Chapter 340 Her Plan
Aria’s POV
The phone buzzed against the bedside table while I was still holding Damian’s hand.
I almost didn’t answer it.
Everything else could rot. But the name on the screen made my thumb move before my brain caught up.
Sylvia Smith.
I stepped out into the corridor, quiet enough not to wake anyone who might’ve drifted off in that awful waiting-room way, and I pressed the phone to my ear.
"Sylvia."
"Aria, darling." Her voice poured out like warm honey with a razor blade hidden in it. She’d always been able to do that, wrap a threat in silk so soft you almost thanked her for it. "How is our poor Alpha King? Still sleeping, I hear. Such a shame. He was always so... vital."
My grip tightened on the phone. I made myself breathe.
"Did you call to ask about my husband’s health, Sylvia? Because that would be a first."
A soft laugh, almost fond. "No. I called about our little arrangement. It’s been ten days, sweetheart. You gave Kiel your word."
A pause, delicate as a knife slipped between ribs. "The paperwork’s ready. All the V&A Group shares, signed over, clean and quiet. My lawyer can be at the hospital by tomorrow morning. Save you the trip. I know how... occupied you are."
There it was. The whole reason she’d been circling since the day Vincent Smith’s heart stopped. Not grief. Never grief. Just those shares, that empire, the fortune that should have been split three ways and now sat entirely, legally, in my name.
She’d waited exactly ten days. Long enough to look patient. Not one hour longer.
And a week ago, I might have signed. But that was before Byron Finch. Before I’d pulled that thread and watched it lead somewhere Sylvia never meant for it to go.
"You know," I said slowly, leaning back against the cold wall, "for a while I actually thought about it. Just signing. Walking away. Letting you have your money and your pack and your perfect little life."
"That’s very sensible of—"
"Then I found out who Byron Finch really is."
The silence on the other end lasted a beat too long. Half a second. But I heard it. I heard the exact moment the honey curdled.
"I don’t know what you—"
"Zachary Grove," I said, and I let the name land soft, the way she’d taught me. "Funny thing about aliases, Sylvia. People forget they’re still attached to a face. A trail. A bank account. A man who did a very ugly job for someone and expected to get paid for it."
"Aria." Her voice had changed. The warmth was gone, and underneath it I could hear something I’d never heard from her before. Fear. Thin and sharp and real. "You’re grieving. You’re not thinking clearly. Whatever you think you’ve found—"
"I know what happened to my father." I closed my eyes. My own voice came out steadier than I felt. "I know it wasn’t an accident. I know exactly who wanted him dead."
"You have no proof."
"Don’t I?"
I hung up before she could find the honey again.
---
Author’s POV
Sylvia set the phone down on the polished desk very carefully, the way a person handles something they’re afraid to break, or afraid to be caught holding.
Her hand did not shake. She wouldn’t allow it to. But underneath the flawless surface, everything had gone cold.
She knows.
The thought circled like a wolf that had scented blood. She knows about Grove.
It shouldn’t have been possible. She had been so careful. When Aria first started digging, it was Sylvia herself who had let the name Byron Finch slip through a "careless" contact, a breadcrumb dropped in a place Aria would be sure to find it. A dead end wearing a dead man’s alias. Something to keep the girl chasing shadows while the paperwork went through.
But breadcrumbs led to birds, and this particular bird had come home to roost.
Zachary Grove had shown up three days ago, unannounced, at the private club where she took her lunches, sliding into the seat across from her like he owned it.
Older, harder, hungrier than she remembered. He’d smiled with too many teeth and said the arrangement had been so long ago, and inflation being what it was, surely she understood a man needed to be compensated for keeping quiet. Especially now that the girl was asking questions.
Blackmail. From the one loose thread she’d thought she’d cut clean.
Sylvia poured herself a drink and did not taste it.
She could not let Grove live. That much was simple. A man who talked once would talk again, and Aria had grown teeth she’d never had before. But she could not do it herself, and she could not risk Nathan knowing whose mouth he was closing. Her son was loyal, cold when he needed to be, but he had questions in him lately, a hesitation she didn’t trust. If he understood the shape of what she was hiding, she wasn’t certain he’d stay on her side of it.
So she gave him only what he needed.
"Nathan." She caught him in the study an hour later, her voice smooth again, all the fear packed away where it belonged. "There’s a man. Tonight. He’s threatening the family. Threatening me." She let a tremor into it, just enough. "I need it handled, and I need it quiet. No names, no questions. Just an address."
Nathan looked at her for a long moment, jaw tight. Then he nodded once. He always did.
She wrote the location on a slip of paper and pressed it into his hand.
Then, when he’d gone, she picked up a different phone. A burner, the kind she’d learned to keep years ago for exactly this sort of night.
"It’s me," she said when Grove answered. Her voice was warm now, all silk again, the razor tucked away where he wouldn’t see it. "You’ll get your money. Every cent. I’ll send someone tonight to make the handoff." She read him the same address, letter for letter. "Come alone. Wait by the loading dock. My man will find you."
She hung up.
Two men. One address. One of them believing he was going to be paid, the other believing he was going to be a hero.
And Sylvia poured herself a second drink, and this time she drank it, and told herself the shaking in her hands was only the cold.