CASSIAN

Emilio Vincenti didn’t just walk into a room; he performed an entrance. He stood in the center of the harsh, overhead light, looking down at me as if I were a piece of furniture he was considering throwing away.

He was exactly as I remembered him, only older and polished to a more dangerous shine.

He wore a dark, tailored suit under a heavy brown coat with a thick fur trim. His shoes were Italian, leather-soled, and cost more than most people earned in a year.

He had a scar on his upper lip and another crossing his brow... reminders that he hadn’t always been the one standing behind a desk.

His hazel eyes were cold, scanning me with a mixture of hatred and deep, hungry satisfaction.

He wanted wealth and violence to be seen at the same time. He wanted everyone to know he could buy you or bury you, and it didn’t matter which.

"Out," he spoke again.

The word was quiet, but it cleared the room instantly. The bearded guard hesitated for a second, his eyes flickering from Emilio to me.

He knew I was dangerous. He knew that even in chains, I wasn’t a man you left alone with your boss.

Emilio noticed the hesitation. "He’s chained to a chair," he said, his voice dripping with bored contempt. "Out."

The heavy steel door groaned shut. The sound echoed off the damp concrete walls, leaving the two of us in a silence that felt like a physical weight.

One man standing in expensive fur. One man seated in blood and iron. The balance of power seemed obvious, but Emilio was always bad at math.

Emilio took his time. He walked a slow, deliberate circle around me, his shoes clicking rhythmically.

"What has it been?" he asked, his tone casual. "Three years? Four?" He stopped and tilted his head. "I’m honestly surprised. I thought prison would have finished you. I thought one of the men I sent in there would have sent your head back to me in a box."

He smiled, and it was a jagged, ugly thing. "But then, some things just refuse to die. You know what I mean, Cassian? You step on them. You come back a month later, and you have to step on them again. They’re still there. The only way to actually end it... is to crush it completely."

He paused, leaning In so I could see the fine lines around his eyes. "So. How was prison?"

I didn’t look away. My voice was even, despite the copper taste of blood in my mouth. "The men you sent to find out... they couldn’t tell you?"

I let the silence hang for a beat.

"Oh. Right. I killed them."

The smile faltered. It was only for a fraction of a second... a tiny crack in the porcelain... before he reassembled it. But I saw it. I felt the chain behind my back.

The bracket on the chair was loose now. I just needed him to keep talking. I needed him to stay focused on my face.

"You should have stayed quiet," Emilio spat. "You should have stayed in that hole and rotted. Your father saved you, Cassian. Not your own strength. You’re only alive because Charles Wolfe made a phone call."

"I’m not certain about that," I said. "I would have found my way out. Whatever it took. Just to get back to this. To get back to you."

Emilio scoffed, a short, sharp sound of genuine amusement. "You and what army?"

I looked directly into his hazel eyes. "I don’t need one. You’re already in front of me."

Emilio took a step back. It was involuntary, a reflex born of a sudden, sharp instinct that he was in more danger than he realized.

He caught himself immediately, covering the slip by turning away and pulling a cigar from a silver case.

He lit it, the smoke curling into the red light. It was a performance of composure, but the fact that he needed the cigar to feel steady told me everything I needed to know.

He started walking again, the smoke trailing behind him like a ghost.

"You speak very confidently for someone chained to a chair," he said. "With nowhere to go. No one is coming for you, Cassian. Reid is blocked. Your little pink-haired freak is being dismantled next door. You are alone."

"You’re right," I said. "I am chained to a chair. And you’re in front of me."

"You’re bluffing," Emilio said, his voice gaining strength as he convinced himself. "Drop it. There’s nothing you can do. Not here. Not like this."

He stopped directly in front of me. He held the cigar between two fingers, the glowing tip inches from my face. "Four years. I’ve been waiting four years for this. For you to pay for what you did to my father."

"If I recall correctly," I said, my voice dropping to a low rumble, "you started it."

Emilio’s smile changed. It became predatory. He found the door he had been looking for. "Ah. Yes. Your little..." He paused, pretending to search his memory for a name he had never forgotten. "What was his name? Julian? That was it, wasn’t it?" 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

My face didn’t break. I have spent years training my features to be a mask of nothingness.

But something happened. A name like that doesn’t just sit in the air; it lands in the blood. It lives in a different place than the rest of the world. It’s a name made of salt and old light and the sound of the sea.

Emilio saw it. He saw the way my pupils dilated, the way the muscles in my neck tightened just a fraction. He had found the wound.

"A fine young man," Emilio whispered, moving closer. "Really. Such a shame. The way he died... so worthless. And it was your fault, wasn’t it, Cassian? If you had simply admitted you were wrong, your Julian wouldn’t have had to... suffer. The way he did."

The memory hit me without permission. I wasn’t in the basement anymore. I was back in that warehouse four years ago. The smell of oil and old wood. The way the moonlight hit the floor. And Julian.

I remembered his face. Or what they had left of his face. It had taken me a moment to recognize him because they had tried to erase the person I knew. They had turned the man I loved into a mess of broken skin and quiet whimpers.

Emilio was watching me, savoring the look on my face. "There it is," he said, satisfied. "That’s the expression I’ve been dreaming of. But do you want to know something, Cassian?"

He raised the cigar, the red ash glowing bright.

"I didn’t just ask my boys to beat him. I made sure they took turns. Of course, I myself was the first to have a taste of him."

The world stopped.

The chains were suddenly irrelevant. The bruising on my ribs, the blood in my mouth, the exhaustion of the last two days...it all vanished, burned away by a rage so absolute it felt like it was made of fire. My body responded before my mind could intervene.

I started to shake. It was a deep, violent tremor that started in my hands and moved through my entire frame.

It was the shaking of a cage being pushed to its breaking point. It was the only thing holding me back from ripping his throat out with my teeth.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I didn’t break.

I just looked at him. I stared into his hazel eyes and I didn’t blink. I didn’t speak. I let the look itself do the work. I wanted him to see the exact moment I decided how I was going to kill him.

Emilio felt it. He took two steps back, his boots scuffing the concrete. His smile was gone. For a real, honest moment, the bravado vanished, and he saw the animal he had cornered. He had to make a visible effort to pull his mask back on.

"It’s time," Emilio said, his voice a little too high. He recovered the smirk, but it was thinner than before. "I think it’s time to send you to meet him. Consider it a gift. You’ve been without him long enough."

He made a gesture with his cigar, about to call the guards back in.

I started to laugh.

It wasn’t a loud laugh. It wasn’t the laugh of a crazy man. It started as a quiet, rhythmic sound in my chest and grew into something steady.

Emilio froze. "What—?"

I looked at him, the laugh still playing on my lips. Behind my back, my left hand was free. It had been free for the last several minutes, ever since he had started talking about Julian.

The bracket had given way while he was busy enjoying his own cruelty. I was just holding the chain in place, waiting for the right moment.

Suddenly, Emilio’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket.

He reached for it, eyes still on me. He answered it, standing right there in the light, because I was "chained" and there was no reason to be afraid.

The room went silent as he listened. I watched the color drain from his face. I watched the cigar slip between his fingers and hit the floor, forgotten.

"What?" he shouted into the phone. "What do you mean?"

He sounded sharp. Panicked. It was the sound of a man whose world had just been told it didn’t exist anymore.

Emilio turned back to me. His eyes were wide now, searching my face for an answer he didn’t want to find. I just watched him.

I sat there, the laugh having settled into a quiet, cold satisfaction. I had been waiting for this for four years.

BOOM!