Chapter 4

That night, Aria was too wired to sleep.

Her head buzzed with everything that had happened since her grandfather finally summoned her back from France. 

Shame flared in her face as she realized the face that played the most in her thoughts. Liam’s dark, infuriating questions at the office, his burning gaze at the banquet. 

It was all so reminiscent of a life that seemed so far away, when she was desperate to be wanted, desperate to belong, and he had looked at her like he wanted her. 

He took her. And discarded her, leaving her for the vultures of scandal to peck on.

She turned over in her bed, the silk sheets brushing against her skin doing nothing to make her sleep. Asher was asleep in his own room just beside hers. No use going to him for distraction. Oh and what a welcome distraction he would have been.

So she was left with… nothing but thoughts. And the study. Huh, the study. She shot straight out of bed.

Her dear husband had told her that morning, with the kind of calm authority she couldn’t argue with: “You may go anywhere in the house. Except my study.” His eyes had been steady, polite even, but final. “It’s private. I hope you understand.”

She hadn’t understood at all. Did she look like an understanding woman? Which was why, exactly one day into living with her husband, she was barefoot in the hallway at midnight, staring at the door.

It was locked, of course. But Aria Griffin had never been much for rules, not after everything her grandfather taught her. It took her a full five minutes though.

The lock was made of something even her grandfather hadn’t tested with her yet. The longest time she had ever spent unlocking a door was a little over one minute, and she had considered that the hardest.

‘I stand corrected’, she thought, opening the door and walking inside.

The air felt different. It was far too neat. Far too cold. Not a single paper out of place. Not a pen tilted wrong. If Aston was hiding some great secret of power, it wasn’t here in this sterile order.

Ugh, what a stickler. There was nothing interesting about him. Nothing she could use to occupy herself till she found her footing here again.

Arthur Griffin never made mistakes, but it seemed like arranging this marriage was his first one.

She almost gave up to go investigate stores she could buy out and restart her fashion line with until her eye caught a corner of a folder on the desk.

She’d seen something like it before, years ago, when she was a child pestering her grandfather while he worked. She remembered the exact seal, the weight of it.

He had never let her see it.

Curiosity hooked in her ribs.

Huh. Well if her grandfather hid it away, her husband didn’t, it was fair game if she decided to snoop a little.

She stretched across the desk, her fingers brushing it, and pulled it open. Her robe slipped slightly and she pulled it tightly closed before she glanced at the contents of the folder.

One glance. Then two.

Her blood ran cold. History. From the first page, the folder was filled with the history of the Beaumonts.

Numbers. Transfers. Contracts. Shares. And a name stamped over everything, deliberate and merciless: Arthur Griffin.

She continued checking the folder frantically, and after a point of her grandfather’s name being stamped on papers that seemed to have wrecked the Beaumonts businesses, the nature of the receipts changed. Now everything was stamped by Aston. 

Her mouth went dry. Her chest tightened. She turned another page, hands trembling before she realized she was even shaking. She had been educated in the art of taking over. Her grandfather had found it very paramount, hell, this was what she was planning to do to the Rothschilds.

“He’s… going to take over the company,” she whispered. The sound of it terrified her more than the thought itself. It wasn’t like Arthur didn’t deserve it, but, her grandfather was going to be betrayed.

He was the only solid person in her life and he was going to be betrayed by his right hand man.

The file slipped in her fingers just as the study door clicked open.

Aria froze and her eyes widened as she turned mechanically to the door.

The light from the hallway cut a sharp frame across the floor, and then he filled it.

Aston was really tall. Impossibly tall, his shoulders were blotting out the doorway. His face was unreadable, as blank as the walls of the room she’d violated. As blank as it had been when they met, and as blank as she had always known it.

She quickly clutched the slipping file as she tried and failed to swallow.

Her throat closed. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Aston didn’t speak. He just looked at her. The silence dragged like a noose.

“Incredibly impatient. I would have thought you’d at least wait a week before violating my privacy”, he said, stepping fully into the room and closing the door.

No. Aria stretched her hand as it closed, fully aware there was no way she was getting past the man, fully aware it was useless.

“You want to betray my grandfather!”, she gritted her teeth and stood her ground. A small part of her warned her to keep her mouth shut. The room could be noise proof, he could kill her without anyone hearing.

“Yes.” He admitted plainly.

Aria felt disarmed. She at least thought he was going to argue, going to gaslight her. Her blood ran even colder, did this mean he wanted to kill her? One wouldn’t care about what a dead woman had to say after all.

“You’re not even going to defend yourself? You whacko!”, Aria said sharply.

He began to walk towards her. No, no, no. She shouldn’t have ran off from self defense classes. 

His frame blotted out the single soft lighting in study and he loomed over her, his scent filling the space. This was not the time to be distracted, this was the time to be vigilant. But she had never smelled him before, and he currently smelled like warm skin, and something woody, hints of Sandalwood.

He stopped right in front of her, plucking the folder out of her hands casually as she stood frozen, scared. He looked right into her eyes, and on his blank face, right before her very eyes, his lips curled slowly into a chill smile that actually reached his fucking eyes. God, why hadn’t she seen his eyes?

Her cold blood melted sharply, fast, sending heat down her nerves, blood vessels and down her spine so fast it stole her breath, hotter and sharper than anything she’d ever felt before.

Her heart even rattled in her chest. But now, she didn’t know whether it was due to the danger, or due to his…proximity.

What the fuck?