Aria knew she was being watched.
She could feel it—in the way the staff flinched, how her devices moved ever-so-slightly when she wasn't looking, how footsteps echoed just a beat too long behind hers.
Lucien was getting nervous.
Good.
She sat at the piano in the east wing—half playing, half thinking. The melody drifted like smoke: soft, broken, beautiful.
"Cameras in the walls. Mics in the lamps. How quaint," she murmured, pressing one dissonant key.
She'd grown up under surveillance. Her father had taught her young: "If they're watching you, they're wasting time. Feed them lies and keep the truth buried."
So she did.
That morning, she had taken a call in the garden—loud enough for the nearby "gardener" to overhear.
"I found the files. Elias hid them before he died. They prove Lucien's hand in it."
She let the words hang in the air. False. Twisted. Poisoned bait.
Then she hung up and smiled at the roses.
Let him bite.
---
Lucien watched the footage in silence.
She'd said it too easily. Too clearly. And yet something in his gut coiled wrong.
He played the clip again.
This time, he noticed it.
The way she glanced toward the bush beside her. Just once. Deliberate. Fast.
She wanted him to hear it.
"She's playing me," he muttered.
But the question was—why?
---
That night, Aria stood in the hallway outside Lucien's bedroom.
She didn't knock.
Just stared at the door—the one she was forbidden to enter.
Then she slid something under it.
A note, handwritten in sharp black ink.
"You want to hunt me? Fine. But don't be surprised when you end up caged, too."
Then she walked away.
Smiling.