Chapter 36 Katie #2
He returns to his desk, adjusts a stack of papers so precisely it’s almost ritualistic, then speaks:
“The DOJ is here for interviews. Yours is not going to be one of them.”
My breath catches.“What?”
“I will not allow you to speak to them today.” His voice is controlled steel. “Not because I believe you’re innocent. Not because I believe you’re guilty. But because whatever you say will destroy the firm.”
My throat tightens.“Then… what happens now?”
Cassian clasps his hands on the desk. “You are being placed on administrative leave, effective immediately. Your laptop stays here. You will go home, and you will not set foot in this building again until I tell you otherwise.”
The words hit hard. He is exiling me before I can follow through on the sacrifice I planned.
“Mr. Roth, I—”
He lifts a hand.“Do not explain yourself. Do not confess. Do not apologize. The less you say, the safer we all are.”
My hands curl tightly into fists. “You told me to be brave. I’m just following the order you gave.”
He exhales sharply, the closest I’ve ever seen him to losing control.“No,” he says. “You are trying to be noble. And noble people get crushed by systems like ours. I will not have your na?veté tank this firm.”
My eyes sting. “I thought… I thought you needed a lamb for the slaughter.”
He gives a quiet, humorless laugh.
“I can’t really have you martyring yourself now, can I? You are not going to destroy yourself for him. Not today. Not like this.” His jaw tenses. “If there is a fall to take, it will be on my terms, not yours.”
Even sacrifice isn’t mine to choose.
He moves around his desk until he’s standing right in front of me. Then he slides an envelope across the desk. Inside—a formal letter of administrative leave. A severed tether. A silent, clinical goodbye.
“You will go home,” he repeats. “Do not answer calls from unknown numbers. Do not speak to DOJ agents if they approach you outside this building. And for God’s sake, do not contact Stephan.”
It sounds like another contract—no signature required this time. Just obedience. Different man, same rules.
“But what about Stephan?”
Cassian lowers himself until our eyes are level, his voice dropping to something cold and quiet.
“This is the only protection I can offer you,” he whispers. “Take it, and forget about Stephan.”
The words hit like a blade between my ribs.
I nod, because if I speak, I’ll break. Tears press hot behind my eyes, threatening to spill.
“Thank you,” I manage, though it tastes like ash.
I stand on unsteady legs, gather my coat, my bag, the scraps of dignity I have left, and walk toward the elevator. No one looks at me. To everyone else, it’s just another Monday.
But I feel the walls closing behind me, sealing up the place where I used to exist.
Everyone thinks I was part of Halcyon’s defense team—a junior associate taking orders from her superior. If the DOJ proves I shared information with Stephan outside of protocol, they can charge me with professional misconduct. If they prove intimacy, it becomes evidence of bias.
I turn my head toward the corner of the floor, where the light should be spilling out across the carpet, where the smell of expensive coffee and the low, gravelly vibration of his voice usually anchor this entire floor.
But the office is a black hole. The lights are dead.
The glass walls, usually a window into his brilliance, are now just a mirror reflecting my own hollowed-out expression.
There is no coat on the rack. No shadow moving behind the desk.
It’s as if he’s been erased, and the panic that he might have already been sacrificed—that my letter arrived too late—thrashes in my chest like a trapped bird.
I stare at the gold-embossed nameplate: Stephan Marek.
It looks like a headstone now. My throat hitches, and for a second, I almost run to the door, almost pound on the glass just to see if he’s hiding in the dark.
But Cassian’s eyes are still on me, and I realize this is the “clean” break they planned.
He didn’t want to watch me hang, or perhaps he’s already been led to the gallows himself.
I turn away, the image of that cold, dark room burned into my retinas.
A car is already waiting at the entrance—Cassian’s final courtesy, his final containment.
I take one last look at the steel-and-concrete monument to my undoing, the firm that devoured me, the man I loved somewhere inside it.
The sound of the door locking—that soft, electronic click—doesn't sound like safety. It sounds like the lid of a tomb. I am outside, and he is gone, and the dark has swallowed the world we built.
The tears come all at once—violent, quiet, unstoppable—my breath fractures. My hands shake. The bracelet digs into my wrist like a promise I can’t keep.
My fingers itch to text him, but if I reach out to Stephan now, it won’t just be a mistake—it’ll be obstruction. Anything we say to each other could be subpoenaed. Tomorrow, the DOJ won’t just question what I did—they’ll question who I am.
I bury my face in my palms, letting the grief shake through me until my ribs ache.
I did what I had to—for Mary, for my mother, for him.
But that doesn’t dull the pain.