Chapter 9 - THE DEAD MAN BREATHINGFor seven years, Aria had grieved a grave.
She had spoken to polished stone on birthdays. She had placed white roses beneath a name carved too deeply. She had whispered apologies into winter air because Victoria told her Richard Montgomery died disappointed in her.
Now her father sat ten feet away, breathing.
Alive.
Broken.
Used as a weapon.
Aria moved before thought could stop her.
Ethan caught her around the waist and pulled her back just as one of Victoria’s men raised a gun.
“Don’t,” Ethan said against her ear.
Aria struggled once, then stopped.
Her father’s eyes found hers.
He looked older than he should have. Too thin. His hands trembled in his lap. A scar cut through one eyebrow. But beneath the damage, beneath the years stolen from him, he was still her father.
His lips moved.
Run.
Victoria saw.
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder.
“How touching,” she said. “I wondered whether you would recognize him.”
Aria’s voice came out raw. “What did you do to him?”
“What I had to.”
“You kept him prisoner.”
“I kept him alive.”
The sentence landed like poison.
Victoria stepped into the chapel, confident because she knew everyone inside cared whether Richard died. Men like Vance used greed. Victoria used love.
“The accident should have ended cleanly,” she said. “But Richard was stubborn. Even half-dead, he kept breathing. Vance wanted him finished. I convinced him a living signature was more useful.”
Aria shook.
“A living signature?”
“Power of attorney forms. Transfer approvals. Medical authorizations. Board directives.” Victoria smiled faintly. “Your father protected his empire with paperwork. I took it the same way.”
Ethan’s voice was cold enough to cut glass. “You just confessed in front of witnesses.”
Victoria laughed. “Witnesses trapped in an illegal search of private property? A traumatized girl? A business rival? Please, Mr. Cross. I expected better.”
Ethan’s eyes flicked toward Marcus.
Almost invisible.
Aria noticed because she had spent years surviving Victoria’s rooms by noticing things.
Marcus’s left hand moved near his jacket.
Recording.
Victoria did not see.
She looked only at Aria.
“You think he was coming back for you?” Victoria asked softly. “He barely remembered your name some days. Drugs are cruel that way.”
Richard made a sound. Pain. Protest.
Aria’s heart cracked.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” Victoria leaned closer. “Ask him where he was when you screamed yourself hoarse after the funeral. Ask him why he signed away your guardianship. Ask him why every doctor called you unstable when you begged to see his body.”
Aria’s eyes burned.
Ethan stepped forward. “Enough.”
Victoria’s attention snapped to him. “This is family business.”
“No,” Ethan said. “This is organized crime wearing pearls.”
For the first time, Victoria’s smile vanished.
One of her men raised his weapon higher.
“Drop yours,” Victoria ordered.
Ethan had not drawn a gun, but two of his men had.
Seconds stretched.
Aria looked at her father again.
His right hand twitched against the wheelchair armrest. Not randomly. Patterned.
Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap.
Aria’s breath caught.
When she was little, Richard taught her Morse code during long flights.
A game, he had called it.
For secret princesses and bored fathers.
Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap.
D.
Then another pattern.
O.
W.
N.
Down.
Aria looked down.
At the chapel floor beneath the pew nearest Victoria.
A metal grate.
Richard’s fingers moved again.
Now.
Aria understood only one thing: her father had been waiting too.
She dropped suddenly, sweeping her injured foot into the side of the nearest pew. Pain shot up her leg, but the pew crashed sideways into Victoria’s guard.
Ethan moved at the same instant.
Gunfire exploded.
Aria threw herself beneath the pews as Marcus tackled Victoria’s second man. Ethan slammed into the first, driving him into the wall. Victoria screamed, not in fear but fury, and pulled a small pistol from inside her coat.
She aimed at Richard.
Aria saw the barrel.
Everything inside her went silent.
She crawled forward and grabbed Victoria’s ankle.
Victoria fell hard.
The gun fired.
The bullet struck the chapel ceiling.
Dust rained down.
Richard’s wheelchair tipped.
Ethan caught it before it fell.
Marcus pinned Victoria to the ground. For one savage second, the perfect woman in black silk clawed at the dirty chapel floor like an animal.
“Get your hands off me!” she screamed.
Aria pushed herself up, shaking, bleeding through one bandage.
She walked to her father.
Richard lifted a trembling hand.
Aria took it.
His fingers were cold and fragile.
“Dad,” she sobbed.
His eyes filled with tears.
“My winter rose,” he whispered.
Aria broke.
She folded over his hand and cried in a way she had not cried since seventeen—without silence, without shame, without Victoria’s permission.
Ethan stood beside them, breathing hard, blood on his knuckles.
For a few seconds, there was only reunion.
Then Richard’s hand tightened.
Weak, urgent.
“Not safe,” he rasped.
Aria lifted her head.
“What?”
His eyes moved to the chapel wall.
Behind the old cabinets, a red light began blinking.
Ethan saw it.
May you like
“Move!”
The explosion hit before anyone reached the door.
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