Chapter 121 - I'm not going to run away

After work, Sarah and Aiden walked back to the apartment.

Aiden was nervously glancing around every few seconds.

Sarah pinched his arm. "Hey, can you relax a bit? You are making me nervous..."

"OK. Sorry... I can't help but think that she will jump out of nowhere.", he explained himself.

"How about you think what we will do for dinner?"

"We will eat at the airport.", Aiden said with a straight face.

"Airport?", Sarah was confused.

"We are going back tonight."

"No."

"Stop resisting and listen... we are going back home tonight.", Aiden wanted Sarah to leave to be out of Evalina's reach.

"Yes. We are going home right now.", Sarah pointed at the building in front of them. "I have meetings tomorrow. I'm not leaving tonight."

"How stubborn!", Aiden frowned.

"You noticed that just now?" Sarah was getting upset. How can he just decide for her to leave?

"We will talk about this when we reach the apartment." He still didn't give up, no matter how stubborn she is.

"There is nothing to talk about. I'm not going to run away... Do you want me to hide until Evalina gives up?" For Sarah, this is not something to negotiate. She is not leaving tonight.

"Maybe we go back for some time... until she cools down.", Aiden was thinking as long as they leave, it's fine. He will think later how to keep her from coming back.

Sarah shook her head, "No. She is after you for three years. Do you think she will cool down in a week? A month? This will not end until I end it."

"It's my mess. Why would you end it?", Aiden does not want her in harm's way. Even if it's against a woman.

"She is after me.", Sarah stated a fact.

"Now I feel guilty.", he lowered his head.

"I don't blame you for things you did or didn't do before we met."

"I know.", Aiden put his hand around her waist and pulled her towards him as they walked to their apartment.

…

After dinner, two of them sat with their laptops on the sofa in the living area.

"You first", Sarah pointed at his laptop.

"You will be disappointed…", he warned her.

"Show me what you have about Evalina.", Sarah demanded.

Aiden pushed his laptop to Sarah... She checked it... "This is her resume, criminal background check from when she joined your team three years ago... Application for a work visa. You don't have anything else?"

"I told you that you will be disappointed.", Aiden shrugged.

"You didn't look into her at all?", Sarah was confused. How come he didn't look into background of a woman who is stalking him?

"Until today I didn't really think much about her as a threat.", Aiden just saw her as someone who is interested in him. He was not interested in her, so he didn't care.

"She is chasing you for three years and you didn't think to find out more about her?", Sarah thought that he is very careless.

Aiden shrugged, "If I check background of every woman who wants to get in my bed, I will be very busy checking backgrounds."

"Well... true...", Sarah relaxed and laughed. She pinched his cheeks, "That is your curse for being too handsome!"

He rubbed his cheeks, pretending that it hurts. "What do you have?"

Sarah turned her laptop slightly toward him so that he can also see. "I checked Evalina since she came to US seven years ago from Russia on a student visa. After three years of studying she got a degree in Computer Science and went back to Russia for a year. She came back on a tourist visa and one week after entering the country she had an interview at White corp. I can assume that she applied for a position in your team from Russia and came here after she passed the phone screen. That was three years ago. She is following you around since then."

"Evalina has no criminal record, but there are two instances where she was in a fight that was reported, both time self-defense, so no charges are filled. First one is two years ago, in an alley three men attacked her, and she got out of there unscratched. Look at the injuries they sustained..." Sarah opened a file and waited for Aiden to read it.

He looked at it and frowned. The injuries of men were severe. All of them spent weeks in the hospital.

Sarah continued. "There is another one about six months later. In front of a bar, five men attacked her with a similar outcome. No scratch on her and look at their medical reports..." Sarah showed files to Aiden, and continued, "Based on these, she knows how to fight. Even if they had zero training, there was five of them... if she is not very well trained, she would not get out of it without a scratch."

Aiden read through the files with a serious expression and agreed with Sarah's conclusion. Then he remembered one-point Sarah said and asked, "What do you mean by she is following me around since her interview?"

"I would actually describe it as obsession. I'm not sure how come alarms in your head didn't ring..." Sarah shook her head. "Look at these: three photos from events organized by White corp. on each of these are two of you in a group of people, everyone is looking at the camera, while she is looking at you."

Aiden studied photos for some time before asking, "What photos are these? I don't even remember taking photos on company events... and how can three photos be considered as obsession?" He was confident that Sarah is exaggerating. Based on just this, Evalina was not an extreme case, so he found a justification why he didn't investigate her further.

Sarah perked up. "Ah, I was waiting for you to bring that up... these are taken from her cloud backup..." Sarah opened a folder with more than three thousand photos. On each of them was Aiden... in his office, meeting room, hallway, restaurants, events, park...

Aiden looked at the photos and his mouth twitched.

"Oh, and in the last few weeks, even I got an honor to be in these... some photos have a good angle.", Sarah opened one photo from two weeks ago and started a slide show. Photos showed two of them in a coffee shop, on a bench in the park, walking on the street holding hands, shopping for groceries...

Aiden was looking at these, and his expression was changing with each photo: confused, upset, guilty. He looked at Sarah, "I didn't know it's this serious...I really didn't know about any of this."

Sarah was upset. 'How can you be so oblivious?' She took back her laptop and mumbled, "Of course you didn't know... if you spent half an effort investigating her how much you spent on Philip, you would find out."

Aiden was shocked to hear her say that, "Can you repeat that?"

Sarah looked at him, and said in a clear voice, "If you spent half an effort investigating her how much you spent..." she stopped talking because thought flashed through her mind, 'He didn't investigate Philip... it was Omega who did it...' She awkwardly smiled.

Aiden observed her expression. She was obviously uncomfortable. She didn't want him to know that she is aware that he is Omega. It just came out of her, during a careless moment because she is upset. 'When did she find out? How? I was careful…' But that doesn't matter. What matters is that she knows. And she didn't expose him. And she is not upset. She is accepting him the way he is, even if he works under Omega moniker… She accepted HIM. Aiden felt a huge relief wash over him. He kept her laptop on the side table and pulled her in a tight hug.

Sarah knew that he realized: she knows that he is Omega. She was happy that he didn't probe into the topic... because it does not matter. She loves him and trusts him no matter who he is. And he knows that.

Without a word, they held each other for a long time.