Chapter 12
Ileaned back and folded my arms. “Explain.”
His eyes held mine, the honesty in them edged with shame.
“For months before the accident, my company was dying,” he admitted.
“It started when we lost the Bali resort bid to a multinational that undercut us by nearly twenty percent. That loss rattled our primary investor hard. They pulled out of the Milan flagship after that, citing ‘risk exposure.’ Without their funding, construction stalled, permits lapsed, and the losses kept mounting.”
His jaw tightened. “Velaré was over-leveraged. We’d stretched our credit lines too far trying to keep every project afloat. One setback triggered another, and within weeks, we were staring at a liquidity crisis. Without fresh capital, administration was inevitable.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, his voice roughening.
“Then the deal came through on the day of your party. It was the only thing standing between Velaré and collapse.” He paused, his expression tightening.
“The Aethelstan Group gave me the capital, but their terms came with a price. Cassandra’s father is their majority shareholder and chairs their investment committee. He set the terms.”
“Cassandra’s father?” I interrupted. “You mean Liam’s father? Liam is your business partner—why couldn’t he just advocate for the deal himself?”
“Liam and his father have a… professionally fractured relationship,” he explained, choosing his words carefully.
“Liam left the family business to build Velaré with me. In his father’s eyes, that was a betrayal.
A deal from Liam would have been rejected on principle.
But Cassandra… she’s the favored child, the one who stayed close to the family empire.
Her advocacy carried weight we could never have.
She was the only one who could get them to soften the terms enough for us to sign.
She brought the finalized sheet to the office that afternoon. ”
He drew a breath before continuing. “The team was ecstatic. They’d been through hell with me during those months.
When they insisted on going out to celebrate…
I felt I had to go. It wasn’t just a victory lap; it was a strategic necessity to show unity and confidence.
And I…” He swallowed, looking away. “I was so relieved after carrying that weight for so long that I let myself be swept along.”
He rose from his chair and sank to his knees before me, his hands falling limp against his thighs.
“I know I fucked up, Alessia.” Shame weighed down every word.
“I know I hurt you, and there isn’t an excuse that can undo that.
But trust me.” His eyes searched mine, desperate for any sign that I was still listening.
“The man I became during those months… that is not who I am. That is not who we are.”
He looked down for a moment before meeting my eyes again.
“If you ask me about that time, I honestly don’t know what to tell you.
” He exhaled slowly. “I remember pieces. Moments. Things people said. But the rest…” He shook his head.
“It’s just a blur. I remember being exhausted.
I remember the pressure, the constant feeling that there was too much happening and not enough time to deal with any of it.
But I couldn’t tell you what happened on which day, or even what came before what. There are gaps everywhere.”
He paused, searching for the right words. “I know I was there. I know I made decisions. I know I did things. I just can’t remember enough to put it all together.”
He reached for me, his hand stopping just short of mine, his fingers trembling in the space between us. “I am so sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry that I brought us to this cliff’s edge. But please,” he whispered, his eyes glistening, “don’t push us over. Don’t do this.”
My eyes dropped to his hand, lingering there before I looked back at him. He wanted me to hold on now. He wanted me to believe in us now. And I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t fought this hard when it had mattered.
“Why didn’t you tell all of this to the woman who was probably waiting for you?” I asked softly.
His head dropped. He didn’t touch me, but he hovered over my lap, his shoulders caving beneath the weight of everything he had been carrying.
“I… I thought I could handle it alone,” he murmured, each word heavy with regret.
“I thought I could fix everything before you ever had to know. My plan was to get through the crisis, put everything back in place, and tell you once it was over.”
A bitter breath escaped him. “But there was always another problem waiting. One thing became two, two became five, and before I knew it, I couldn’t see a way out.”
He lifted his head, his eyes filled with exhaustion and regret. “I was drowning, Alessia. And pulling you down with me felt like the cruelest thing I could do. You had your own work. Your own stress. The last thing I wanted was for you to come home and find more pain waiting for you because of me.”
His voice faltered, and he looked down again. “You deserved peace at home. You deserved a husband who could give you that. I couldn’t stand the thought of being the person who took it away from you.”
I searched his face and saw what I had refused to see before—the deep exhaustion beneath his eyes, the remorse written across his features, and the guilt etched into every line of his face.
But none of it mattered.
He was showing it to the wrong woman.
“Was this your first relationship?” I asked.
“No.” He shook his head, confusion crossing his face. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re talking as if it was.” I let out a disbelieving breath and shook my head. “Let me get this straight. You were having problems at work. You were struggling. You were drowning in all this pressure, and your brilliant solution was to stop talking to your wife?”
He opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him get a word out.
“Instead of turning to the person you built a life with, instead of telling your partner you were falling apart, you decided the best thing you could do was shut me out.” My laugh was short and bitter. “What kind of logic is that?”
He opened his mouth, then stopped. “I…” The words caught before he finally managed, “I didn’t want to stress you.”
“Compared to ignoring me?” The question came out cold and sharp. “You didn’t think that would stress me? You genuinely thought hiding everything from me, making me feel invisible, was better than sitting down and telling me what was happening in your life?”
I didn’t remember living that life. I didn’t remember the slow erosion of my spirit, the compromises I must have made, or the despair that had settled in piece by piece until there was barely anything of me left.
That woman was a stranger to me.
But the hurt wasn’t.
It lived somewhere beneath my ribs, deep enough that I didn’t need the memories to recognize it. A hollow ache spread through my chest, carrying the weight of a betrayal I had never witnessed and yet knew intimately.
That ache of being left behind. Of being shut out when all you wanted was to be let in.
And the bitterest irony of all was that after a lifetime of carefully avoiding any man who made me feel, even for a second, that I wasn’t respected or valued, I had ended up marrying one.
The woman I had been had chosen him.
She had trusted him.
She had believed he was the person she could lean on when life became too much.
But when his life began falling apart, he had shut her out and left her standing on the other side of the door—the very thing she had spent her life fearing.
And the ultimate humiliation?
That past version of me had stayed. She hadn’t left. She had become the very woman I swore I’d never be: tied to a man who didn’t appreciate her, probably making excuses for him, forgiving him when he didn’t deserve it.
My resolve crystallized, forged from anger and sadness into an unwavering decision.
Cassian could wear his remorse until it consumed him. He could drown beneath the weight of his own regret.
The woman who used to forgive him was gone.
He wasn’t the only one who had forgotten her.
His eyes glistened, and he blinked hard, fighting the moisture gathering there. “I—I don’t know how it happened. My intention was never to hurt you, Alessia. I never wanted that. I just didn’t want to pull you down with me. That was all I wanted.”
His eyes searched my face, desperate to find even the smallest sign that his words had reached me.
The explanation was as hollow as I felt.
“You should sign the papers, Cassian,” I said.
He turned his face away, staring at the wall, the floor, anywhere that wasn’t me. His shoulders rose with a shaky breath. When he finally looked back at me, his eyes were shining, the tears he had been fighting sitting dangerously close to spilling over.
“We were supposed to go to our laser tag place tomorrow,” he murmured.
For the entire past week, Cassian had been dragging me from one place to another, taking me through the old pieces of our life in the hope that one of them would spark a memory.
It had become his personal mission, a desperate tour through a past I couldn’t remember and he couldn’t stop trying to give back to me.
I’d felt a little bad for messing with him constantly, so I’d let him have this.
First, it was the café where we met. He led me to the exact table where we had once spent hours talking. He told me what we had ordered, what we had talked about, how easily the conversation had flowed between us. This time, we couldn’t make it past ten minutes before the silence became unbearable.
After that, he took me from one restaurant to another, carrying pieces of our history with him.
At each place, he told me a different story.
A ridiculous thing we had laughed about.
A private joke that had once belonged only to us.
A night when we had stayed long after dinner, reluctant to leave each other.
He remembered all of it.