He Gave My Daughter’s Heart to His Mistress’s Son Chapter 10

He Gave My Daughter’s Heart to His Mistress’s Son Chapter 10

For nine days, nothing.

Nine days of bodyguards and checked locks and Lily asking why we always took different roads to her checkups. Nine days of Grant being a ghost with a hammer, somewhere out there, choosing his moment

On the tenth day, my phone rang at 11 p.m. Unknown number Security protocol said don’t answer.

I answered.

“Aggie.” Grant’s voice. Hoarse, almost tender, using the nickname from when we were twenty-two and he had/ holes in his shoes. “Do you remember our first apartment? The one with the radiator that sang?”

“Where are you, Grant?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. Where it went wrong. And I figured it out.” A wet, unsteady laugh. “It’s Sloane. It was always Sloane. She faked the test that made me doubt Lily. She lied about Noah. She’s the reason I gave the heart away. If you do the math, Aria-really do the math-she killed everything. Not me. I was

just another one of her victims.”

Cold crawled up my spine. “Grant. What did you do?”

“I’m going to send you an address,” he said. “Come alone. I’m going to give you justice, Aggie. A gift. And then you’re going to forgive me, and we’re going to start over.”

“Grant-”

“Come alone, or the gift gets ruined.”

He hung up. The address arrived: a decommissioned Hale Holdings warehouse by the river.

I did not go alone. I want that on the record, for every woman reading this: I did not go alone. I went with my father’s entire security team deployed in the dark around that warehouse, with police already rolling silent,

with a wire under my coat. I walked through that door alone because the negotiator said a hostage situation needed me visible-but I was never, for one second, actually alone.

That mattered. It was the whole difference between the old Aria and the new one.

Inside, under a single hanging work light, Sloane Hale was zip-tied to a chair.

Her face was bruised. Her diamond studs were gone. When she saw me, she made a sound I’ll hear for the rest of my life. “Aria. Aria, please. Call the police. He’s insane. Please.”

“Where is he?” I said, loudly, for the wire.

“Right here.”

Grant stepped out of the dark, and I almost didn’t recognize him. The beautiful surgeon was gone What stood there was gaunt and gray-skinned, eyes fever-bright, and in his right hand, swinging gently, was the hammer.

“You came,” he breathed, and smiled, and the smile was the worst part, because it was genuinely happy. knew you would. You always come through, Aggie. It’s why I picked you.”

“Picked me.”

“At twenty-two. Out of everyone.” He said it like a compliment. “I always knew quality. And then she-” the hammer flicked toward Sloane, who flinched so hard the chair scraped, “-corrupted everything. So here’s my gift, Aria. The woman who destroyed our family, delivered for judgment. You say the word. Anything you want

done to her. And then the books are balanced, and you forgive me, and we go home.”

“Aria,” Sloane sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it, the test, the heart, the threats-please.”

And here is the thing: I had hated this woman with everything in me. She’d helped steal my daughter’s heart. She’d smiled while threatening Lily’s life.

But I looked at her zip-tied to that chair, and I felt nothing Grant wanted me to feel.

“Let her go, Grant,” I said. “She’s going to prison anyway. The federal case-”

“Prison?” The happiness drained from his face. “Prison isn’t justice. Don’t you understand what I’m offering

you? I’m giving up everything-my last chance to run-to give you this. Again I sacrifice for you, and again

you’re ungrateful-”

“You took my gratitude,” I said, very quietly, “and used it as a leash for eleven years. It’s gone, Grant. There’s

nothing left to pull.”

His face went through grief, then confusion, then arrived somewhere flat and final.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, Aggie. Then I’ll take what’s yours after all.”

He raised the hammer-and turned toward me.

“Starting with that face he likes so much.”

He charged.