NOAH
The mind has a strange way of holding onto things it shouldn’t. It fixates on details that hurt, turning them over like a jagged stone in a pocket until the edges draw blood.
For , that stone was a photograph.
Two days ago, I was in Cassian’s villa. I shouldn’t have been looking through his things, I know that, but the wallet was sitting there on the desk, open, vulnerable. And inside was a picture.
And It wasn’t a picture of .
It was a younger Cassian. He looked different, lighter, sohow. But it was his expression that stopped my heart.
It was a look I had never seen on his face, not once, in all the ti I’ve known him. It wasn’t directed at the cara; it was directed at the man beside him.
His hair pulled back into a loose, ssy bun. His face was a confusing, beautiful contradiction, masculine and delicate all at once.
They were both smiling. It was a bright, unguarded smile, the kind that only exists between two people who have stopped performing for the rest of the world. I took it. I told myself I’d return it, but I just put it in my pocket and left.
I’ve been looking at it ever since. Every ti I tell myself to stop, I find my hand drifting toward the drawer.
Jealousy is an ugly, heavy thing, especially when you can’t justify it.
Who am I to object to Cassian’s past? Who am I to be angry that he once loved soone enough to look at them like they were the entire world?
But the silence in my chest always asks the sa question: Will he ever look at like that? And the silence never answers.
And for three days, the world had been made of silence.
I had called him more tis than I care to admit. Voicemail. I’ve sent ssages. Delivered. Then just Unread.
I stared at the status on the screen until the blue light burned into my retinas. I told myself he was busy.
He’s the CEO of XUM; he has etings, he works odd hours, he doesn’t owe a play-by-play of his life. I’m just his assistant. Mostly.
I had gone back to the villa yesterday. Miss Chen t at the door with the sa warmth she always has, but her eyes were carefully accurate.
"He hasn’t been back," she said.
She said it the sa way she had two days before, but I heard it differently.
The bad feeling that had been a tiny, distant possibility was starting to take on a solid, terrifying shape.
I went ho. I put the stolen picture in my drawer. I stared at the ceiling until the sun ca up, telling no one.
I didn’t sleep. "Not sleeping well" was a nice way of saying I spent eight hours vibrating with anxiety.
My body continued to function by so miracle of muscle mory, but my mind was a fractured ss.
Mason noticed imdiately on the walk to work. He’s always had a way of studying like I’m a puzzle he’s determined to solve.
"You look like you haven’t slept in a week," Mason said, his eyes narrowed. "You look like a sad ghost, Noah. A very tired, sad ghost."
"Thank you," I muttered. "That’s helpful."
"Is it Cassian?" He asked it lightly, but there was a sharp edge to his curiosity. He’s been suspicious for a long ti, and today he was finally testing the water.
"It’s nothing," I said. My voice was thin and brittle, the kind of voice that confirms it’s definitely sothing.
Mason decided not to push. He just nodded and said, "You know you can tell things, right?"
I knew. But there was nothing to tell. Not yet.
Today didn’t care about my internal collapse either. There was a contract negotiation that had already been rescheduled twice.
The CFO asked directly to handle the proxy work because that’s what Cassian made , his shadow, his stand-in.
I had two options: go to the eting, or explain to a room full of high-level executives why I couldn’t locate my boss. I chose the eting.
The drive took an hour. I sat in the back of the car with the senior contracts manager and the head of partnerships.
They treated with that specific, awkward deference people use when they aren’t sure what your actual job is but know you have the ear of the man at the top.
We arrived at the client’s building in the neighboring city. It was a space designed to scream "seriousness." Glass, steel, and expensive leather.
I put my phone on Do Not Disturb. I needed to give this my full attention, mostly because the alternative was letting the panic swallow whole.
Midway through the negotiation, the atmosphere in the room shifted.
A junior associate’s phone buzzed in the hallway. He stepped out, then ca back in a minute later. His expression had changed, it was professionally controlled, but the air around him felt different.
Then the whispering started. It was that specific pattern of people receiving information and trying to figure out how to react while technically still in a eting.
I noticed it, but I didn’t engage. I was already carrying too much; I didn’t need their anxiety.
But then the phones started coming out.
Under the table. Above the table. People were reading things, their eyes darting to and then away. There was a shared quality to the silence now, everyone knew sothing that I didn’t.
The tension built until the air felt thick enough to choke on. We continued, because that’s what professionals do, but the eting we started wasn’t the one we were finishing.
I rounded up the final points. The contracts were signed. The partnership was confird. On paper, it was a functional success. I had represented Cassian perfectly, despite him being a ghost for the last seventy-two hours.
As the room began to clear, the client looked at . It was a look of pity mixed with morbid curiosity.
"Strange timing," he said carefully. "Closing a deal while your boss is... well. You haven’t seen the news?"
My blood went cold. "I’m sorry?"
"Cassian Wolfe," the na landed like a physical blow. "There’s been... it’s circulating. Or it was. Apparently, it’s being scrubbed fast, but people are saying he was shot. That he was brought to the Presbyterian General hospital."
My brain flatlined. For one second, I refused the information. In the next, I accepted it completely.
"I’m sorry," I heard my own voice, but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. "I don’t... can you show ?"
The client turned his phone toward . It was a screenshot of a headline from a blog that usually dealt in rumors. XUM CEO Shot in Targeted Attack. The post was already gone, but the image remained. The words were clear.
"It’s likely just a rumor," the client added, perhaps seeing the way the color had drained from my face. "These things circulate. It’s unverified. Probably nothing."
I read the headline again. My chest felt like it was becoming smaller from the inside, collapsing in on itself. I reached for my own phone and turned off DND.
Mason. Five missed calls. Ten ssages.
Have you seen this? Noah. The rumors about our boss. Noah, are you there? Call when you can.
The ssages didn’t make it feel less real. They made the nightmare official.
I stood up. I didn’t wait for the formal wrap-up. The chair scraped loudly against the floor.
"I have to go," I said to the room. I was already moving toward the door before the contracts manager could finish saying my na.
I didn’t wait for the company car. I flagged a cab, my hands shaking so hard I almost dropped my phone. The city moved past the window in a blur of gray and yellow. I was heading back toward the hospital, toward the truth.
It’s unverified, I told myself. It’s probably nothing. People are already saying it was false. XUM would likely put out a statent soon.
I tried to build a wall of logic. He’s fine. He has to be fine. He survived prison, he survived the streets, he survives everything. He’s Cassian Wolfe.
But the counter-thought was louder. Miss Chen said he hasn’t been back. He hasn’t answered you in days. He’s gone.
The feeling that had been sitting in my gut since the villa visit was no longer a vague shape. It was a certainty. It was dressed in every unanswered call and every night spent staring at the ceiling.
The hospital was a maze of unhelpful desks and corridors filled with people who knew things but weren’t allowed to say them. I asked. I begged. I saw a nurse’s face shift when I ntioned the na, and that told everything I needed to know.
Then,he saw before I saw him.
Nick. My brother. The man who shared my face but none of my weakness. He looked unreadable, as always, hard and distant.
He dragged away. I couldn’t even get the question out properly. My voice was a wreck. "Nick... tell . Is it true—"
Nick looked at . It was a long, heavy look. He was deciding how much of was going to break.
"You already know it’s true," Nick said. His voice was flat, clinical. "So what exactly are you asking ?"
The world, which had been holding itself together by the thin thread of my denial, finally let go. The uncertainty was gone, and the thing it was holding together, , followed right behind it.
"Is he going to live?" I whispered.
Nick didn’t answer right away. He just looked past at the double doors of the intensive care unit.
"He’s stable," Nick said eventually. "But stability is a fragile thing, Noah. Don’t go looking for promises I can’t keep."
I looked at the doors. Sowhere behind them, Cassian was fighting for his life.
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