figure out the rest from there.
