Chapter 5
I dismissed the guests from the ballroom.
Not home.
Into the west salon.
Food.
Drinks from unopened bottles.
No one left the estate until I knew how many had participated.
This was family business now.
I kept Scarlett and Cassian with me.
Rafe returned Iris after her hand was wrapped.
She stood farther away this time.
I noticed.
Scarlett noticed too.
Good.
I asked Cassian:
“What did you tell Scarlett about Anthony?”
He said nothing.
Scarlett answered for him.
“That my father begged you to let him leave.”
True.
“That you smiled and agreed.”
Also true.
“Then sent men after him.”
False.
I looked at Cassian.
“Whose men?”
Scarlett hesitated.
“Westbrook.”
“Names.”
“I don’t know.”
Of course.
Cassian supplied the story without details she could verify.
I walked toward him.
“You told me Anthony was hit by unknown men after crossing Bellmore Road.”
“Yes.”
“You told Scarlett I sent them.”
Silence.
“Which lie came first?”
His face hardened.
“Anthony was dangerous.”
Not answer.
Scarlett stared at him.
“Cassian?”
He looked at her.
“He would have come back.”
My breathing stopped.
There.
Not confession.
Enough.
Anthony had begged me for safe passage after secretly selling access to a rival family.
I could have killed him under our rules.
I didn’t.
Scarlett was nineteen then.
I knew killing her father would create a wound that outlived the betrayal.
So I stripped his authority and sent him away.
Only four people knew his route.
Me.
Cassian.
My father.
And Anthony’s driver.
My father died six months later.
Driver disappeared.
Cassian remained.
I asked:
“Why did Anthony need to die?”
Cassian’s face closed.
Scarlett stepped backward.
“No.”
She understood before he admitted anything.
Anthony knew something about Cassian.
Something dangerous enough that my oldest friend preferred a dead traitor to a living exile.
And for four years, Cassian used that death twice—
May you like
first to hide his own secret from me,
then to turn Anthony’s daughter against me.
