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 me, 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 me.

It was a younger Cassian. He looked different, lighter, somehow. 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 time I’ve known him. It wasn’t directed at the camera; it was directed at the man beside him.

His hair pulled back into a loose, messy 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 time 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 someone enough to look at them like they were the entire world?

But the silence in my chest always asks the same question: Will he ever look at me like that? And the silence never answers.

And for three days, the world had been made of silence. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

I had called him more times than I care to admit. Voicemail. I’ve sent messages. 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 meetings, he works odd hours, he doesn’t owe me a play-by-play of his life. I’m just his assistant. Mostly.

I had gone back to the villa yesterday. Miss Chen met me at the door with the same warmth she always has, but her eyes were carefully accurate.

"He hasn’t been back," she said.

She said it the same 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 home. I put the stolen picture in my drawer. I stared at the ceiling until the sun came 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 some miracle of muscle memory, but my mind was a fractured mess.

Mason noticed immediately on the walk to work. He’s always had a way of studying me 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 time, 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 something.

Mason decided not to push. He just nodded and said, "You know you can tell me 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 me directly to handle the proxy work because that’s what Cassian made me, his shadow, his stand-in.

I had two options: go to the meeting, or explain to a room full of high-level executives why I couldn’t locate my boss. I chose the meeting.

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 me 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 me whole.

Midway through the negotiation, the atmosphere in the room shifted.

A junior associate’s phone buzzed in the hallway. He stepped out, then came 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 meeting.

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 me and then away. There was a shared quality to the silence now, everyone knew something 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 meeting we started wasn’t the one we were finishing.

I rounded up the final points. The contracts were signed. The partnership was confirmed. 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 me. 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 name 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 me?"

The client turned his phone toward me. 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 messages.

Have you seen this? Noah. The rumors about our boss. Noah, are you there? Call me when you can.

The messages 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 name.

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 statement 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 mentioned the name, and that told me everything I needed to know.

Then,he saw me 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 me away. I couldn’t even get the question out properly. My voice was a wreck. "Nick... tell me. Is it true—"

Nick looked at me. It was a long, heavy look. He was deciding how much of me was going to break.

"You already know it’s true," Nick said. His voice was flat, clinical. "So what exactly are you asking me?"

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, me, followed right behind it.

"Is he going to live?" I whispered.

Nick didn’t answer right away. He just looked past me 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. Somewhere behind them, Cassian was fighting for his life.