Chapter 37 Stephan
Stephan
Ispend the morning racing across the city, calling in every favor I have left.
By noon, I’ve had fifteen “coffee catch-ups” and secured a dozen polite variations of “I'll see what I can do.” Every handshake feels like penance.
Every favor I call in is a confession of how badly I failed her.
I burned the contract, but not the impulse behind it.
Every negotiation still feels like a clause—one more desperate amendment to keep her safe inside boundaries she never asked for.
It’s all I can pull together on short notice. The rest—letters, calls, pressure points—I’ll handle when I get back to the office.
The snow has stopped by the time I arrive, but the cold still hangs in the air like a warning.
I take a deep breath in the elevator, trying to steady myself. I haven’t seen Katie since our last night together—and every minute of silence since has scraped me raw. My fingers itch to text her. To call. To hear her voice—to believe she’s still mine.
I pray she’s still wearing the bracelet. It wasn’t a trinket or a symbol of ownership; it was a promise. A way to stay connected even if the world turned against us. But if anyone ever learns where it came from, it won’t look like affection. It’ll look like leverage.
I start to picture her mouth, then stop. That memory is evidence now, not solace.
The moment the elevator doors open, I know something is wrong—the air crackles with panic. Associates dart between cubicles with armfuls of files. Paralegals rush toward the big conference room, voices low and clipped.
The DOJ is here—I can feel it like a storm front rolling through the floor.
I scan the bullpen. Katie’s desk sits empty. Stripped clean—as if she’d never existed here. For a second, I convince myself she’s just late. Then I see the missing prayer card.
A hollowness opens in my chest.
She did it. She martyred herself for me.
I force myself to keep moving, each step a negotiation with collapse.
The moment the door clicks shut, I sit and press my head into my hands.
The plan I built this morning—every shield, every favor, every ounce of leverage— none of it reached her in time.
I couldn’t save her.
My jaw tightens until it aches. She sacrificed herself, and I wasn’t there to stop her.
She’s gone. And now I don’t know if I’ll ever get her back.
Cassian’s voice echoes from across the bullpen, making my blood boil despite what he says. He did this.
I buzz Annie.
“Could you ask Mr. Roth to come to my office?”
“Of course, sir,” she replies.
There is a knock at the door, and when I look up, Cassian is standing there—no smug expression, no words, just his presence.
“Shut the door, Cassian.”
I tell myself I’ll keep it civil, that I just need answers. Then I see the calm in his eyes—the calm of a man who already decided my fate—and I lose it.
He does as I say, and as soon as the door clicks, I’m on him, pinning him against the bookshelves. One hand braces beside his head, the other gripping his lapel in a white-knuckled fist.
“Where is she?” The words tear out of me.
“Stephan—”
The force of it—the desperation behind it—makes Cassian’s eyes flash with something I’ve never seen from him. Fear.
“Tell me,” I growl, my breath shaking. “What did you do with her?”
Cassian’s jaw tightens. “Let go.”
“Where is she?” I demand again, leaning in, my face inches from his. “Her desk is empty. Her things are gone. I know you did something. So tell me where the hell she is.”
His composure fractures, a hairline crack. He didn’t expect me to unravel this fast.
He glances at the hand gripping his suit. “Stephan, you need to calm down—”
“I will not calm down.” My voice finally breaks, raw and hoarse. “She’s gone. And you know exactly why.”
Cassian takes a slow breath, steadying himself. “I did what had to be done to protect this firm—”
“Don’t you dare,” I snarl, pressing closer, blocking every inch of space he could use to slip away. “Don’t pretend this was strategic. This was you removing her. Sending her away before I could get to her.”
Cassian arches a brow. “You’re acting like a man who’s lost control.”
“I have lost control!” The admission rips out of me, louder than I intended—my hand trembles where it grips the wall beside his head.
Cassian’s eyes widen—because he hears it. The truth I never meant to say aloud. “Sit down, Stephan, you and I both know this has to be done.”
For a breath, I almost tell him the rest—that I’m not angry, I’m terrified that I don’t know how to protect anyone without breaking them first.
I release him, and he takes a moment to compose himself.
“Now,” he says, straightening his suit. “You can still save her. I didn’t fire her. That would be stupid. And I didn’t let her quit either. She hasn’t fallen on her sword yet. She’s on administrative leave. It was the only way I could protect both her and this firm.”
The words land, but my body doesn’t register them. My blood still thunders in my ears.
But then, the lawyer in me—the cold, calculating part that has won a hundred unwinnable cases—takes a breath. I look at Cassian, and I see the chess move he’s actually made. As long as Katie is on leave, she hasn’t been terminated. She is still a member of this firm.
The rage drains, replaced by the familiar click of strategy locking into place. Strategy—that’s all the contract ever was—a framework for control disguised as care. Even now, I can’t stop drafting invisible terms.
The realization hits me like a shot of adrenaline.
Because she’s still an employee, her work on the Halcyon files—and every communication she’s had with me regarding “Firm Business”—stays locked behind the vault of Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work-Product Doctrine.
The DOJ can’t subpoena her personal notes if they are technically firm property under “internal review.” By keeping her on the payroll, Cassian hasn't just silenced her; he’s wrapped her in a legal shield that the Feds can’t pierce without a war.
Cassian hasn’t just silenced her; he’s turned her into a firewall. The ethics code calls it “conflict mitigation.” I call it a slow death by plausible deniability.
“She won’t cooperate with the DOJ while she’s under our umbrella,” Cassian continues, seeing the light return to my eyes. “They can’t interrogate her without firm counsel present. They can’t flip her. They can’t use her against you.”
“Against us,” I snap, my mind already racing through the precedents I can cite to keep the DOJ at bay.
Cassian’s eyes flick—barely—but enough to tell me he heard the desperation bleeding through.
“You need to understand something,” he says quietly. “If the DOJ had sat her down today? She would have handed them everything she had just to keep your name clean. She would have burned herself alive for you.”
The air leaves my lungs in a violent rush. A trembling starts in my fingers, and I can’t stop it. I press them into my thigh until it hurts, but it doesn’t help.
Cassian watches me in that steady, evaluating way he’s done since we were teenagers. He’s calculating the blast radius from this.
“She’s terrified, Stephan,” he says. “But she’s safe. Safer than she’d be here.”
My mind keeps flashing—Katie alone, her eyes red, her hands shaking, believing she ruined everything. Believing I hate her. Believing she saved me.
I rake both hands through my hair, pulling at the roots because it’s the only way to keep myself upright. “I’m sorry… for all of this.”
Cassian exhales, shoulders settling.
“I’ve known you since we were children, Stephan.
I watched you break a man’s jaw at a bar once because he laid a finger on his girlfriend.
Your anger doesn’t scare me. I know you’d never hurt me.
But your passion does. You fall hard when you do, and that can get you into trouble.
But that’s also why you haven’t opened up to anyone in a decade. ”
My eyes fall to the floor. “You’re right. I’m my father’s son in that way.”
Cassian doesn’t flinch. “You are so much more than your drunk, piece of shit father.”
I nod, but deep down I don’t believe him. “So what’s the plan?”
“She stays away. She stays unseen. And you stay here, pretending you’re fine.”
I nod like I understand, but his words sound far away.
Cassian keeps talking—details, timelines, strategy—but it all fades into a dull hum, and something inside me shifts. A clarity so sharp it hurts.
Cassian sees it. His voice stutters for a fraction of a second before he masks it. Because he recognizes this version of me, he’s seen it twice in our lives—once when my father died. And again, when we built this firm from nothing.
The version of me that does not scream. That does not break. The version of me that has made up his mind.
I straighten my suit jacket, smooth my tie, and meet his eyes with a clarity I didn’t have an hour ago.
“Alright,” I say quietly. “I understand.”
Cassian watches me too closely. “Stephan—”
“I’ll handle my part,” I tell him, voice calm, even. “You handle yours.”
He opens his mouth to protest, to warn me, to lecture me again—but pauses because he knows that tone. Because he knows he can’t stop me anymore.
This isn’t about love anymore. It’s about containment. Cassian’s version of protection isn’t so different from mine.
I wrote one contract to bind her to obedience; he’s written another to bind her to silence. The ink just changed from desire to policy.
If I can’t control the narrative, I become the narrative—the partner who fell for his associate and brought down his own firm.
I turn toward the door, the calm settling deeper with every step.
Cassian’s voice follows me: “Stephan. Do not do anything reckless.”
I pause, hand on the door. Then look back over my shoulder.
“I won’t,” I say.
But we both know what I really mean: I won’t do anything to hurt this firm, but I will do something.
Cassian thinks containment is protection. Maybe he’s right. But control has always been the only language I know for love.
The door shuts behind me with a soft, final click.
And that’s when the resolve locks into place—cold, precise, absolute.
I will fix this, and I will get Katie back—even if saving her means losing what’s left of myself.