The safety deposit vault was colder than Aria remembered.

Maybe it was the metal walls. Maybe it was the memory of why she sealed the box in the first place.

Dominic waited outside the glass, pacing. Sloane was already downstairs pulling surveillance footage, making sure no one had followed them.

The bank attendant slid the slim metal box across the table. “You have fifteen minutes. Take what you need. No copies here.”

Aria nodded.

When the door clicked shut behind her, she opened the box with a single key—a key she hadn’t used since the week Nathan died.

Inside:

• A flash drive

• A worn manila folder

• One small envelope with N.V. handwritten on it in Nathan’s old scrawl

She opened the folder first.

Inside:
A contract. Signed by Marcus Hale. Dated nine years ago. A $50,000 “private loan” to a design student with no legal business yet. Listed under Vale Concepts, not Vale Interiors. No repayment structure. No record in public filings.

But the signature was real.

And next to it? A clause that had been deliberately omitted in the sanitized version she filed when she launched her company:

“In lieu of repayment, lender retains 30% creative equity stake in any future related entity.”

It wasn’t just a favor.

It was ownership.

This was the original sin. The debt that could ruin her if it ever saw daylight.

She’d buried it. Hid it. Thought she’d paid it off in silence. But Hale had never forgotten.

And now?

He was using it as leverage.

She closed the folder and opened the envelope.

A note. Three words.

He never left.

Aria swallowed.

Nathan had written that—weeks before the crash. It wasn’t about Hale’s cousin.

It was about Hale himself.

He’d never stopped circling her.

Never walked away.

Just waited.

She exited the vault, folder clutched to her chest.

Dominic looked up, ready to speak—but stopped when he saw her face.

“You found it.”

“I found everything.”

“Then we end this.”

But before she could respond, her phone buzzed.

A message. No number.

Nice try, Aria. You dig, I burn more. Next up? Your employees. Your investors. Your sister.

Attached: a photo.

Lila. Sitting in a café. Smiling. Unaware.

Aria looked up at Dominic, fury and fear boiling in her chest.

“He’s coming for her. Now.”

Dominic’s face turned to stone. “Then we move first.”

But Aria saw something else in his eyes.

Something he wasn’t saying.

Because while she’d been opening a box…

Dominic had been making a deal.