Chapter 19 Cassian’s Past
Iwake to the low hum of something. A sharp electric buzzing that blends with the headache blooming behind my eyes.
My wrists burn. Ankles too. My whole body aches like I’ve been to hell and back.
Problem is, I think only one of those things is true. I’ve been to hell. And I stayed there. That’s where I am now.
There’s concrete under my bare feet, cold and slightly damp, sending shivers through my nerves and making my calves throb. I’m sitting on something different. Metal. It digs into my spine.
A metal chair.
I try to move.
Nothing.
Rope. Tight. Around each wrist, each ankle. Another strap across my chest, holding me against the backrest. There isn’t even an inch to shift.
I’m locked in.
I try lifting my head. My neck screams. My eyelids feel glued shut, and it takes effort to force them open. Longer than I’d like. Because even though my heart is pounding, screaming at me to act, I already know, before my full senses return, that I’ve got no way out.
I’m powerless. Someone made damn sure of that.
“Hello, Cassian,” a voice says from my right. A man’s voice. Arrogant, self-satisfied.
My heart skips a beat. I already know who it is.
I force my eyes open and snap my head toward the voice. Heat surges through my chest, flooding my limbs. I yank against the restraints, rage overriding reason for a second, even though I know I’m not getting free.
Then the room comes into focus.
And I know.
This is hell.
The space is dark, cluttered with shadows that shift over mismatched furniture.
Shelves line the walls. A desk. A black-on-black pool table.
A table meant for dining, or maybe interrogation.
There’s even something that looks like a bar.
In the back, a wall of monitors glows faintly, humming with static.
That’s the sound I woke to. A quiet, constant electric pulse that fills the room non-stop.
And the man?
He’s sitting in a chair beside me. Close enough for me to smell his cologne, far enough that I couldn’t reach him if I tried. Even if I somehow convinced him to lean close, I wouldn’t get the chance to slam my head into his.
It wouldn’t work.
He knows what he’s doing.
First thing I clock: I’m not his first captive.
Second: I’ve seen him before.
Even if I hadn’t recognized the coat and hat he wore outside Sabine’s workplace, the level of preparation tells me everything I need to know.
It’s him.
The man I’ve been chasing.
He has a long face with small, slanted eyes.
Loose skin, most of it hidden under heavy body and facial hair.
Thick, black hair that looks like it lingers no matter how often he shaves.
His eyebrows are bushy. His nose is long and slightly hooked.
A few raised birthmarks stand out, one below his lip, another on his cheek.
He looks nothing like I expected.
There’s nothing forgettable about him. Nothing that wouldn’t make him stand out in a crowd. It’s the kind of face people remember without meaning to.
And when he speaks again, I realize even his voice is distinct.
Like it’s mocking me with the fact that it was always identifiable, and I still missed it.
“Winning with you was easier than I expected, Little Soldier,” he says, inching just a little closer.
I can’t even describe what his voice does to me. My arms are trembling from how tightly I’m tensing my muscles. My teeth feel ready to crack. My heart—
My heart is already broken.
The fact that I’m here, tied up in god knows where, means I’ve lost something far more important than any game with this man.
I lost my grip on Sabine.
And on my mother…
“What have you done to them?”
The words scrape out of my throat. My voice is raw, torn from the depths of me.
“Where are they?”
He clicks his tongue, straightens a little, and slaps his knees like he’s about to stand up, though he doesn’t. He glances around the room like he expects someone else to be here, then sighs.
“This is my first time doing this, you know,” he says. “I’ve never had a man be my playdate before. I was actually pretty excited. When I first saw you, I thought you might be her lover. But no. You were something better. A brother, with brains. And the way you tried to catch me...”
“Where is she?” I cut him off. I can’t take another word.
I know I shouldn’t let my emotions get the better of me. I trained for situations like these.
Be steel when someone’s trying to break you.
Embrace the silence.
Endure the pain.
Hold your mind.
But it’s useless.
I can’t calm down.
The fear and the rage rise inside me like a flood, drowning everything else. Logic vanishes.
His smile widens.
He leans back, hands resting lazily on his knees, then taps a finger against his temple.
“Aren’t you a little cliché for a kidnapping victim?” he says. “You’ve been trying so hard to get into my head. Surely you know that’s not how you win. You’re smarter than this. Aren’t you?”
He leans forward again, and the shadows shift across his face, catching every line and crevice. His expression burns itself into my memory.
And his words crawl into my mind like spiders.
Of course he’s right. He knows I know he’s right. Even now, he’s playing me.
Get a hold of yourself, Cassian.
He wants someone to share the spotlight with. Someone who understands the rhythm of his act. He wants to relive the game, move by move, mistake by mistake. I see it in his eyes.
Because that’s what all this was for him, wasn’t it?
Everything he did to Sabine—watching her, sending her gifts, surrounding her with signs of his presence. It was never about connection. There was no empathy. No attempt to see the world through her eyes.
He analyzed her. Studied her perspective.
But only to use it against her.
Only to savor the exact reactions he had hoped for.
And now he’s waiting for the same from me. Waiting for me to break, to give him something he can use. And if I don’t, I know he’ll make moves to force it.
I stare at him, throat tight, barely able to breathe past the rising panic. And the hatred. Lots of hatred.
“You’re right,” I say.
“I am,” he murmurs. “I’m right most of the time. Thought we at least had that thread of understanding in common.”
I breathe in through my nose, feel my chest expand, every tense muscle fiber protesting. But I need to calm down. I need to play the game.
“I suppose I’ve let myself slip.”
His eyebrows rise in interest.
I lower my gaze slightly. Not in submission, just enough to suggest I’m recalibrating. Reeling it in. Trying, as he clearly wants, to meet him on his stage. And god, what a stage it is.
The longer I look at it, the more I realize it’s designed to mimic something. A bar. There’s an old jukebox in the far corner. The area with the desk and screens is carpeted, even though the floor beneath is cold, damp concrete.
He’s going for a vibe, clearly. Trying to recreate something that made sense in his sick little world.
But the smell gives it away.
Mold. Mildew. Rot.
It clings to every breath I take.
“Well,” I say, voice steadier, “you’ve got me. All wrapped up. The game ended early, huh?”
He watches me. Hard. Those beady, unblinking eyes twitch at the edges, like he’s holding something back. A smile. A lunge. A slip into whatever version of himself lives behind that too-loose skin of a face.
Then, slowly, he begins to clap.
Three, maybe four lazy, theatrical claps that echo through the room.
“Bravo,” he says softly. “That’s more like it. There’s the soldier boy I wanted. The sharp one. The one who knows when he’s lost the upper hand and doesn’t waste time pretending otherwise. I knew you’d be fun.”
My fists tighten against the restraints, ropes biting into my skin. But I keep my face still.
“You asked about your mother and sister,” he continues. “And I was going to make you wait. Drag it out a little, play a guessing game, and see how long before your voice cracked and you begged. But since you’re being so very good…”
His breath is warm and sour, tainted with cologne.
“They’re alive.”
Relief floods through me.
“For now,” he adds.
“I swear to god—” I begin.
“No, no.” He lifts a finger. “Don’t ruin it. You were doing so well. Don’t make me think we’re back to shouting. I hate that part. It’s… predictable.”
He spits the word like it tastes wrong.
I bite down on my rage and ask, evenly, “What do you want?”
He grins.
And that’s when I finally see it clearly.
Everything I pictured when Sabine first told me about the stalker, all the shadows, the disgust, the certainty that he was a monster. It was right.
I might be made from similar cloth. But the way he’s stitched together? It’s nothing like me.
“Isn’t that the golden question?” he says. Then he rises from the chair and walks to the desk beneath the wall of screens. He presses something on the keyboard lying flat in front of him, and the monitors flicker before switching, one by one, to new feeds.
“What do you think, Cassian? Why do I do what I do? Can you guess?”
My heartbeat spikes as I look at the screens. Nausea crashes over me before my brain can fully process what I’m seeing, but even though it makes me sick, I can’t unsee it. I don’t think I ever will.
They’re showing places. Not just random ones. Every single feed shows somewhere connected to Sabine or our family.
One shows the entrance to her workplace. Another, what must be the inside of the building, maybe her desk. The colors match some of the selfies she’s sent me from there. Another shows the entrance to Grayson’s family home. One is inside his office.
Then there are the ones placed lower, near the base of the desk. The ones he clearly positioned for easy access. The crown jewels of his collection.