Chapter 29
JEREMIAH’S POV
I gripped the car wheel tightly while driving to save Aria, every muscle in my arms straining to hold back the storm inside me.
My knuckles were cracked from punching walls and cold metal during recovery, and now they were bleeding again, but I didn’t care. The moment I got word through one of Peter’s encrypted fallback channels that Aria had been taken by Elodie, my whole body went cold and my mind
went black.
Flashback–three weeks ago
“Sir, the coordinates don’t feel right,” my second–in–command, Roe, muttered just before the bir took off. “Pilot’s face ain’t on file either. Checked twice.”
I had a gut feeling something was off too. I should’ve backed out. I should’ve grounded the jet and ripped open every panel until I found the rot.
Instead, I told Roe, “Just double–check the security on the next op. We fly now.”
Ten minutes later, fire swallowed the sky.
had ten seconds to make a choice. I grabbed my emergency gear and dove straight out through the emergency chute, crashed into freezing water below, and let the whole world believe I diec with that plane.
spent the next three weeks holed up in a military clinic buried so deep off–grid that even the ghosts didn’t whisper. I had broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and thirty–six stitches across my back, but I still woke every damn night from dreams of Aria bleeding, begging, disappearing intc shadows I couldn’t reach.
The moment I was stable, I broke out, left everything behind, and started tracking her signal. I didn’t trust the Velenza satellite network before, but this time I wired it back online myself. If she eached for help, I’d feel it.
And then… she did.
Her voice came through the burner phone so faint I almost thought it was another goddamn hallucination. “Jeremiah… please save me. It’s… it’s me, Aria.”
I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Not yet. My throat locked up hearing her sound so broken.
But I traced the call the second she hung up.
Her signal pinged near the old mountain roads outside Elodie’s territory. Remote. Isolated. Nc cameras. No patrols. A perfect place to leave a woman to die.
I found her.
She was curled by the side of the road, her dress torn and soaked in blood. Her body looked too still, and for one second, I thought I was too late again. My chest cracked wide open.
I jumped out of the car and ran to her, dropped to my knees, and gathered her in my arms. Her pulse was weak. Her lips were cut. She smelled like metal and smoke.
“Aria,” I whispered into her hair, holding her tight against my chest. “Fuck, come back to me.”
4:56 pm DD
She stirred. Barely.
Then her arms wrapped around me, and she sobbed so hard my shirt soaked in seconds. I didn’t let go. I didn’t speak. I let her cry and just held her through it.
“I’m sorry,” I said into her temple. “I should’ve been faster.”
Her voice cracked. “Harvick’s dead.” I froze. She went on, slower this time. “Elodie ran. She escaped.”
My eyes stayed locked on the road behind us, but my rage sharpened again.
Then I said it, clear and final.
“No more mercy.”
Because she killed Peter. She tortured Aria. She took everything that made this woman feel human and tried to bury it. Now I’m taking everything from her. And this time, I’m not flying out.
I’m burning in.
I brought Aria to one of my most guarded safehouses, hidden deep in the northern cliffs where no signals reached unless I let them. Only five people knew about this place, and two of them were already dead. The rest were paid enough to disappear for life if they ever betrayed it. She hadn’t said much the first few days. Just quiet breathing and sharp eyes that scanned everything. Even in sleep, she twitched. Trauma made her flinch at shadows and reach for blades before thinking. But she never broke. She kept standing, kept walking, kept holding knives like they were the last things tethering her to this world.
One morning, I handed her something wrapped in dark cloth.
She opened it.
The black opal ring.
“It was recovered from the estate ruins,” I told her. “Thought you’d want to decide what to do with
it.”
She stared at it for a second. Her jaw clenched. Then she whispered, “I don’t need rings. I need her ruined.” And she threw it into the fire behind us. No hesitation. No regret.
That was the moment I knew I loved her. Not because she was soft. But because she wasn’t. Because she could be destroyed and still walk like the flames bent for her.
Later that week, I got a tip from a loyal inside the Ferrante chapel. Lara was holding a private service for Harvick. Closed doors. No press. Just the remaining elders and Elodie whispering poison into her ear. They fed her a story that Aria pulled the trigger, that revenge turned her into a killer, that she finished what fire failed to do.
I’d had enough.
So I walked into that church. No mask. No aliases. Just Jeremiah Ferrante in the flesh.
Every man at that table froze. A few went pale. One dropped his glass. Lara turned like a ghost was standing in front of her.
She whispered my name. “Jeremiah?”
4:56 pm DDED
I stepped forward, slow and clear. “You raised the wrong woman.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the bitch you call daughter–in–law. Elodie killed Harvick. Not Aria.”
“No,” she said, voice cracking. “No. She said…”
“She lied,” I snapped. “She faked cancer. She faked a child. She faked a family. And now you son’s rotting in the ground because you believed her instead of the woman he destroyed.”
Lara stumbled back. Her hands clutched her chest. She gasped, then collapsed to the floor.
I didn’t move. None of us did.
Doctors were called, chaos erupted, but within the hour, they confirmed it. Lara Ferrante was dead. Heart gave out.
stepped outside.
Aria was standing by the edge of the trees, cloaked and watching everything. She looked at me didn’t smile, didn’t speak. Just nodded.
Then she said it, voice low and even. “That’s what loving a lie does to you.”
walked to her, my coat heavy with the weight of names I planned to bury next.
Elodie’s next,” I said.
Aria’s hand slid into mine. “Good,” she said. “Because I want her to scream louder than I did.”
4:56 pm
ARIA’S POV
