Chapter 380: Secrets
The sound of her voice cut through the chaos like something clean.
I froze.
The room that had felt like a cage seconds ago broke open. Andrew’s smirk was still there, blood pooling at the corner of his mouth, eyes glittering like he’d won something invisible, but all I could see was her. Aria, standing far away, the color drained from her face, dark hair clinging to her cheeks, eyes wide and glassy with something I couldn’t name.
Her voice shook as she called me again, closer now, and when her hand found mine, I let her take me. She didn’t say a word; she just dragged me through the mess I’d made, past the staring faces and the sound of glass crunching under my shoes. Sarah was behind her somewhere, calling her name, but Aria didn’t stop. She didn’t even look back.
The air outside hit me like punishment, cold, sharp, filled with rain that clung to skin like oil. She led me through the side exit toward the underground garage, her hand still tight around mine, until we reached the car.
"Keys," she said, breathless.
"It’s fine. I’ll drive."
Her eyes flicked to me, wet, trembling. "Are you sure?"
I nodded, opening her door for her, and for a moment, she just stared at me like she didn’t recognize the person standing there. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t recognize myself either.
When we got in, the rain was coming down in thick sheets, the kind that blurred the city into streaks of light and sound. The wipers moved, steady and slow. Neither of us spoke. The silence pressed in from all sides, heavy with all the words neither of us could manage to find.
I could still feel the blood on my hands, not physically, but somewhere deeper, the echo of it under my skin. My thoughts were a mess of old ghosts and new mistakes.
Andrew’s voice replayed in my head, that smirk curling around his words like smoke. Is that why you tried to kill me once?
And for a second, I was there again.
The pool.
The water.
The small body thrashing while I stood frozen on the edge, torn between saving him and letting the silence swallow him whole. The moment our father’s voice came, cold and unimpressed. The same voice that told me later, Sentiment makes you weak. People are either useful or they’re not.
That same cold had never really left. Maybe it never would. Maybe that’s why I’d always been good at breaking things. People. Lives.
Maybe that’s why I’d been built to ruin everything I touched.
Including her.
The thought sank its claws in and wouldn’t let go. My grip on the steering wheel tightened, my jaw locked. Aria’s reflection flickered in the window, small, fragile, too good for what sat next to her.
"Kael," she said softly, breaking the silence. "Are you okay?"
Her voice reached me like a tether I didn’t know how to hold.
"I’m fine," I lied, though my pulse still thundered in my ears.
"You’re not," she said immediately, shaking her head. "You’re shaking."
"I’m fine, Aria."
She turned toward me, eyes full of that quiet kind of desperation that always made me falter. "Then how am I supposed to help you?" she asked, voice breaking. "How am I supposed to be anything to you if you won’t let me in?"
I couldn’t look at her. My chest felt too tight.
"I can handle it," I said, but the words sounded small even to me.
She leaned closer, trembling. "You don’t have to handle everything alone, Kael. You can’t keep shutting me out every time something happens. I’m not made of glass."
Her words hit something deep, something that ached to answer, to open up, to tell her about everything, the pool, the father, the blood that wouldn’t wash off, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, it felt like I was pulling a gun on the only person who’d ever looked at me like I was worth saving.
"Aria..." I started, my voice rough, low, and maybe this time I really would’ve told her...
... but my phone vibrated.
It was almost a relief at first, the distraction. I thought it’d be Niko, maybe something about the press or the police or Andrew, but when I glanced at the screen, the number wasn’t saved.
Just a message.
> By the way, did you know?
Aria lost a baby.
A month ago.
It was why she was admitted into the hospital. I guess she still doesn’t trust you Mr. Roman.
The words didn’t make sense at first. They just sat there, glowing faintly in the dark car like a threat.
Then the world went still.
The rain stopped sounding like rain. The lights outside blurred into nothing. My throat tightened, and the breath caught halfway to my lungs, like something inside me had seized.
I turned toward her, slow, mechanical, unable to speak, unable to even think properly, just that one sentence looping over and over, every word cutting deeper than the last.
And she was still looking at me, worried, her hand half-raised like she was about to touch me, ask me again what was wrong.
And I...
I couldn’t even breathe.
The rain had begun to fall harder, hammering the roof until it drowned out every other sound. I didn’t even realize I’d slowed down until the headlights dimmed against the fog, and the city faded behind the curtain of water. My hands were still on the wheel, but I wasn’t really driving anymore.
The phone was burning in my palm.
That one message sitting there, still open, still pulsing like a vein under the glow of the dashboard light.
I pulled over, the tires cutting into the shallow puddle on the roadside. The car went still. My chest didn’t.
For a while, I just sat there. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt worse.
And then the memories started bleeding back.
The day she collapsed,
That sterile hospital room, the white too bright, the beeping too steady. She’d looked so small under the sheets, pale as chalk, her lips cracked like she’d forgotten how to breathe properly.
The doctor’s words had been vague back then, stress, exhaustion, minor internal complications. I didn’t ask more because I’d been too busy being afraid she might not recover.
And when she did, she smiled. Softly. Weakly.
Like she was trying to convince me she was fine when she wasn’t even close to fine.
And now I knew why. It all suddenly made sense.
My fingers clenched around the phone. The sound of the rain filled the car like static.
It was a baby.
Our baby.
And she hadn’t told me.
The thought sliced through everything else.
She’d carried that pain, every ache, every tremor, every silent cry by herself. She’d gone through that loss alone. And I hadn’t even known. I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t even deserved to be there.
But it gutted me anyway.
Because if it was mine, if that child was ours, then what kind of man was I that she couldn’t trust me with it? What kind of monster had I made myself into that she chose silence over me?
My jaw locked, and my throat burned. I didn’t even realize I was shaking until the phone slipped from my grip and landed on the console.
Everything crawled up inside my chest, shame, grief, anger, all tangled together until I couldn’t tell which was which. I wanted to hit something, scream, drive until I disappeared. But all I could do was sit there and breathe through the wreckage.
The voice in my head, the one I couldnt stop, whispered...
Of course she didn’t tell you. Why would she? You’ve killed before. You break things. You destroy. She was protecting what was left of her from you.
My breath hitched, and I pressed a fist against my mouth, like that could hold everything back. But it didn’t. It never did.
"Kael?"
Her voice came small from beside me, soft, confused. She’d noticed the car had stopped. She was turned toward me now, brows knitting, worry breaking through that brave calm she always wore.
"What’s wrong?" she asked again, and that question, the simplest, kindest thing... unraveled me completely.
Before I could stop myself, before I could think, the words were already out.
"Is it true?"
She blinked, startled. "What?"
I swallowed hard. My voice came out raw, cracking.
"Is it true that you lost a baby?"
I turned toward her, my heart clawing up my throat. "My baby, Aria?"
The air went dead between us. The rain blurred the windows into a moving wall of silver, and the only sound left was her breath catching, small, sharp, almost breaking.
And I just sat there, waiting, every muscle in my body locked, terrified of what she’d say next.
The rain was still coming down in sheets, drumming against the car roof like a thousand whispered accusations, each drop a reminder of something I didn’t want to think about. The glow from the streetlamps blurred across the windshield, slicing her face in soft amber light, and that was when I saw it.
The look.
That small, dreadful shift in her expression that told me everything I didn’t want to believe.
She didn’t have to say a word, I saw it in her eyes first. The shock, the guilt, the silent plea that I’d take the words back, pretend I hadn’t asked.
"How..." her voice cracked, barely audible over the rain, "how do you know that?"
I stared at her. My heart was pounding so loud I could barely hear my own thoughts. But I didn’t answer her question, I couldn’t. It didn’t matter how I knew. It mattered that she had hidden it.
"How could you keep it from me?" The words came out low, rough. "How could you do that to me, Aria?"
She flinched at my tone, tears instantly welling in her eyes. "Kael, please—"
"No," I cut in, shaking my head, voice sharp. "You lost our child, and I had to find out from someone else. You think I wouldn’t have known? You think I wouldn’t have wanted to be there?"
Her lips trembled, and she shook her head, almost helplessly. "Who told you?" she asked again, her voice breaking around the edges.
"Does it matter?" I snapped. "Does any of that matter now?"
"Yes," she said, louder this time, tears falling freely now. "Because I wasn’t ready—" Her breath hitched. "I wasn’t ready for you to find out. Not like this."
I laughed... a short, hollow sound that didn’t even sound like me. "So what, you were just going to keep it from me forever?"
Her silence, that hesitation was all the answer I needed.
"You really were," I muttered, staring at her like I didn’t even know who she was anymore. "You were really trying to keep me from knowing."
Her chin trembled, guilt spreading across her face like a stain. "Kael—"
"Were you ever going to tell me?" I asked again, my voice trembling now with something that wasn’t quite anger, wasn’t quite heartbreak. it was both, twisted together. "Was I that much of a piece of shit to you that you couldn’t say a single word about this?"
She shook her head, whispering, "No, it’s not like that—"
"Then what is it, Aria?" I leaned closer, voice breaking under the weight of it all. "Why did you have to carry all that grief by yourself? Why didn’t you let me carry it with you?"
Her silent sob filled the small space between us, soft, raw, shaking .... and I hated myself for every tear that fell because of me. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop seeing the image of her alone in that hospital bed, fragile, broken, terrified, and me somewhere else, thinking she’d only fainted, while she’d been losing our baby.
It was too much.
I turned away from her before I could say something worse, because I could feel the anger inside me morphing into something darker, something aimed at myself this time.
My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white, eyes burning with tears that refused to be shed.
And all I could think was that somehow, even now, even after everything, I was still losing her.