For three long seconds, nobody moved.
The gallery was nothing but marble and breath and the steady, traitorous pounding in Aria's ears. From her narrow strip of shadow behind the pillar, she could see Damien in profile, the sharp cut of his jaw, the phone still pressed loosely to his ear.
The vault door behind her was open. The Seraphim Serum sat ten steps away, locked in its glass cradle, humming faintly with cold.
Ten steps. A lifetime.
Above, the vent rattled once, then went silent. Leo had learned his lesson. No more clumsy sounds. But his fear tasted thick in the air, metallic and young. If Aria could smell it, Damien could drown in it.
"Damien?" Elena's voice buzzed from the phone. "You went quiet. Is there a problem with the Council audit? If this is about the unauthorized Wolfsbane, I can spin it, but you have to give me something to work with."
Damien's eyes tracked slowly across the room. He was not looking at the open vault. He was not looking at the vent. He was following an invisible trail only he could see.
Scent. Heat. Heartbeat.
"No problem," he said finally, his voice calm. Too calm. He lowered the phone, breaking the call without another word. "I have a security anomaly. I'll call you back."
He slid the phone into his pocket.
Aria held her breath until her lungs burned. Blood roared in her ears. She loosened her grip on the tranquilizer gun before it snapped in her hands.
He took a single step toward the pillar.
"Moonflowers," he murmured again, more certain now. The word was almost a curse. "You were always terrible at hiding from me, Aria."
She could not see his face from this angle, but she could hear the change in his voice. The anger wasn't there. Something worse was.
Certainty.
He knew.
A faint chime buzzed from the control panel beside the vault. A notification blinked red: ACCESS LOG UPDATED.
Damien's gaze flicked toward it. His jaw tightened. He exhaled through his nose.
"Unauthorized vault entry," he said softly. "Override from an unregistered biological signature. Access granted at Matriarch level."
He turned his head, just enough that Aria could see the cold curve of his mouth.
"Curious."
Up in the vent, Leo's fingers flew over his tablet, trying to close log windows, erase traces, anything. The interface flashed back at him: LOCAL LOG FILE LOCKED. REMOTE EDITING DISABLED.
Damien had taken manual control.
"Mom," Leo whispered down the shaft, so quiet she almost didn't hear him. "We're cooked."
Aria swallowed. Her throat was dry.
If she stayed hidden, he would drag her out. If she tried to run, the vault sensors would scream. The only choice left was the one she hated most.
Walk into the light.
"Come out," Damien said. He wasn't shouting. That was not his style. His voice was low, conversational, like they were in his kitchen, not in front of a vault she had just cracked open. "And tell your son to stop trying to pick a fight with my servers. He is going to bruise his ego."
Aria shut her eyes for a heartbeat.
For Mia.
She slid the tranquilizer gun back into her boot, pushed herself upright, and stepped out from behind the pillar.
The change in his expression was minute, but she saw it. His shoulders stiffened. His eyes sharpened.
"Aria," he said, as if tasting the name. "I thought you were sleeping."
"I was," she said. Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. "I walk in my sleep now. Very inconvenient."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not amusement. Something sharper.
"You picked the most secure room in the building to do it in," he said. "Strange route. Did you enjoy the ventilation system?"
"Not particularly."
His gaze dropped to her clothes. Black turtleneck, leggings, bare feet in soft-soled shoes. No jewelry. No loose hair. Nothing a person could grab.
Not an outfit for sleep.
"Leo," Damien said, raising his voice a fraction. "You have ten seconds to get out of that vent before I gas the shaft. The fire suppression system is tied into the oxygen feed."
There was a beat of silence.
Then Leo's head appeared in the opening, his hair dusty, glasses askew. He stared down at Damien, then at his mother.
"You do not have gas in the vents," Leo said, trying for bravado and almost making it. "That would violate three building codes and a few war crime treaties."
"Five seconds," Damien replied.
Leo exhaled sharply and dropped the last few feet, landing beside Aria with more courage than grace. He hugged the tablet to his chest like a shield.
Damien looked at the two of them. Mother and son. Both dressed in black. Both covered in dust and stubbornness.
A family of thieves.
"You picked a bad night to test my patience," he said quietly.
Aria stepped slightly in front of Leo without thinking. Damien's eyes flicked to the movement, then back to her face.
"This isn't what it looks like," she said.
His gaze went past her to the open vault door. Then to the cryo-case on its pedestal, the contents glowing a cold, important blue.
"It looks," Damien said, "like you broke into my vault for the most valuable serum on this continent."
Aria lifted her chin. There was no point denying that part.
"I did."
Leo shifted at her side. "It was my idea," he said quickly. "She told me not to, but I—"
"Leo," Aria snapped. "Not now."
Damien watched the exchange, filing it away. "The retinal scan logs show my clearance pattern. The voice print reads as me. But the biological signature that forced the override was not mine."
He took a slow step closer, studying her.
"The system called you Matriarch," he said. "Care to explain that, Aria?"
She felt the weight of the word settle on her shoulders like a cloak. Matriarch. The machine had said it in that flat, indifferent voice, but she had felt something reach back at her. A recognition she did not understand.
"I do not know what it means," she answered truthfully.
He searched her face for a lie. Whatever he saw there made his jaw clench.
"Of course you do not," he said. "You never wanted this world."
He brushed past them, walking toward the open vault. Aria's muscles locked.
"Damien, do not—"
He stepped through the door.
Every instinct in her screamed to bolt after him, grab the vial, run. She forced herself to stand still. Leo's hand found hers and squeezed hard.
Damien stopped in front of the cryo-case. The serum sat in its cradle, a tiny glass cylinder filled with something that looked almost alive. It pulsed faintly, lit from within by a blue-white glow.
He pressed his palm to the biometric pad on the side of the case. It scanned his heat, his handprint, his genetic markers. The locks disengaged with a sharp hiss.
He did not pick the vial up. He just stared at it.
"You were going to use it," Aria said, surprising herself. "On Mia."
"Yes," he said without turning. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow might be too late."
"So instead of asking, you decided to steal it."
"You do not exactly have a great track record with my trust, Damien," she said. "The last time I told you I was pregnant, I got divorce papers."
Leo let out a small, shocked breath. He was hearing this in full for the first time. Damien's shoulders went rigid.
"I did not know," he said quietly.
"You knew enough," Aria shot back. "Enough to get rid of the inconvenient mate before the Council could question your alliances."
He turned then, slowly. The expression on his face was not rage. It was something emptier. The look of a man who had been replaying the same night in his mind for five years and was only now seeing the edges.
"This conversation," he said, "will not happen in front of my vault."
He reached into the cryo-case and lifted the vial carefully between two fingers. The glow reflected in his eyes, turning them pale and almost inhuman.
Aria's heart lurched. Leo tightened his grip on her hand hard enough to hurt.
"Please," Aria said, the word ripping out of her before she could swallow it. "Do not play with this. Do not use it as a leash. She will die without it."
He looked at the vial, then at her.
"You think I do not understand that?"
"Do you?" Her voice shook now, the composure cracking. "You froze my accounts. You locked me out of hospitals. You turned this city into a cage and then act surprised that I am clawing at the bars."
"You ran," he said. "You ran with my children and did not look back."
"You handed me a pen and asked me to sign away my life," she said. "What exactly did you expect me to do? Send you a postcard from the delivery room?"
Leo looked between them, pale.
Damien's fingers tightened around the vial. For a moment, she thought it might crack in his grip.
"Enough," he said, forcing the word out. "We are not doing this in front of him."
He stepped out of the vault, moving past them to the panel by the door. He entered a new code, quick and sure. The heavy steel began to swing shut.
"Wait," Aria said, panic flaring. "What are you doing?"
"Securing the vault," he said. "And removing the one thing in this building you are desperate enough to break yourself on."
The door thudded into place. The bolts drove home with a final, echoing boom.
Damien turned back to them, the vial still in his hand.
"You want this," he said. "Good. So do I."
Leo frowned. "You need a medicine you cannot even metabolize?"
"This serum is not for me," Damien said. "It is for Mia. It always was."
Aria searched his face. There was no lie there. Only cold conviction.
"Then give it to me," she said. "I will take it to her."
"No."
The refusal was a wall she slammed into at full speed.
"No?" she repeated. "What do you mean, no?"
"I mean," he said, stepping closer until there were only three paces between them, "that you have already proven you are willing to disappear with my children the second I turn my back. You do not trust me. I do not trust you. So the serum stays with me until Mia is in a controlled environment and every dosage is monitored."
"You think I will poison my own daughter?"
"I think you are exhausted, desperate, and operating on half-remembered street recipes from the Underground," he said bluntly. "You are not a doctor, Aria. You are not Dr. Aris. You are a thief who just broke into my vault and hijacked a system you do not even understand."
Leo bristled. "She is not the only one who hijacked it."
Damien glanced down at him. "You and I will have a separate conversation about federal cybercrime statutes."
Leo rolled his eyes. "You do not scare me."
"Liar," Damien said mildly.
They stared at each other, mirror-gray eyes locked. Something passed between them, something sharp and unwillingly familiar. Aria could almost see it: the same stubborn streak, the same refusal to look away first.
She stepped between them.
"Stop measuring whose temper is worse," she said. "We do not have time for that."
Damien's gaze slid back to her. "On that, we agree."
He slid the vial into the inner pocket of his sweater, close to his heart. The move was instinctive, protective.
"Here are the terms," he said. "You and Leo go back to the East Wing. You do not touch another vent, panel, or lock in this building. You do not leave the penthouse level without my authorization. You do not contact anyone outside."
"And if we refuse?" Aria asked.
Damien didn't blink. "Then I hand Leo over to the authorities for corporate espionage and I petition for emergency custody of Mia based on your inability to provide medical care. I have the lawyers to do it, Aria. Don't make me use them."
Aria stared at him. "Those are not terms," she said. "Those are bars."
"Call them what you like," he said. "But I am done pretending this is anything other than what it is. My children are in my territory now. I will not apologize for acting like it."
"Territory," Aria repeated, disgusted. "You talk about them like assets on a balance sheet."
"If they were just assets," he said quietly, "I would not be standing here freezing in a sweater at three in the morning holding the last vial of a medicine that can kill me if I mishandle it."
Silence settled between them.
Leo shifted his weight. He looked at Aria, eyes wide behind his glasses. He was a genius, but right now, he was just a little boy who was out of moves.
She swallowed hard. Every cell in her body pushed back against the idea of surrender. She had survived five years by never handing control back to this man.
But Mia's face flashed in her mind. The way she had clung to his coat. The way her small body had burned.
For Mia.
"Fine," Aria said. The word tasted like broken glass. "You win. We stay. You control the serum."
A muscle jumped in his cheek.
"This is not about winning," he said.
"Of course it is," she shot back. "Winning is the only language you speak."
"Go back upstairs," he said, ignoring the barb. "Get cleaned up. There is dust all over you. Dr. Aris will be here at dawn."
"One more thing," Aria said.
He raised a brow.
"If you ever gas the ventilation shafts," she said, "I will bring this building down around your ears."
He considered her for a long moment. Then, to her surprise, he nodded once.
"Noted."
He stepped aside, giving them a clear path to the doors.
Leo tugged at her hand. "Mom."
She hesitated, then turned away from the closed vault and the man guarding it. They walked toward the exit, the marble cold under their feet.
At the threshold, Aria stopped and looked back.
"Damien," she said.
He met her gaze.
"You said the system called me Matriarch," she said. "If that is true… you might want to ask yourself why your tower thinks someone else outranks you."
His eyes darkened, just a fraction.
"Trust me," he said. "That question is already at the top of my list."
She held his stare for one last second, then turned and walked out with Leo at her side.
Behind them, the gallery lights dimmed. Alone in the silence, Damien stood in front of his sealed vault, one hand pressed flat against the heavy door, the other resting over the pocket where the serum lay.
Matriarch.
The word curled in his mind like smoke. Somewhere above, his daughter slept under his abandoned coat, her body a war zone of bloodlines he barely understood.
For the first time in years, Damien Sinclair felt something he did not like to name.
Not anger. Not control.
The thin edge of fear.