Chapter 29 #4
“Cassandra is perfect for him. She studied him, learned him, became everything he could possibly want. And she would have been his wife if you hadn’t—” He stopped, swallowed, forced himself to continue.
“I fought my entire life for a legacy name. I bled for it. Sacrificed for it. And he—” He pointed at Cassian, his hand shaking.
“He gave that name to someone who didn’t even want it. Didn’t need it. Didn’t take it.”
He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in ragged bursts. His eyes had gone glassy, latched on mine with such desperate intensity that they should have frightened me. They didn’t.
“You are a burden.” The words came out in a rush, venomous and eager. “Nobody wanted you here. Your mother left you. Your father died. Your grandfather died—and even when he was alive, he didn’t care about you. Not really. He cared about his work. And now you’re also divorced.”
Cassian shifted beside me. I felt the movement before I looked at him—the sudden tension gathering in his body, the unmistakable intention to intervene. I put my hand over his without looking away from Michael. A silent command: Stay.
Michael leaned closer, his voice dropping to something almost gentle.
“Tell me, Alessia. When you lie awake at night counting all the people who’ve left you…
do you ever wonder if maybe, just maybe, you were never worth staying for?
That they’re all standing on the other side of some door, finally able to breathe, and you’re the reason they couldn’t before?
That you’re not someone people leave… but someone people escape? ”
Michael’s smirk widened. “Yeah. I know all about you too. So don’t sit there pretending you’re better than me. You’re not. You’re not even anyth—”
Cassian’s hand vanished from under mine. He was moving but I was faster.
I stood and stepped directly in front of Michael, blocking Cassian’s path, putting myself inches from the man who had just tried to tear me apart with my own history—to take every loss I had ever carried and hold it up like evidence against me.
One thing he’d said was true.
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
I wasn’t supposed to be standing in the middle of their family drama, their inherited grief, their generational wreckage, this self-inflicted war, watching one man tear himself apart over a name that, to me, meant absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t supposed to be part of their mess.
And yet here I was.
Michael had dragged me into it.
I hadn’t asked for this. Hadn’t wanted it. Hadn’t cared about him, or his daughter, or his pathetic fixation on a name that would never love him back.
But now he’d made me care.
Because he had hurt my people.
He had put Naija in a hospital bed. Naija, who had done nothing to him. Who had been doing her job when he decided her life was an acceptable price for whatever grievance he had been nursing all these years. Who had been trapped all alone in a bathroom while smoke filled her lungs.
This tantrum-throwing, middle-aged toddler had decided that setting a fire was an acceptable way to express his feelings.
All because he wanted a name.
All because a dead man hadn’t loved him enough.
All because he’d spent years chasing something that was never going to fill the hole inside him.
In the history of sad backstories, his would be laughed out of the room. Booed off the stage. Sent home with a participation trophy and a little note reading: Try harder next time.
“Alessia—”
Cassian’s hand closed around my arm, meant to pull me back.
I stepped forward instead. Out of his grip. Toward the man who thought he could hurt my people and walk away. I held eye contact with Michael. His eyes were gleaming—that sick, victorious glint of a man who thinks he’s finally landed a blow.
“How does it feel?” His voice was smug, savouring. “When someone disrupts your plans? When someone appears out of nowhere and fucks up everything you worked for?”
My feet moved slightly, searching through the debris. They found it. A shard of glass from the liquor he’d dropped earlier, sharp enough to catch faintly against the sole of my shoe.
I kept my eyes on him. I didn’t look down. Didn’t let my expression change. I simply nudged the shard forward, a little at a time, until it rested precisely where his next step would land if he came toward me.
I didn’t answer his question.
Instead, I decided to give him a glimpse of his future.
“Naija spent one day at the hospital.” My voice came out so calm it surprised even me. “I’ll make sure you stay locked up in a room for much longer.”
I turned before he could answer and reached for Cassian’s hand. His fingers closed around mine instantly, warm and firm, as though he’d been waiting for me. We walked away.
Behind me, I heard it. Footsteps. Angry, hurried, exactly as I’d predicted.
Then the crunch. The sharp intake of breath. The scream.
“Fucking bitch!”
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t stop walking. But I paused for half a second, just long enough to let my voice carry back over my shoulder.
“Don’t blame me for your cheap shoes.”
I kept walking, hand in hand with Cassian, toward the door.
Then I stopped one more time. Half-turned. Let him see my face—the calm, the absolute lack of fear.
A smile spread across my lips, slow and certain. “Oh, and Baylee?”
His eyes, wide with pain and rage, locked onto mine.
“Between Quinn and Sterling?” I let the words hang for just a moment. “Quinn is a much better last name.”