Chapter 17
The sound of shattering glass rang through the house.
I rushed into the dining room. I took it in at a glance: Cassandra stood at the head of the table, breathing through her mouth.
Her hand remained glued to the rim of her dinner plate, ready to hurl it near the same spot a cluster of glass shards lay on a gin-stained rug.
Behind her, Mrs. Morris was pressed flat against the far wall, her chin trembling, clutching a silver tray at her chest like a shield.
“Cassandra.” My voice was low, a command that sliced cleanly through the charged air.
Her head jerked toward me, her expression slack, like a puppet with half its strings cut, and her eyes, red-rimmed and swollen, wet with the misery she was always manufacturing.
The rage that had filled the room thirty seconds ago drained right out of her.
Replaced by a flood of tears. “Dad,” she choked out.
I crossed the room in a few strides, carefully pried the plate from her clammy, white-knuckled grip, and pulled her into a firm hug. Over her trembling shoulder, my eyes met Mrs. Morris’s. “Go. I’ll handle this.”
Mrs. Morris nodded and immediately backed out through the swinging door, her apron whispering against the frame, leaving the smell of her sweat behind.
Cassandra’s fists clutched at my shirt as she wept, her chest hitching against mine in long, ragged spasms that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs. I stroked the back of her head, grounding her, steadying her.
“It’s alright,” I murmured, even though it wasn’t. Even though her spiraling was becoming more frequent. Even though I could feel how close she was to another break.
But for now, I held her together.
Like I always did.
“It’s been two months, Dad,” she sobbed, her whole body trembling with the force of it. “He hasn’t called. He hasn’t apologized. You said he’d come crawling back, begging for my forgiveness, for me to return. You promised me that would happen.” Her voice broke. “What happened? Why isn’t he here?”
“Shhh,” I soothed, continuing to stroke her hair. “He’ll come around. When have I ever lied to you?”
She pushed back violently, her eyes blazing with a fresh wave of betrayal. “You weren’t there! You didn’t see the way he looked at me. Like I was nothing. Less than nothing. You told me he loved me!”
I’d navigated this hysterical loop with her countless times before. I kept my voice calm, my question pointed. “Was he alone with you when he said these things?”
She paused, the anger in her eyes flickering with doubt. “No, Liam and Rohan were there too.”
“Then of course he had to lie,” I said, my voice soft. I guided her to sit and took the chair beside her.
“Think, Cassandra. Remember how careful he always was? How he never let anyone see what he truly felt? The looks he’d give you when he thought no one was watching? The way he’d find an excuse to be near you?” I leaned in. “That boy loved you before he even understood what the word meant.”
She nodded slowly, clinging to the familiar story. “I know, Dad. But…” Her face crumpled again. “How could he make it sound so real? So final?”
I pulled her head to my shoulder, my voice a low, comforting murmur.
“My darling, you’re not seeing the full picture.
It’s not about you. It’s about me. First, the shame of what his father did, stealing from us, running off and leaving us to clean up the mess.
And now he’s in business with Liam, the son of the man his father robbed.
Imagine the guilt he carries. He must feel like a thief twice over. ”
I sighed, the sound heavy with manufactured understanding.
“Of course he has to push you away. In his mind, he’s already taken so much from this family.
How could he possibly dare to take the one thing that’s truly precious to me?
To ask for my daughter, too?” I shook my head.
“He has to pretend he feels nothing. In his twisted sense of honor, he believes he doesn’t deserve you. ”
His father hadn’t stolen from me. The man was a fool, choosing to abandon his family for a fleeting affair, but he was no thief.
That particular lie, however, was far too useful.
Cassandra didn’t need the mundane truth; she needed a grand narrative of betrayal and inherited guilt to explain Cassian’s distance.
She sobbed harder into my shoulder, her voice wet against my shirt. “Why can’t he just choose me? Why does it have to be so hard?”
I stroked her hair, my touch gentle. “I know, sweetheart. But real love is never easy, is it? It’s a battle. And you know how to fight, don’t you?”
She straightened, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. A fierce, unwavering determination hardened her gaze. “Yes. I do. I’ll fight for both of us until he’s mine.”
I smiled, a swell of genuine pride warming my chest. That’s my girl.
She was my daughter through and through.
She understood that love wasn’t a gift, something you simply waited around to be given; it was a prize to be claimed, no matter the cost. Cassian’s inability to comprehend the magnitude of the devotion being offered to him was a tragic oversight.
But that was temporary. He would come around.
He had to.
He would have already been my son-in-law by now if it hadn’t been for that woman.
The thought sent a bolt of cold fury through me.
The plan was perfect in its simplicity. He would build the business—a venture he had begun with my son—into a resounding success.
I had allowed them their youthful “partnership,” their little amusements, because I understood what such things were worth.
It was an investment. Once he had proved himself worthy, once he had established his position beyond question, he would naturally marry my daughter.
In the end, he would be my son-in-law. My son would return to the fold, bringing with him the business he had built, and everything which had been so needlessly disrupted and allowed to drift for far too long, would settle once more into their proper places.
Everything would be restored.
Then Alessia slithered into the picture, and poisoned everything.
She married him while his business was still a fragile seedling, before it had had the chance to grow into the mighty oak it was always destined to become.
A foolish woman, acting on emotion as the young so often do, mistaking the intensity of feeling for evidence of its worth.
They never seem to understand that a future built on nothing but love is a fortress raised on sand.
Beautiful perhaps, for a time, but doomed by the weakness of its foundations.
She stole what was meant to be ours.
She stole the position my daughter had been born to fill.
My precious girl shut herself away in her room for weeks after the news of his marriage broke. She stopped eating. I had to coax water past her lips. It broke my heart to see her so diminished, her whole bright future snatched away before she had even been given the chance to claim it.
I had to rebuild her reality carefully, piece by piece.
I sat with her and explained the obvious: it was all optics.
He had not married Alessia for love. He had married her for appearances.
A young, ambitious entrepreneur was a risk; a married man, by contrast, suggested stability, responsibility, trustworthiness.
It was a cold, calculated business decision, nothing more.
A strategic wife was simply another prop in the presentation of a successful man. There were no real feelings involved.
I repeated it until she stopped crying.
There were no real feelings involved. How could there be? He had known my daughter long before Alessia had entered his life. He had built his future alongside her brother. He knew our family. He knew where he belonged.
All Cassandra had to do was be patient. Wait a few years.
The plan to hasten their demise was flawless.
I leveraged every connection at my disposal, pulled every string within reach.
I orchestrated a perfect, sustained pressure campaign.
The objective was never to destroy his company.
That would have been crude, and ultimately counterproductive.
I merely needed to cripple it sufficiently.
To make the struggle constant, draining, inescapable. To make him need a lifeline.
Need me.
Nothing dramatic enough to arouse suspicion, nothing severe enough to kill the business outright. Just a steady accumulation of setbacks, each one small enough to dismiss and together impossible to escape.
A man drowning at work has nothing left to give at home.
What kind of wife stays beside a hollow man, a shell slowly collapsing beneath the weight of a failing dream?
Alessia’s so-called love would have withered under the strain.
It was only a matter of time before she walked away.
And when she did, when he was finally brought to the lowest point of his life, my daughter would have been there.
She would have stepped into the wreckage without hesitation, her devotion unwavering where Alessia’s had proved conditional. She would’ve been his salvation in every way.
His gratitude would have been absolute.
Then I would have proposed the final merger. With his company’s survival secured by my hand, I would offer him the means to preserve it—and, in the same breath, propose the union of our families. By then, he would have been in no position to refuse.
He was a man who believed in paying his debts. I had seen it myself, in the way he had cared for his mother. He could endure humiliation, hardship, even ruin; what he could not bear was the knowledge that he owed someone and had failed to repay them.
He would not have said no. I would have made certain of it.
The plan accounted for everything.
Except for the woman who didn’t leave.
Until now.
I reached into my jacket pocket, withdrew the folded article, and placed it on the table between us.
The headline was clear: The End of a Power Couple: Velaré Founder Cassian Sterling and PR Mogul Alessia Quinn Finalize Divorce. Below it was a photograph of them outside the courthouse.
Cassandra’s eyes flew to the paper. She snatched it up, her breath catching in a sharp gasp. “Is this real? Is the bitch finally out of the picture?”
“It’s real,” I confirmed, keeping my voice calm. “She’s gone.”
A brilliant, triumphant smile broke across her face.
“I can’t believe it, Dad! You were right!
He was only waiting for the right time. He left her.
” She clutched the newsprint to her chest as if it were a love letter.
“He got rid of her.” Her voice dropped to a reverent whisper, full of awe and possession. “For me.”
Watching the pure, unfiltered joy light up her face filled me with profound satisfaction. “Yes, my darling,” I said, my voice smooth as silk. “He did it all for you.”
She let out a low, triumphant laugh as she looked at the article again.
“This smug bitch,” she spat. “Walking around as though she owned him, calling him her husband.” Her fingers twitched.
Then she seized the edge of the page and tore Alessia’s picture cleanly from it, shredding the photograph into strips with a violent, satisfying sound.
“Everything was perfect until she showed up. She ruined it all.” A cruel smile touched her lips. “I can’t wait to see her face now. Broken. Pathetic.”
Then, her expression softened into something reverent. She gathered the remaining half of the photograph—the half bearing Cassian’s face—and clutched it against her heart.
When she looked up at me, tears of happiness glistened in her eyes.
“I won’t lie, Dad. For a moment, I thought I’d lost him.” Her fingers tightened around the photograph. “But you were right. He’s still mine. He always has been. I can never lose him.”
I stroked her hair. “He’ll always be yours, my dear.”
Long ago, I had made my daughter a promise: Cassian Sterling would one day be her husband.
It was time to make that promise a reality.
My daughter had waited long enough.