Chapter 150: Inconvenience

CASSAIN

He paused, sounding genuinely exhausted. “Do you know how much work this is going to be to fix? The favors we have to call in? The money we have to move? Father warned you, Cassian. He said no trouble. And you went out and made the biggest mess possible.”

I leaned against the wall, the pain in my side beginning to throb in time with my pulse. Preston was talking about optics. He was talking about “work” and “embarrassment” and “complications.”

In the other room, Noah was probably curled in a ball, wondering if he would ever feel clean again. In a basement across the city, Alex was realizing he would never walk again. And here I was, being scolded for the inconvenience of it all.

“You made this mess,” Preston’s voice turned sharp and directive. “You’re going to clean it up. Father’s orders. You handle the Hendrix family. Figure out what to tell them. Deal with his threats. Fix it, Cassian. This isn’t a request.”

He kept talking, a endless stream of “Do you understand the position you’ve put us in?” and “The disrespect you’ve shown the name.”

I waited for a moment of silence.

“Is that all?” I asked.

There was a sputtering sound on the other end. “Excuse me?! Don’t you dare use that tone with me! I am your elder brother, Cassian! You will show me—”

Click.

I hung up. I didn’t have the energy to listen to a man who had never bled for anything in his life talk to me about respect. I stared at the phone for a second, knowing it would ring again within the minute. I didn’t care.

I pocketed the device and turned back toward the hallway. My body felt like it was made of lead, and every breath was a sharp reminder of the night’s violence. But as I walked toward the bedroom, my purpose was clear. The Hendrix family, the merger, my father’s temper… none of it mattered.

I reached the bedroom door and rested my hand on the wood. I had no idea what I was going to say. I didn’t know how to fix a soul that had been shattered.

But I was going to try.

I pushed the bedroom door open, the hinges moving with a silent, expensive smoothness that felt out of place in a world that had become so jagged. The room was bathed in the soft, golden glow of the morning sun, but the air was thick with the lingering scent of trauma.

Cyan was standing by the mahogany closet, his pink hair a vibrant, chaotic splash against the dark wood. He was rifling through my clothes with his one good arm, pulling out shirts and holding them up with a dissatisfied pout.

And there was Noah.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his shoulders hunched, looking so small and fragile that it felt like a physical blow to my chest. He was watching Cyan, his eyes wide and unfocused, lost in the middle distance of his own mind.

Cyan held up one of my white button-downs, the fabric draped over his arm. It looked massive… big enough to be a tent for someone of Noah’s build. Cyan turned, his eyes snapping to me as I stood in the doorway.

“This is ridiculous!” Cyan complained, waving the shirt with an indignant huff. “Everything in here is huge! Cassian, why are you built like a damn tree?”

I stood there, my arms crossed over my bandaged chest, a dull throb radiating from the stitches in my side. I raised an eyebrow, my voice dropping into a dry, flat monotone. “No shit. I’m six-foot-six, Cyan. What did you expect? Silk tunics? And doesn’t Noah have other clothes in his room?”

Cyan huffed, tossing the shirt onto the bed in a pile of discarded linen. “Well, I don’t want him to wear anything too fitted for him. So we’ll have to work with it. The boy can’t go around in a torn gala shirt all day.”

He reached back into the closet and pulled out a plain black t-shirt. It was still far too large, but the cotton would be more forgiving than the structured dress shirts.

In the silence that followed, Noah looked up.

Our eyes locked. The exchange was brief, but it was loaded with everything we hadn’t said… everything we couldn’t say. I saw the tremor in his hands, the lingering shadow of terror in the depths of his pupils.

But beneath the fear, there was something else. A flicker of relief. He looked at me as if confirming I was real, that the man who had pulled him out of that penthouse wasn’t a hallucination.

I wanted to move. I wanted to cross the room and bury my face in the crook of his neck and tell him I would burn the world down before I let anyone touch him again. But I stayed rooted to the spot. I gave him the only thing I could offer right now: space.

Noah broke the gaze first, his head dipping. He stood up slowly, his movements cautious, as if he expected his legs to betray him. He took the bundle of clothes from Cyan.

“I’ll just… shower,” he said. His voice was quiet, hoarse, the sound of a throat raw from screaming or the chemical burn of the alcohol Alex had forced on him.

He moved toward the ensuite, passing me as he went. He didn’t touch me, but he was close enough that I could smell the wrongness on him… the sharp, metallic scent of fear, the stale sweat of the gala, and the lingering, synthetic odor of the drugs. It was a violation of his very essence.

The bathroom door clicked shut. The sound of the lock sliding home echoed like a gunshot.

The moment the door closed, Cyan’s playful façade vanished. He crossed the room in three long strides, stopping inches from my face. His expression was hard, his eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity.

“He’s not okay, Cassian,” Cyan whispered, his voice low so it wouldn’t carry through the door. “He’s barely holding it together. He won’t say much but I can see it. He flinches if I move too fast. He’s zoning out every thirty seconds.”

My jaw tightened until it ached. “I know.”

“Do you?” Cyan challenged, his voice trembling with a mix of anger and grief. “Because this isn’t something a shower and a nap fixes. He’s traumatized.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said.

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