Chapter 171: Theater

CASSIAN

The car was a silent, pressurized cabin as it cut through the early morning fog of the city.

Outside, the world was beginning to stir, but inside the leather-bound interior, my mind was still back in the villa. Specifically, it was centered on the mattress where I had left Noah Bennett barely three hours ago.

Leaving him had been a physical struggle.

I’d stood in the doorway of the master suite for ten minutes, watching the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.

He was completely dead to the world, sprawled out in a way that suggested his bones had turned to liquid.

His skin was a canvas of my ownership, red flowering marks on his neck, the dark purple of my thumbprints on his hips, and the faint, angry bite marks I’d left on his shoulder when he’d been screaming my name.

The urge to crawl back into those charcoal sheets, to wake him with my hands and feel him tremble into me again, was a visceral, thrumming ache in my gut.

I wanted to see his eyes go wide with that delicious mix of fear and wanting. I wanted to wreck him all over again.

But I was woken up with a call from my father. An emergency board meeting. The kind of summons that, even for me, couldn’t be ignored without triggering a war I wasn’t ready to fight yet.

I’d moved quietly through the kitchen earlier, the cold marble floor under my feet a sharp contrast to the heat of the bedroom.

I don’t cook. I have people for that.

But this morning, I’d found myself cracking eggs and buttering toast with a meticulousness that felt foreign.

I’d prepared a spread, eggs, fruit, pastries, and covered them with silver domes to trap the heat.

I knew he wouldn’t be able to move for a while. I had dismantled him quite thoroughly, and there was a dark, primal satisfaction in knowing I’d rendered him that helpless.

I’d set the tray on the nightstand, watching him sleep one last time before reluctantly heading for the door.

Now, sitting in the back of the Maybach, I felt the phantom echoes of the night in my own body.

My stitches, the ones from the gala, were pulling slightly, a dull reminder that I probably should have seen a doctor forty-eight hours ago.

My lower back was stiff, and my muscles were humming with the fatigue of hours of exertion. But the soreness was a trophy. I felt satisfied. Heavy. Claimed by him as much as I had claimed him.

I felt the faint sting of scratches on my back where his nails had dug in, and a mark on my own neck that was currently hidden by the high collar of my dress shirt.

Just the memory of him coming apart, of the way he had begged me to stop and then begged me to continue, made the blood rush south.

I adjusted my position in the seat, my jaw tightening. I wanted to turn the car around. I wanted to tell the driver to go back. I wanted to spend the day in bed until Noah Bennett couldn’t remember his own name.

Instead, I looked out the window as the XUM headquarters came into view. I had a circus to attend.

…

The executive boardroom on the top floor was a cathedral of glass and ego. By the time I arrived, the air was already thick with the scent of expensive coffee and manufactured grief. It was theater.

Everyone in that room knew Alex Hendrix was a predator. Everyone knew his death was a blessing for the partnership’s bottom line. But they would sit there and clutch their pearls, performing a funeral rite for a man they all secretly despised, simply because it was the “appropriate” thing to do for the stakeholders.

The agenda was predictable: succession, share freezes, project continuity, and legal damage control. They were terrified of the optics.

I arrived fifteen minutes late. It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t want to hear the opening platitudes or the fake condolences. I wanted to enter when they were already exhausted by their own pretension.

I pushed open the heavy oak doors without knocking. The conversation died instantly. A dozen heads snapped in my direction, the silence becoming heavy and palpable.

A junior board member instinctively started to stand up in a show of respect, only to be pulled back down by a sharp look from a senior partner. Don’t, the look said. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

I didn’t care. Power was realigning in the room just by the fact that I was breathing the same air. I wasn’t the official CEO, not yet, but the title didn’t matter. They were looking at me as if I were the one holding the scythe.

I ignored them all, walking to my seat. My brother, Preston, was seated to the right of our father, his posture so stiff he looked like he was held together by wire. He glared at me, a look of pure, concentrated venom. You’re late. You’re unprofessional. You’re a disgrace.

I met his eyes for exactly one second before looking away, dismissive. Preston’s jaw clenched so hard I thought a tooth might crack. It was deeply satisfying.

My father, Charles, didn’t reprimand me. He sat at the head of the table, his expression neutral, almost bored. He expected this from me. He’d factored my arrogance into his calculations years ago.

I pulled out my chair and sat, crossing my legs and leaning back with a relaxed posture that bordered on insulting.

I didn’t greet anyone. I didn’t apologize. I simply existed, and the room waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, a risk consultant cleared his throat and tried to regain control of the floor.

“As I was saying,” the man stammered, his voice climbing an octave. “The reputational risk regarding the Hendrix estate is… well, it’s significant. We need to discuss the strategic realignment of the luxury development phase. The optics are—”

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