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“When I got to your place, you weren’t there. Then we saw the news … I-I don’t know what came over me,” she explains. “I was so angry. It’s not Mattia or Jay’s fault, I want you to know that.”
“Well, that can’t be entirely true,” I say with a smirk.
“I snuck past them, acted too quickly for them to stop me,” she continues. “My mind just kind of went blank with rage and the next thing I knew I was standing on my father’s driveway, demanding to speak with him.”
“That was so dangerous, Aria,” I say, trying to keep the edge of chastisement from my voice.
“Well, his men immediately surrounded me. It was the strangest thing, I was so angry that I didn’t even feel afraid,” she says. “And my father, when I spoke to him, he just made me angrier. It all just bubbled up.”
“I know the feeling.”
“He just pushed me so far.” The anger rises in her voice again. “And for the first time in my life, I argued with him and I pushed back. But it didn’t end well.”
Arial looks at the bruises on her wrists and arms, and I watch the anger within her turn to fear. It pains me to see her like this. I want to reach out and hold her so that I can take her pain away. But the cell’s bars separate us.
“He locked me away like a prisoner. He wanted me to release a statement saying that you had kidnapped me. He even offered to let me go back home, saying I could do whatever I wanted and spend however much I wanted.” Aria scoffed, rolling her eyes. “He tried to buy the statement from me. It’s as if he doesn’t know me at all.”
“That’s because he doesn’t,” I say softly.
I reach out and rub my fingers lightly over the bruises on her wrists. “He will pay for what he’s done to you.”
“He threatened to only release me if I agreed to speak out against you,” she continues. “But I know that he had planned to keep me captive. The room that he locked me in already had all my clothes waiting for me. You can’t tell me it wasn’t premeditated.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I feel so helpless here. I feel like it’s killing me.”
She smiles at me. After everything she has been through, she still smiles at me. And her smile is so beautiful that it is enough to take away any pain that I might still feel.
“But you did help me,” she says kindly. “You sent Mattia, and now I’m free. I’m here.”
“And for that, I will most certainly be giving him a raise,” I say.
“I heard that!” Mattia calls from a short distance away.
Aria sighs and looks at me. Her beautiful eyes turn red as tears threaten to roll down her cheeks. What I wouldn’t give to be able to kiss her deeply.
“I know about those twenty years you spent in prison,” she says. “Jay told me.”
“I didn’t want to scare you,” I say. “I was going to tell you eventually, I promise.”
“You were innocent,” she says, shaking her head. “All those years of your life lost at the hands of my father. I hate him so much for it.”
“It’s in the past,” I say, trying to calm her down.
“No,” she blurts out. “That doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is what’s right, and what’s wrong, and my father will pay for what he has done to you, trust me.”
There’s something different about the Aria that stands before me now. I think back to the woman that was crying on her best friend’s couch … That version of her is long gone. The woman in front of me now is angry and determined. I learned long ago that when those two things come together in a woman, the entire world is at risk of burning.
“He will have his day,” I say. “I’m just grateful you’re alive and safe now.”
When she looks at me again I know that there is something she is not telling me. I want to ask her about it, but she speaks first.
“Did you think I would be afraid of you if you told me?” she asks. “Or did you think I would take my father’s side?”
“Neither,” I say.
I know that if I’m to move forward with Aria, I will need to be nothing but honest. I will not lie to her like her father has lied to her countless times. I hate to even think about it.
“I wanted you to trust me,” I say. “That day on Jess’s couch … I saw the fear in your eyes and I wanted it to go away. I wanted you to know that I was helping you without any conditions.”
