Chapter 149: Stitches

CASSIAN

The living room of the suite felt smaller than it had an hour ago, crowded by the presence of ghosts and the sharp, medicinal tang of antiseptic. I sat on the edge of the velvet sofa, my jaw set as the medical practitioner worked in silence. Across the room, I watched Cyan.

He was being everything I wanted to be in that moment. Cyan had his good arm wrapped around Noah’s trembling shoulders, guiding him with a whispered tenderness toward the bedroom. Noah moved like a sleepwalker, his gaze vacant and haunting, his spirit still trapped in that glass tomb of a penthouse.

I wanted to stand up. I wanted to shove the practitioner aside, go to him, and pull him against my chest until the shivering stopped. I wanted to tell him that as long as I was breathing, no one… not Alex, not my father, not God himself… would ever lay a hand on him again. But I was stuck.

I was anchored by the needle currently threading through my skin and the crushing weight of my own guilt.

My fault. The thought was a rhythmic hammer in my skull. I had seen the predator in Alex from the start. I had known the rot that lay beneath that angelic façade, and yet, I had let Noah walk into his orbit. I had played a game of pride and distance, and Noah had paid the price in terror.

“Sir, please don’t move,” the practitioner murmured, her voice a soft command. “I’m almost done.”

I gripped the edge of the sofa, my knuckles white, and watched the bedroom door click shut. Noah was gone. Cyan would handle the immediate aftermath… the soft clothes, the quiet reassurances… while I sat here, leaking blood and receiving the penance I deserved.

The practitioner was the nurse from the hospital I had used before; she didn’t ask questions about the bullet graze or the knife wound. She simply worked.

The knife slash along my side was the worst of it. It was a clean, deep opening that required my full focus to ignore. As she pulled the silk thread tight, I felt the familiar, sharp bite of the needle piercing the flesh, followed by the tug of the skin being forced back together.

I didn’t flinch. Prison had been a masterclass in enduring pain without an audience.

• One… two… three…

By the time she reached fifteen stitches, the wound was a neat, puckered line. She moved to my shoulder, which had already been cleaned. The bullet had only taken a narrow strip of skin, a shallow trench that would scar but wouldn’t hinder my movement. She applied a fresh bandage there, then moved to wrap my ribs.

“You have a cracked rib, Mr. Wolfe,” she said, her voice clinical. “Perhaps two. I’m wrapping them for support, but you need to breathe deeply despite the pain to avoid pneumonia.”

I nodded, barely listening. I could feel the blood beginning to stiffen in the fibers of the bandages.

“Keep the wound dry for forty-eight hours,” she continued, packing her instruments into a black leather bag. “Change the dressings twice daily. Watch for redness or swelling… infection is your biggest enemy right now. No strenuous activity for a week. I’ll be back in ten days to remove the silk.”

She handed me a small plastic bag of antibiotics and a bottle of high-grade pain relief. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Thank you,” I rasped.

I stood as she left, the movement pulling at the fresh stitches in my side. I saw her out, the heavy door clicking shut with a finality that should have brought peace. Finally, the room was quiet. Finally, I could go to the bedroom. I could go to Noah.

I took one step toward the hallway. Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out, expecting a status report from Miller. Instead, the caller ID flashed: FATHER.

My stomach dropped into a cold, dark pit. I knew Charles wouldn’t be calling to check on my health. I knew exactly what this was. If I ignored it, the calls would escalate. If I let it go to voicemail, he’d send a cleanup crew to my door.

I swiped the screen and brought the phone to my ear. “Yes?”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!”

It wasn’t my father. It was Preston. His voice was a shrill, hysterical gale that made me pull the phone inches away from my ear. Preston was always the one Charles sent to do the screaming; my father preferred to be the one who delivered the silence.

“Father specifically told you not to cause trouble, Cassian!” Preston launched in without a breath. “You were supposed to finalize the merger and come home like a civilized human being! Not start a goddamn war in the middle of Barcelona!”

I stood in the center of the living room, my eyes fixed on the closed bedroom door. Preston was rambling now, his voice thick with the kind of agitation that usually meant he was pacing a hole in his office rug.

“You got into it with Lorenzo Marchetti? Do you have any idea who that is? The connections that family has? He survived, Cassian! He’s telling everyone who will listen that a Wolfe threatened him and slaughtered his guards. Father had to spend the last six hours smoothing that over with the Italians!”

I stayed silent. I didn’t defend the fact that Marchetti was a dog who deserved to be put down. It wouldn’t matter to them.

“But that’s not even the worst of it,” Preston’s voice shifted, dropping into a tone of genuine, panicked disbelief. “What the fuck did you do to Alex Hendrix?”

I felt a ghost of a smirk touch my lips, cold and devoid of humor. “I handled him.”

“Handled him? Hendrix’s security was found dead! There’s blood all over his private penthouse! And Alex? He’s missing, Cassian! Vanished! No body, no trace, just a room that looks like a slaughterhouse!”

Preston let out a jagged breath. “The partnership was just announced. Wolfe and Hendrix. The biggest deal of the decade. And now the Hendrix heir is gone, and everyone… the investors, the board, the media… is looking at us. Do you have any idea how suspicious this makes the family look?”

“The Hendrix family is furious,” Preston continued, the volume rising again. “Alex’s father is threatening legal action, business retaliation, political pressure. He’s making this a massive headache for the old man. Father has been swarmed with calls since four in the morning! Everyone is panicking!”

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