Chapter 295
Aria’s POV
The baby didn't answer, obviously. But in the quiet of that yellow nursery, with sunlight warming my face and Devon's texts promising he was coming home, I felt something shift. Not closure, exactly. But maybe... acceptance.
The door opened. Devon stood in the doorway, still in his court suit, his tie loosened and his hair slightly disheveled from running his hands through it—a tell I'd learned meant he was processing something heavy.
"Hey," he said softly.
"Hey." I didn't get up. "How was it?"
He moved into the room, sinking onto the floor beside the rocking chair rather than taking the ottoman. His head came to rest against my knee, and I felt the tension vibrating through him.
"Your father cried," Devon said flatly. "When they read the verdict. Victoria just stared straight ahead like she couldn't process that she'd actually lost."
"Did they say anything?"
"Victoria maintained her innocence to the end. Your father..." Devon's jaw clenched. "He tried to give a statement about how he'd been manipulated, how he never meant for things to go so far. The judge shut him down. Told him he'd had plenty of opportunity to express remorse before poisoning his wife for four months."
I closed my eyes, trying to feel something. Satisfaction, vindication, grief—anything. But there was just that same hollow numbness.
"Aria." Devon's hand found mine. "You know this doesn't make you like them, right? Wanting justice doesn't make you a monster."
"I kept imagining what my mother would think," I said quietly. "If she could see me now. Her daughter, testifying against her father, sending him to prison for life. Would she be proud? Or horrified that I tore the family apart?"
Devon shifted, rising to his knees so he could look me in the eye. "Your mother kept a diary documenting her suspicions because she knew. She knew something was wrong and she wanted the truth to come out. You honored that. You made sure her death meant something."
"Or I used it as an excuse to destroy everyone who ever hurt me."
"Even if you did—and I'm not saying that's what happened—but even if you did, so what?" His eyes were fierce. "They earned destruction, Aria. Your father chose to marry his mistress. Victoria chose to poison a woman who'd never done anything to her except exist. Scarlett chose to help traffic you to save her own ass. None of that is on you."
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe that I could walk away from this with clean hands and a clear conscience. But the truth was messier than that. The truth was I had wanted to destroy them. I'd lain awake nights imagining my father's face when he realized I'd won, planning how to strip Victoria of every scrap of dignity, fantasizing about the day Scarlett would realize that her beauty and manipulation couldn't save her from consequences.
And I'd gotten exactly what I wanted. So why did it feel so much like losing?
"I'm tired," I said finally. "I'm just... I'm so tired, Devon."
He stood, holding out his hand. "Then let's get you horizontal. Doctor's orders—you're supposed to be resting."
I let him pull me up, guide me to our bedroom. He helped me out of my clothes with the kind of clinical efficiency that should have been unsexy but somehow wasn't—just intimate in a different way. He tucked me into bed, pulled the blackout curtains, and started to leave.
"Stay," I said.
He paused in the doorway. "I have a conference call in ten minutes—"
"Please."
The word hung in the air between us. A request. A need. An acknowledgment that I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts right now.
Devon's expression softened. He pulled out his phone, typed something quickly, then shrugged out of his jacket and tie. A moment later he was climbing into bed beside me, still in his dress shirt and slacks, pulling me against his chest with a possessiveness that should have chafed but instead felt like safety.
"Better?" he murmured against my hair.
"Getting there." I pressed my face into his shoulder, breathing in his scent—expensive cologne and something underneath that was just him. "Devon?"
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For everything. For fighting for me, for believing me, for..." I swallowed hard. "For making me feel less alone in all this."
His arms tightened around me. "You're not alone. Not anymore. Not ever again, if I have anything to say about it."
"That sounds suspiciously like a promise."
"It is." He kissed the top of my head. "Get used to it, Mrs. Kane. You're stuck with me now."
I fell asleep listening to the steady beat of his heart, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't have nightmares.
---
The letter from Scarlett arrived three days later.
I almost threw it away unopened—seeing her name in the return address made my stomach clench with remembered fury. But curiosity won out. I took it to the study, closed the door, and stared at the envelope for a full five minutes before finally tearing it open.
"Aria,
I know I don't have the right to ask for your forgiveness. I know that everything I did—stealing Ethan, trying to take the Hampton house, working with Mom to push you out of the family—makes me the villain in your story. And maybe I am.
But I need you to know: I didn't know about Mom and Dad. I didn't know what they did to your mother. I swear to God, Aria, if I had known they were poisoning her, I would have said something. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a murderer.
The trafficking thing... that was stupid. So incredibly stupid. I was desperate and scared and Mom said she had a way to make everything go away, and I just... I went along with it. I didn't think about what it would mean for you. I didn't think at all.
I'm going to prison. My lawyer says at least five years, maybe more depending on the judge. And I deserve it. I know that. But before I go, I wanted to tell you that your mother was a good person. I remember her being kind to me when Dad first brought Mom around. She didn't have to be. But she was.
I hope you get to be happy, Aria. I hope you and Devon have the life that we could never give you. You deserved better than the family you got.
-Scarlett"
I read the letter three times, trying to find the manipulation in it. The angle. The way she was trying to play me even from behind bars. But if it was there, I couldn't see it.
Maybe she was sincere. Maybe prison had cracked through her facade and revealed something almost human underneath. Or maybe she'd just gotten better at faking empathy.
Either way, it didn't change what she'd done. But it did... complicate things. Make them less black and white than I wanted them to be.
Devon found me still sitting there an hour later, the letter on the desk in front of me.
"From Scarlett?" he asked, reading over my shoulder.
"She says she didn't know about the poisoning."
"Do you believe her?"
I thought about it. Really thought. "Yeah," I said finally. "I think I do. She was Victoria's puppet, not her partner. She was too busy being spoiled and manipulative in her own petty ways to be involved in anything that serious."
"So what are you going to do?"