23. Cassie
CASSIE
The resignation letter sits on my keyboard for twenty minutes before I hit send.
My finger hovers. Trembles. Then I click, and just like that—two years, gone.
"I did it," I whisper to my empty apartment.
My phone buzzes within seconds. Delilah. I let it go to voicemail. Then again. And again. By the fourth call, I finally pick up.
"Please tell me you didn't?—"
"I did."
"Oh, Cassie." Her exhale cracks down the line. "What did that bastard do to you?"
"Nothing I didn't let him."
That's the worst part.
My mother shows up that evening with a grocery bag and zero judgment. She doesn't ask about Gideon. Doesn't mention the media circus painting me as the assistant who slept her way into a scandal. She just pulls me into her arms like I'm seven years old with a scraped knee.
"Come here, baby."
"I'm fine, Mama."
"You're lying." She cups my face, brown eyes seeing straight through me. "But that's okay. You don't have to be fine yet."
I break. Right there in her arms, sobbing into her shoulder like the past month never happened. The island. The villa. The way Gideon whispered my name like it meant something.
"The news keeps calling me his mistress," I choke out.
Sabrina pulls back, jaw tight. "And since when do we let other people write our story?"
"I let him write it. I let him decide when to hide me and when to defend me."
"Then take the pen back."
I scrub my cheeks. "What if I'm nothing without Carrington?"
She laughs—a real, warm laugh that fills my empty kitchen. "Baby, you were somebody before that man ever looked your way. You'll be somebody long after he forgets how to dial your number."
"He won't forget."
Sabrina tilts her head. "No," she agrees softly. "I don't think he will either. But that's his lesson to learn, not yours to teach."
I stare at my phone screen. No missed calls from him.
Maybe that's the answer I needed all along.
The television is a mistake. I know this. And yet I can't look away.
"—sources confirm the executive assistant at the center of the Carrington scandal has resigned effective immediately?—"
The anchor's mouth keeps moving, but my ears are ringing. They flash my photo. My photo. The one from last year's company gala where I'm smiling in a gold dress, looking like I don't have a care in the world.
Now they're calling me "the woman who brought down a billionaire."
I mute the TV, but it doesn't help. The damage is already crawling under my skin.
My phone buzzes. Delilah's face lights up the screen, and this time I answer because hiding in my apartment feels like drowning.
"Tell me you're not watching that garbage," she says instead of hello.
"Too late."
"Cassie, turn it off. Right now."
I click the power button. The screen goes black. "It's off."
Silence stretches between us. Then Delilah's voice goes quiet, serious in a way I've rarely heard.
"There's something else. Gideon—he's gone underground. Completely. No statements, no press conferences, nothing. His PR team is running on a loop, but he hasn't been seen since the gala."
My chest tightens. "What do you mean gone?"
"I mean the man vanished. Cancelled every appearance. Won't even return investor calls, according to my sources." She pauses. "They're saying he's spiraling."
I press my palm against my sternum, trying to calm the hammering inside. "That's not my problem anymore."
"Cassie—"
"It's not, Dee." My voice cracks. "I resigned. I walked away. Whatever he does now, whatever mess his board created—that's his world. Not mine."
But even as I say it, I know I'm lying.
Because I love him.
God help me, I love the bastard who watched me get humiliated in front of everyone and responded with corporate restraint. I love the man who held me like I was precious and then let me leave an island without a single word of defense.
"You're thinking about him," Delilah says softly.
"I'm trying not to."
"That's not the same thing."
I sink onto my couch, staring at the blank television. My reflection stares back—tired, hollow, nothing like the woman who walked into Carrington International two years ago with a smile and a dream.
"He would consume me," I whisper. "If I went back, if I let him all the way in—there wouldn't be anything left of me."
Delilah doesn't argue.
She doesn't have to.
We both know I'm already halfway gone.
Three days. Three days of hiding in my apartment, avoiding headlines, and pretending my phone isn't a lifeline I'm terrified to grab.
Then Bianca Torres's name lights up the screen.
I answer on the second ring. "Bianca?"
"Don't speak. Just listen." Her voice is low, sharp, nothing like the cool attorney who barely acknowledged me before the island. "The investigation isn't over. Gideon's been working around the clock—forensics, financial trails, witness statements. He's got proof Nolan fabricated those documents."
My breath catches. "What?"
"He's not protecting the company anymore, Cassie. He's burning it down to save you."
I press a hand to my mouth. Images flash—Gideon's features going stone at the gala, his silence while cameras flashed, his face the last thing I saw before the plane took off.
I thought he chose the company.
I thought he chose control.
"He's been locked in the Manhattan office for forty-eight hours straight," Bianca continues. "Everett tried to stop him. Told him to let you take the fall and rebuild shareholder confidence later."
"What did Gideon say?"
A pause. Then, quietly: "He told his father he'd burn Carrington International to the ground before letting another person he loved be destroyed by its politics."
Loved.
Past tense. Or present? My pulse pounds so loud I almost miss Bianca's next words.
"He's not fighting for his reputation, Cassie. He's fighting for you. The question is—when he wins, will you still be there?"
The line goes dead.
I stare at my reflection in the dark window. Same woman. Same scars. But something inside me is cracking open, and it's not grief this time.
It's hope.
Gideon always tried to protect me by keeping me safe inside his walls. But this—this is different. He's not hiding me. He's not controlling the narrative.
He's going to war.
After I left that island, I realize:
Maybe he's not the only one who needs to fight.