I find him in his office at midnight, bourbon in hand, documents spread across his desk like evidence. The lamplight catches the amber liquid as he lifts the glass, and he doesn't even glance up when I walk in.
His shirt's unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves shoved up his forearms, and there's something in the rigid set of his shoulders that makes my stomach drop.
"We need to talk." My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He doesn't look up. "There's nothing to discuss."
I close the door behind me, twist the lock. The click echoes in the silent room, and his eyes finally track up to watch my hand on the brass.
"Our marriage is falling apart and there's nothing to discuss?"
He sets the glass down with deliberate care, like he's considering throwing it.
"Maybe it was always going to fall apart." His gaze when it meets mine is flat, empty of the heat I've grown addicted to. "It was against your will, remember?"
The words land like a physical blow. I cross to his desk, my hands finding the edge of the mahogany, gripping hard enough that my knuckles go white.
"This isn't about my initial will. This is about Ivy poisoning you against me."
"Everything's Ivy's fault?" He laughs, bitter and sharp. "How convenient."
"She's feeding you lies and you're swallowing them whole." My voice rises despite my best efforts to stay calm.
He stands, and suddenly he's towering over the desk, using his full height against me for the first time since our wedding night.
"Are they lies? The phone calls from our bedroom?" A muscle jumps in his jaw. "The information only you had access to?"
"I didn't make those calls!" The words crack in the middle, betraying me.
He reaches for the bourbon bottle, pours another two fingers with hands that are too steady, too controlled. "Of course. It's everyone else—Ivy, Rafael, mysterious enemies." He takes a long drink, his throat working. "Never you."
The dismissal in his tone breaks something in my chest. I slam my palms down on his desk hard enough that papers scatter, my wedding ring catching the light and throwing diamonds across his documents.
"When did you stop trusting me? Was it gradual or did you just wake up one day and decide I was the enemy?"
"When people started dying." His voice drops to something quiet and lethal, the tone he uses before he kills someone. "When information only you and I knew ended up in rival hands."
The accusation hangs between us, suffocating. This is it—the cliff edge, the ending I've been feeling coming for days, and I'm standing on it completely alone.
My throat burns with tears I refuse to let fall, my whole body trembling with the effort of holding myself together. I've tried logic, tried anger, tried everything except the one truth I've been too terrified to say first.
I step closer, close enough to smell bourbon and bergamot, that scent that used to mean home. "I'm your wife."
He doesn't move. His back stays rigid, face carved from stone, eyes fixed on those damn documents like I haven't just spoken.
"Cassian." My voice cracks, and I hate myself for the weakness. "I'm your wife. And I..."
I reach out, my hand hovering over his arm, afraid to bridge that final distance and find only ice. "I love you…"
The words fall into the space between us. Raw, fragile, more dangerous than any weapon he's taught me to wield. It's the first time I've said it out loud, this confession I've been carrying around like it might save us both.
He flinches. Not with warmth or recognition, but like I've physically struck him across the face.
When he turns, his eyes are so cold I barely recognize the man standing in front of me.
"Love?" The laugh that comes out of him is harsh, broken, the sound of something dying in real time. "That's the last card you have to play, isn't it? The one you saved for when the lies stopped working."
"That's not…" I choke on the words, on the unfairness of it all.
"Don't!" His roar makes me stumble back, my spine hitting the desk. "Don't you dare use that word." He stalks toward me, each step deliberate and predatory. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't change the facts."
I'm trapped between him and the desk, and for the first time since our wedding night, I'm genuinely afraid of him. Not of what he'll do, he'd never hurt me, not physically, but of what he's already done.
The way he's already destroyed us.
"What facts?"
"That my men are dead." He looms over me, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his eyes, the ones I used to trace in the dark after we made love. "That you are, and always will be, Vincent Castellano's daughter."
"What does that mean?" My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms.
He spins away, runs both hands through his hair hard enough that it has to hurt.
"It means maybe this was always the plan. Marry me, learn my operations, destroy me from the inside out." He laughs again, that same broken sound that's tearing me apart. "Your father would profit immensely from my downfall."
"You think I've been playing you from the beginning?" I stare at his back, at the tension in his shoulders, disbelieving. "The pool house, the tears… everything we've shared was what, some elaborate act?"
"I don't fucking know!" He explodes, grabbing his glass and hurling it against the wall.
Crystal shatters, bourbon bleeding down the expensive wallpaper like a wound.
"I don't know what's real anymore." His chest heaves, hands shaking at his sides in a way I've never seen. "When I look at you, I see the woman I love and the threat to everything I've built. I can't separate them anymore!"
The truth crystallizes in my mind, cold and sharp as the broken glass on his floor.
"So, Ivy won," I say quietly, more to myself than to him. "She wanted to break us and she has."
"This isn't about Ivy." But his jaw tightens, tells me everything he won't say out loud.
"No." I laugh, and it comes out harsh and broken. "This is about you being too damn proud to admit you're being manipulated. Too paranoid to see who really loves you and who's using you."
I head for the door, my legs moving on autopilot. My hand closes around the knob when his voice stops me cold. "Where are you going?"
"Away." I don't turn around, can't look at him right now. "If you don't trust me, there's no point in staying."
"If you leave now," his voice drops to something deadly quiet, the tone that makes grown men confess their sins, "don't come back."
I pause, my fingers tightening on the brass until it hurts. "Is that a threat?"
"It's a fact." I hear him move closer, feel his presence at my back like a physical weight. "You walk out that door, you're confirming every suspicion I have."
I turn to face him, and the distance between us might as well be the Grand Canyon.
"And if I stay? What then?" My voice rises despite my efforts to stay calm. "More surveillance? More accusations? Watching you let Ivy crawl all over you while you treat me like a criminal?"
"I need time to think." He won't meet my eyes, stares at a point over my shoulder instead. "Without you here clouding my judgment."
The words are nails in a coffin, final and brutal. I nod slowly, something cold and hard settling in my chest where my heart used to be.
"Clouding your judgment. That's what I am to you now? A cloud?"
He doesn't answer. The silence stretches between us, damning in its completeness.
"Then I'll make it easy for you."
I walk to our bedroom on autopilot, my body moving while my mind goes numb. I pull clothes from drawers without looking at what I'm grabbing, throw them into a bag I find shoved in the back of the closet.
He follows like a shadow, stands in the doorway watching me pack like I'm a suspect he's documenting for evidence.
"This is what you want?" I ask, shoving another dress into the bag without bothering to fold it. "For me to leave so Ivy can slip right into my place?"
His jaw tightens but he doesn't speak. Doesn't defend himself or her.
I stop packing, turn to face him fully. The man standing in my doorway looks like Cassian, sounds like him, smells like him.
But the person I fell in love with is already gone.
"She has everything to do with this. And when you finally realize it, when you see how thoroughly she's played you…"
I zip the bag closed with more force than necessary, the sound is violent in the quiet room.
"Remember that you chose her over me. Over your wife."