Chapter 336 What if his death had been Sylvia’s doing too?
Aria’s POV
"Aria." His voice cracked on my name. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he leaned toward me as far as the cuffs would let him. "God, Aria, thank you for coming. I didn’t think you would. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t."
I let the silence stretch.
"You wanted to see me," I said finally. "So talk. I’m not here to make it easy for you."
"I know." He nodded fast, too fast, the way desperate men do. "I know I have no right. But I need you to hear it from me. What happened on that road—I never wanted that. I swear to you, on my son’s life, I never wanted that."
"On Marcus’s life." I tilted my head. "The son you hung around my neck like a stone. That life?"
He had the decency to look away.
"I’ve spent two years being lied to by you in that gentle little voice," I said. "So forgive me if the repentance act isn’t landing the way you rehearsed it. You put a bomb on a bus, Ethan. There were pack members on that bus. There was a King on that bus. Save the tears for the judge. They’ll play better there."
"I didn’t know it was you."
I went still.
"When the job came in," he said, and now the words were spilling out of him fast, like a man emptying his pockets in front of a firing squad, "Aria, I swear to God, I never knew you’d be anywhere near it. If I had known, I would never have—"
"You’d never have tried to kill the King only if I wasn’t standing next to him." My voice came out flat as glass. "Do you hear yourself? That’s your defense?"
"That’s not—" He dragged his cuffed hands as far up his face as they’d go. "You don’t understand. I didn’t come up with this. I didn’t want any of it. Silver Creek’s been bleeding out for six mouths, you know that better than anyone, you kept the books. When the offer came, it came with money we needed to survive the winter, and it came from someone I couldn’t say no to."
Something cold slid down my spine.
"Who," I said.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then, quietly:
"Nathan Smith."
The name went through me like a wire.
"He set the whole thing up," Ethan said. "The routing, the cutouts, the shooters—it was his people, I just gave them the corridor and the timing. He wanted it to look like an outside contract so it couldn’t be traced to the family. And Aria—" He leaned in, and for the first time there was something in his face that wasn’t self-pity. It was fear. "The way he talked about it. The King going missing. He wasn’t surprised. He acted like a man who already knew how the story ended. I think whatever happened to Damian on that road, your family had a hand in it. I think they still do."
I sat there and let it settle, one cold layer at a time.
Nathan. Sylvia’s son. Sylvia, who’d shoved a waiver across a table at me before my father’s body was even cold and demanded I sign my inheritance away. Sylvia, who’d looked at me like I was a stain she’d been assigned to remove.
"Why are you telling me this," I said. "You don’t do anything unless it buys you something."
"Because they used me and they’ll bury me," he said bitterly. "You think Nathan’s going to let me testify to any of this in open court? I’ll have an accident in here long before I ever see a judge. You’re the only person walking around free who has a reason to want the truth out." He swallowed. "And because—God help me—for what it’s worth. I’m sorry. I know it’s worth nothing. I know that."
I stood up.
"You’re right," I said. "It’s worth nothing."
I was almost at the door when I stopped, one hand on the cold metal frame, and I didn’t turn around.
"For two years I thought there was something wrong with me," I said quietly. "I thought if I was just patient enough, useful enough, quiet enough, you’d finally choose me. Turns out there was never anything wrong with me at all. There was just something rotten in you." I opened the door. "Enjoy the winter, Ethan."
---
Rick was waiting for me in the car with the engine running.
I didn’t say anything until we were three blocks clear of the facility. Then I told him. All of it. Nathan, the routing, the money, the way Ethan swore whoever took Damian off that road already knew how the story ended.
Rick’s hands tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked.
"Sylvia," he said.
"Sylvia." I stared out the windshield at the gray afternoon sliding past. "I want eyes on her. Discreet ones. Everywhere she goes, everyone she meets, every call that leaves that house. If Nathan so much as orders takeout, I want to know what he ordered."
"Done." He shot me a sideways look. "You think they’ve got the King?"
"I think they wanted him gone and they didn’t much care whether that meant dead or vanished." My hand had drifted to my stomach again, the way it did now without my ever deciding to. "And I think if there’s any chance he’s still alive, it runs through that family."
Then a thought surfaced, slow and terrible, the way the worst thoughts always do—not all at once, but like something rising up out of dark water.
My father.
Vincent Smith, who’d built an empire that stretched across half a dozen pack territories. What if his death had been Sylvia’s doing too?