The silence in the Moreau estate wasn't peaceful.
It was the kind that held its breath—like the walls themselves were listening.
Aria lay in bed staring at the ceiling, arms folded over her stomach, her mind still buzzing from dinner. The weight of the chandelier lights, Juliet's trembling fury, the way Vincent hadn't looked away once when the silence cracked in two—she'd held it all in like oxygen, but it refused to exhale. It pulsed beneath her skin now, raw and unfinished.
She couldn't sleep.
Her room, though grand, felt wrong. Too polished. Too clean. It didn't smell like her. It didn't know her. The drapes were too thick, the sheets too starched. Even the clock on the wall ticked with the rhythm of someone else's life.
She rose quietly, the floor cool beneath her feet as she slid on a soft robe and cracked the door.
The hallway was dim. The sconces glowed like fading memories, casting gold pools across the marble. A draft stirred the edge of the curtains that hung at the end of the corridor, moonlight spilling through the tall windows like something secret.
She padded down the hall, careful to avoid the patches of floor she remembered creaked—though no one had told her where they were, she somehow still remembered.
The estate was vast, but the air tonight made it feel narrow. Every shadow felt closer than it should have been. Every painting she passed seemed to watch her leave her room like she had no right to wander.
As she reached the grand staircase, her steps slowed.
A low voice echoed from behind a nearby door.
She stopped.
Vincent's study.
Her bare feet stilled on the marble, every nerve alert. She inched closer to the door tucked slightly open, the edge of it framing warm light and murmuring shadows.
She didn't need to press her ear to the door. They weren't exactly shouting—but there was enough heat in the tone that the tension carried.
"…dragging her in from nowhere—it's humiliating," Isabelle hissed.
Aria froze.
Isabelle again, voice sharp and clean as glass about to break. "She doesn't belong here, Vincent. That girl is a ghost from a mistake you've spent years burying. And now you parade her through the dining room like some pet project?"
Vincent's voice followed—gravel-worn, quiet, and absolute.
"It's already decided. She stays."
Isabelle laughed once, brittle and vicious. "Because you say so?"
"Because she's my daughter." A pause. Then—lower: "Equally. Whether you like it or not."
Aria felt the floor shift beneath her. Not literally. But the words echoed so hard in her chest it took a second for her to breathe through them.
Isabelle scoffed. "You're using her. Don't pretend otherwise. You dragged her in to spite me."
"She is here because she should have always been here," Vincent replied, voice flat now. Final. "I am tired of pretending her existence is something shameful."
"Then what am I, Vincent?" Isabelle's voice trembled—not with pain, but fury. "A placeholder? A cover?"
"You are exactly what you made yourself to be," he said.
Silence followed. It wasn't empty.
It was thick with things Aria couldn't see—but she felt the temperature of the air shift.
Then a chair scraped loudly against hardwood.
Footsteps followed.
Aria's heart snapped to her throat.
She turned quickly, ducking behind the nearest column, pressing her back against the cold marble. Breath held. Barely breathing.
Isabelle's heels clacked against the floor. Her shadow passed through the doorway—elegant, stiff, burning.
She didn't pause.
Didn't see Aria.
The footsteps disappeared down the hall, swallowed by silence again.
Aria leaned her head back against the column, her pulse loud in her ears.
She had no idea how long she stayed there.
Minutes.
Long enough for her breathing to settle. Long enough for the words to echo back in her own voice.
She is equally my daughter…
She didn't know if it felt like vindication or a trap.
Maybe both.
She stepped away from the column slowly, her hands cold, her thoughts colder.
Whatever loyalty Vincent had claimed, whatever stake he'd placed in her name—it had come late. So late. But it had come.
And someone like Isabelle would never forgive that.