8. Cassie
— ? —
Cassie
Elliot’s building makes Charles’s look like a strip mall.
Forty stories of glass and steel, rising out of the downtown skyline like a monument to ambition. The lobby alone is bigger than Charles’s entire floor, all white marble and modern art and aggressive minimalism that whispers money so loudly it might as well be screaming.
I park in the visitor lot and walk through the front doors like I have every right to be here, even though my hands are still trembling and there’s definitely mascara smeared under my eyes.
The receptionist is polished and professional and clearly skeptical of the disheveled woman who just walked in off the street demanding to see the CEO.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Cassandra Wallace.” I keep my voice steady through sheer force of will. “Tell Mr. Beaumont I’m here about his wife.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. For a moment I think she’s going to have me escorted out, but she reaches for her phone instead, speaking quietly into the receiver while I stand there trying not to fidget.
Whatever Elliot says makes her eyes widen slightly. She hangs up and pastes on a professional smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Someone will be right down to escort you.”
Two minutes later, I’m in a private elevator that goes straight to the top floor.
The ride is smooth and silent, and I use the time to check my reflection in the polished metal doors.
I look like hell. Smeared makeup, wild hair, feral energy that comes from watching your entire life implode in a single afternoon.
I don’t care. I’m not here to look pretty. I’m here to burn things down.
The doors open, and Elliot is waiting.
He’s in a charcoal suit today, perfectly tailored, with a white shirt open at the collar. His expression is unreadable, that same careful neutrality I remember from the gala, but there’s a sharpness in his green eyes that suggests he’s already guessed this isn’t a social call.
“Mrs. Wallace.” He doesn’t sound surprised. “This is unexpected.”
“Your wife is fucking my husband.”
The words come out flat and hard, no emotion, just facts. I watch his face for a reaction, shock, anger, hurt, anything.
For a moment, nothing. His expression stays perfectly still, perfectly controlled. Then something flickers in his eyes, not surprise, exactly, but a kind of cold recognition. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
“Is she,” he says. It’s not a question.
He turns and walks toward a corner office, clearly expecting me to follow.
I stand there for a moment, thrown by his reaction. Or lack of one. Most men, learning their wife is cheating, would show something, anger or denial or pain, some flicker of feeling.
Elliot Beaumont looks like I just told him there’s traffic on the highway. Mildly inconvenienced at best.
I follow him, because what else am I going to do? I came here for answers, and apparently Elliot Beaumont has them.
His office is massive. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, dark wood furniture, art on the walls that probably costs more than my car. He gestures to a leather chair across from his desk and waits until I sit before settling into his own seat.
“Tell me what happened,” he says.
So I do. All of it, the phone, the messages, the pictures, walking in on them in Charles’s office.
The confrontation, the things Celine said, the way she crumbled when she realized I had proof.
I talk for maybe ten minutes straight, and Elliot listens without interrupting, his face giving away nothing.
When I finish, he’s quiet for a moment.
“How long was it going on?” he finally asks.
“Months. Based on the texts, at least four or five months. Maybe longer.”
He nods slowly, like he’s processing. “And you have proof? The messages, the photos?”
“Backed up in three different places. Screenshots of everything.”
Another long pause follows while he steeples his fingers under his chin, studying me with those sharp green eyes.
“Why come to me?” he asks. “You could have just, I don’t know. Gone home. Called a lawyer. Started divorce proceedings. Why drive across town to tell a stranger his wife is cheating?”
It’s a fair question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing since I got in the car.
“Because she was terrified,” I say slowly. “When I told her I was going to tell you, she completely fell apart. Started begging, crying, saying she’d lose everything. And I thought, I don’t know. I thought you deserved to know. And I thought maybe...” I trail off, not sure how to finish.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe you’d want to do something about it. Together.”
His eyebrows rise slightly. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
“I want revenge,” I say. “On both of them. Charles took everything from me, my job, my dignity, five years of my life. And Celine sat there smiling at me, playing the helpless little girl, while she was screwing him behind my back. I want them to pay. I want them to hurt. And I figured...” I take a breath.
“I figured you might want the same thing.”
He’s quiet for a moment, studying me. I can’t read his expression at all, it’s like trying to read a wall.
“Mrs. Wallace,” he says finally, “I appreciate you coming to me with this. But I should be honest with you. My marriage to Celine is... complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“We have an arrangement.” He says it like it explains everything.
“We married for reasons that had nothing to do with love. There was a pregnancy scare, early on. Family pressure. A wedding that happened before anyone had time to think it through. By the time we realized we’d made a mistake, we were already too entangled to easily separate. ”
“So you just... let her do whatever she wants?”
“Within reason. The understanding was discretion. Freedom, as long as it didn’t become public, didn’t embarrass either of us.” His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “Sleeping with a married man. Getting caught. Having his wife announce it in a crowded lobby. That’s not discreet. That’s sloppy.”
“So what are you saying? You don’t care?”
“I’m saying I don’t care about Celine.” He leans forward, and for the first time, I see something other than cold neutrality in his eyes. Interest, maybe, or calculation. “But I do care about being made to look like a fool. And I care very much about the terms of my prenuptial agreement.”
My heart skips. “Prenup?”
“Infidelity clause. If I can prove she’s been unfaithful, she gets nothing. No settlement, no alimony, no claim to any of my assets.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Celine was very eager to sign. She didn’t think she’d ever get caught.”
Now I understand why she was so terrified. Why she begged. Why she fell apart completely at the thought of me telling her husband.
It wasn’t about love or guilt or even embarrassment. It was about money. About losing access to the lifestyle she’d married into.
“I have everything you need,” I say. “Texts, photos, timestamps. Proof she’s been cheating for months.”
“Then Mrs. Wallace, I think we can help each other.”
We talk for another hour. He asks questions, sharp, precise, questions a lawyer would ask. I answer as best I can, showing him screenshots, walking him through the timeline. By the end, my throat is dry and the sun has shifted across the sky.
He offers me a job. He’s building out his client-relations team, and he needs someone competent who knows the industry from the inside. The pay is good, better than good, and it comes with the added benefit of making Charles absolutely insane.
“Why?” I ask. “You don’t know me. You have no reason to help.”
“Consider it mutually beneficial.” He stands, moves to the window. “Your evidence gives me grounds for a clean divorce. And your presence in my life will make your husband very uncomfortable.”
“So we’re using each other.”
“Isn’t that what all partnerships are?” He turns to face me. “The question is whether we can be useful enough to each other to make it worth the trouble.”
I think about it. The risk, the exposure, the potential for everything to explode.
Then I think about Charles on the floor of his office, moaning about his balls while Celine begged for mercy.
“There’s one more thing,” I say. “I want them to see us together. I want Charles to know that the man he’s been obsessed with, the man who makes him feel like a failure just by existing, I want him to know that’s the man I chose.”
Elliot’s smile shifts into something warmer, darker.
“Fake dating your enemy’s enemy?” He sounds almost amused. “Mrs. Wallace, you’re more interesting than I gave you credit for.”
“So we have a deal?”
He crosses the office and holds out his hand.
His grip is warm and firm, and when our palms connect, I feel something I didn’t expect, a jolt and a spark, the first stirring of a thing neither of us planned for.
“We have a deal,” he says.