A Deal with Darkness

The rain had returned to the city, as if it too remembered the night Aria died.

Not the physical death. No — her body still lived, though barely. But the girl she was? The obedient daughter, the devoted fiancée, the good woman trying to win love with loyalty? She had been buried the day her world collapsed.

And now, a different Aria was being born.

⸻

Lucien watched her from across the rooftop.

She stood barefoot on the cold tiles of the penthouse balcony, rain soaking through the thin white tank top and sweats she wore like second skin. Hair dripping, chest heaving, eyes closed — like she was trying to feel something. Anything.

“I don’t sleep anymore,” she said suddenly, not looking at him.

Lucien said nothing. The wind carried her words to him anyway.

“I dream of fire. Of my mother laughing while I screamed. Of Daniel’s voice when he said he loved me — and then signed the papers to have me committed.”

She turned, her eyes bloodshot but steady. “Do you know what it’s like to be betrayed by everyone who ever said they loved you?”

Lucien walked forward slowly. He didn’t answer until he was only inches away from her.

“Yes,” he said.

⸻

She should’ve asked him more.

But she was too broken to care about anyone else’s pain.

So instead, she whispered, “Teach me. I want to become someone they don’t see coming. Someone they can’t touch.”

Lucien’s gaze didn’t waver. “Are you sure? You can’t unlearn what I’ll teach you.”

Aria stepped forward, almost touching his chest. “Good.”

⸻

The training began before sunrise.

Lucien didn’t go easy on her.

He taught her how to fight — not like a soldier, but like someone with nothing left to lose.

“How do you think they’ll come for you?” he asked, throwing a wooden baton at her head. She ducked barely in time.

“Lawyers. Hired thugs. Smiles with knives. Be ready for all of it.”

She fell. Got up. Fell again. He didn’t help her.

He only watched.

Until one morning, she didn’t fall.

And he nodded.

“You’re becoming dangerous, Aria.”

She bled from her knuckles. She smiled through it.

“That’s the point.”

⸻

In the evenings, he made her read.

Files. Contracts. Shell companies tied to her father. Offshore accounts tied to her mother’s “charity.” Fake invoices Daniel had forged in her name.

“Everything they built was on your back,” Lucien said one night, pointing to a spreadsheet showing how Daniel had siphoned funds through her trust.

She stared at the screen, eyes burning.

He handed her a pen.

“You ready to start burning it all down?”

Aria signed the order.

The first domino fell.

⸻

Within a week, Aria’s father was under government audit.

“Anonymous sources” had leaked documents to the Internal Revenue Service, implicating him in years of corporate fraud and foreign tax evasion.

He was pulled from his own board. Stripped of his CEO title. News outlets flooded with headlines. The empire he had built off Aria’s inheritance began to crumble.

She watched the footage with a cold glass of Coke in her hand.

Lucien sat beside her on the couch.

“They’ll think this is just bad luck,” he said.

“Until it’s not,” she replied.

Lucien looked over at her.

“You’ve changed.”

She turned to face him, her voice low. “No. I’m finally being who I should’ve been all along.”

⸻

The next night, she collapsed.

Not physically — mentally. Emotionally. The toll of becoming a weapon weighed on her chest.

Lucien found her curled in the corner of the training room, shaking. Not crying — too numb even for that.

He didn’t speak.

Just sat beside her in silence.

Minutes passed.

“I still remember the smell of roses,” she whispered.

Lucien looked at her.

“The ones my mother had delivered the day I was dragged out of my engagement party in handcuffs. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t ask questions. She just turned away.”

Lucien’s fists clenched.

“You don’t need to remember that anymore.”

She turned to him slowly.

“But I want to.”

He didn’t understand.

“I want to remember it. Burn it into me. So I never go soft again.”

Lucien leaned his head back against the wall.

“Then let it fuel you.”

⸻

Two weeks later, her mother’s foundation collapsed.

Anonymous audio recordings were leaked: payments to cover up embezzlement, hush money sent to former employees, fraud schemes masked as fundraising events.

The media shredded her reputation.

Aria watched her mother fake tears on live television.

“She’s good,” Lucien muttered.

Aria didn’t blink.

“She’s always been good at pretending.”

⸻

That night, Lucien found her on the balcony again.

This time, she was sipping red wine, her feet propped up on the edge, wearing a black silk robe and smirking at the skyline.

“You’re starting to look like someone I’d fear,” he said.

Aria laughed softly.

“You say that like it’s a compliment.”

“It is.”

She turned to him, the wind lifting strands of her now dark hair.

“What about you?” she asked suddenly. “Who do you fear?”

Lucien’s face darkened.

“Myself,” he said. “And what I’m willing to do when I care too much.”

For a moment, Aria couldn’t breathe.

The silence between them was thick. Heavy.

Dangerous.

⸻

That was the first night they almost kissed.

Not out of passion.

Out of pain.

Out of everything they never said.

He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and didn’t lean in.

Neither did she.

But their breaths tangled in the space between them, and neither moved away for a long, long time.

⸻

Daniel’s turn came next.

Lucien showed her the file one night over dinner.

“Here’s what we know,” he said, flipping pages. “Daniel’s company is being used to funnel illegal imports. His fiancée? A cover. Her father’s part of the scheme.”

Aria raised an eyebrow. “He’s engaged again?”

Lucien’s jaw flexed.

“Only on paper. The woman’s a ghost. No one’s seen her in public.”

“Smart,” Aria muttered. “He’s covering tracks.”

Lucien slid the last page to her. “Not smart enough.”

It was a photo.

Daniel — in a hotel — drunk, high, and handsy with someone not his fiancée.

Aria’s smile was slow. “How poetic.”

Lucien leaned back, watching her like a wildfire.

“You want to go after him next?”

Aria looked up, eyes gleaming.

“I want him to drown.”