6. Cassie #2
I don’t think. My knee comes up hard between his legs, and he crumples to the floor with a sound like a dying animal. The satisfaction is savage and instant, a burst of dark pleasure that I know I should feel guilty about but absolutely do not.
“Jesus, fuck.” He’s curled up on the carpet, hands clutching himself, face purpling with pain. “Cassie, what the fuck.”
Celine’s eyes go wide, and now I see real fear there, real uncertainty, real terror.
She didn’t expect this. She expected crying, screaming, maybe some dramatic threats that she could dismiss with a hair flip and a pitying smile.
She expected me to fall apart so she could watch the pieces scatter and feel superior to the broken woman on the floor.
She didn’t expect me to fight back. She didn’t expect me to have ammunition. She didn’t expect the quiet, obedient wife to bare her teeth and bite.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I say, and my voice is steady as steel, steady as the foundation I’m about to knock out from under both of them.
“I’m going to walk out of this office. I’m going to take this phone with me.
And then I’m going to decide exactly how much of your lives I feel like destroying. ”
“Please.” Celine’s voice is barely a whisper, stripped of all its earlier venom. “Please, you don’t, if Elliot finds out, if he has proof, you don’t understand.”
“You should have thought about that before you started fucking my husband.”
“You don’t understand,” she says again, and now she’s crying, real tears streaming down her face, mascara running in black rivers down her cheeks. “If he finds out, if he can prove, I’ll lose everything. Everything. Please, I’m begging you.”
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“Please, Cassie, please.” She actually drops to her knees, and the sight of it is so shocking, so unexpected, that I almost laugh.
The polished, smug, superior Celine, kneeling on the floor of my husband’s office, begging me for mercy.
“I’ll end it. I’ll quit. I’ll never see Charles again, I’ll disappear, just please don’t tell Elliot, please don’t ruin my life. ”
“Ruin your life?” I stare down at her, at this woman who spent months systematically dismantling my marriage, my self-worth, my entire sense of reality.
“You’ve been sleeping with my husband. You’ve been mocking me behind my back.
You helped him gaslight me into thinking I was crazy, thinking I was the reason my marriage was falling apart.
And now you’re begging me not to ruin your life? ”
“I know.” She’s sobbing now, ugly crying that has nothing in common with her usual pretty tears. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I never meant, it just happened, and then it kept happening, and I never meant.”
“Save it.” I step around her, heading for the door.
“I don’t want your apologies. I don’t want your promises.
I want you to spend every single day wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.
I want you to check your phone constantly, terrified that today is the day everyone you know sees exactly who you really are.
I want you to feel even a fraction of what you made me feel for months. ”
I turn and walk toward the door, stepping over Charles’s groaning form without a second glance. Behind me, I hear Celine’s sobs getting louder, more desperate, and I feel nothing but cold satisfaction.
At the door, I pause and look back over my shoulder.
Charles is still curled on the floor, moaning softly.
Celine is still on her knees, makeup ruined, perfect hair disheveled, the picture of pathetic desperation.
They look broken and beaten, exactly like I felt an hour ago, when I was reading their messages in our bedroom and wondering how my life had fallen apart without me noticing.
“Oh, and Celine?” I smile, and it’s all teeth. “I think I’m gonna pay your husband a visit. Let him know what his wife’s been up to. See how he feels about all this.”
Her face goes even whiter, if that’s possible. “No, please, you can’t.”
“Watch me.”
I slip Charles’s phone into my purse and walk out without waiting for a response.
The hallway is quiet, empty, everyone still at lunch, oblivious to the drama that just unfolded behind closed doors. I make it about ten steps before my legs start to shake, before the adrenaline that’s been carrying me starts to fade and the reality of what just happened begins to sink in.
I lean against the wall and force myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. My hands are trembling. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my temples, in every pulse point of my body.
But underneath the adrenaline and the rage and the grief that’s threatening to swallow me whole, there’s something else.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I feel like I have power.
I feel like I have control over my own life, my own choices, my own destiny.
Charles spent months making me feel small and invisible and worthless, and Celine helped him do it, and now they’re both on the floor of his office, broken and terrified, while I walk away with my head held high and the evidence in my purse.
I push off the wall and walk toward the elevator, my heels clicking against the floor with each step. I don’t look back. I don’t need to.
Charles Wallace is going to regret every choice that led him to this moment.
And I’m going to make sure of it.