Chapter 202: The Wrong Bennett

NOAH

Someone shoot me. Please.

Preston Wolfe’s question didn’t just hang in the air; it felt like it had physical weight, a leaden sphere resting right on my sternum, making it impossible to draw a full breath.

The table had turned toward me, a collective, predatory pivot of silk and jewelry and expensive expectations.

“What was it that made him notice you?”

I repeated it internally, not with anger, but with the specific, hollow bewilderment of being handed a live grenade and asked to describe its texture.

What was I supposed to say? What answer existed for that question that was both true and survivable in this room?

I couldn’t say: He noticed me because I was a drunk mess in an alleyway. I couldn’t say: He noticed me because he saw a stray he could put to work. And I certainly couldn’t say: He noticed me because when he looks at me, the air in the room changes.

Across the table, Preston was smiling. It was a look that landed with a sickening jolt of recognition.

He didn’t look like Nick, but he felt like Nick. The same method. The same way of arranging words to sound like a compliment while they were actually being used as a scalpel.

I had spent my entire life navigating this specific brand of psychological minefield in my own house, and somehow, it had followed me to dinner with the Governor.

My brain was a disaster. Since the moment I’d stepped into the Metropolitan Club, I’d been running a highlight reel of my own humiliation.

I’d arrived excited. Actually excited. I’d stood in that lobby looking up at the gold leaf on the ceiling like a tourist, not realizing the ceiling was the least of my problems.

Then Nick had appeared. Then George. My father had looked at me for less than a second, a cursory glance to confirm my presence, like checking a name off a list of chores, and then he’d moved on.

I’d been called a liar about the one thing I was actually proud of. I’d seen the security guards move in. I’d heard my father ask why Nick hadn’t had “him” removed. Him. A pronoun designed to create distance, to strip away the fact that we shared blood.

And now here I was, seated between people who either despised me, owned me, or were currently trying to figure out which category I fell into.

I was doing what I always did. I was shrinking. It was an art form I’d mastered by the age of six, the ability to make myself so small that the room eventually forgot I was there. I was looking at my plate, answering when spoken to with monosyllabic correctness, trying to become part of the furniture.

But inside, the inner monologue was screaming.

You don’t belong here. Everyone can see it. Your father can see the wrong son sitting at the table. Your brother can see the failure wearing a suit he didn’t earn. You are the wrong Bennett and everyone knows.

My eyes burned. Not with the threat of tears, I wouldn’t give them that, I would die before I let a single drop fall in front of George Bennett, but with the pressure of being utterly overwhelmed.

You are fine, I told myself, a frantic pulse in the back of my head. This is just a dinner. It ends. Everything ends. Just don’t cry. Please—Noah, don’t cry. You are fine.

The only reason I hadn’t quietly excused myself to the bathroom and stayed there until the building was demolished was sitting directly across from me.

Cassian.

He wasn’t “warmth,” exactly.

He didn’t offer the kind of comfort that made you feel safe. He was more structural than that. He was a wall.

A physical barrier between me and the worst version of this evening. I knew he was trapped in his own version of this theater, his father’s expectations, Preston’s sharp-edged observations, but Cassian had armor.

He was built for rooms like this the way I was built to run from them.

The fact of him was the only thing keeping me in my seat.

I cleared my throat, catching the slight stutter before it could manifest. I took a breath and looked Preston in the eye.

“I imagine it was the Hendrix project,” I said. My voice sounded further away than I liked, but it was solid. “The documentation and logistics for the initial phase were… disorganized. I managed the transition of the data sets and handled the stakeholder reporting when the project lead was out. I think Mr. Wolfe appreciates people who can move as fast as the requirements change.”

It was a good answer. It was true, mostly, and it was specific enough to sound like competence because, in the weeks I’d been at XUM, I had been competent. Even if the reason I was there in the first place had more to do with a drunk night than a resume.

Preston received the answer with a slow nod. “Impressive,” he said. He made the word sound like something adjacent to a compliment, but not quite reaching it.

He didn’t believe me, not fully, but the table moved on. The Governor made a comment about the importance of “operational agility,” and the spotlight finally, mercifully, shifted away from me.

I exhaled without letting the room see it and returned to my poached sea bass. My heart was still thudding against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I was aware of Cassian’s gaze the whole time. It was like a heat source in a cold room; even when I wasn’t looking at it, I knew exactly where it was.

I had been actively not looking back. I couldn’t. Looking back meant acknowledging that he was watching me, and acknowledging it meant I’d start feeling things that would make my “just don’t cry” pep talk fail.

But then my phone lit up on the white linen again.

You did well Noah, the text read. Good job but don’t shrink yourself. You’re still at the table.

It was so characteristically Cassian. It wasn’t “are you okay?” or “don’t listen to him.” It was a praise followed by a command. A reminder that I had a right to the space I was occupying. It landed like a hand on my shoulder, steadying me.

Something in my chest released. Just a fraction. Enough for me to finally, finally look up.

Cassian was already looking at me. Of course he was. His gaze was unwavering, heavy, and devoid of the “dinner party” performance. He wasn’t smiling. He was just there. Present. Fully on me.

It sent a flutter through my stomach that I didn’t want but couldn’t stop. It was the specific sensation of being looked at like you actually mattered by someone who didn’t perform “mattering.” Cassian either meant it or he didn’t look at all, and right now, he was looking.

The charge of it felt electric, cutting through the low hum of the Governor’s anecdotes and my father’s practiced laughter. For a second, the room felt distant.

Then, my eyes moved. I shifted my gaze slightly and landed on Preston.

It was the first time I’d really looked at him tonight. The resemblance to Cassian was immediate, the same sharp bone structure, the same predatory grace.

But where Cassian was lethal like a natural force, a riptide or a storm, Preston was curated. He was danger in a tuxedo. He looked like the kind of man who would never get his hands dirty because he’d already outsourced the violence.

He was Old Money in the set of his shoulders, in the way he held his crystal glass, in the absolute assumption that the world was designed for his comfort.

I looked away quickly. Preston had caught me looking, and the corner of his mouth ticked upward in a way that told me he’d enjoyed the scrutiny.

The dinner progressed into the third course, something involving truffles and a reduction that smelled like forest floor. The conversation had found a rhythm, but it was a jagged one.

Nick chose his moment. He had the same precision as Preston, the same ability to wait for the exact moment the air went still.

“I’ve been following the news about XUM, Cassian,” Nick said, leaning back slightly. His tone was polite, professional, the picture of genuine curiosity. “The restructuring of the Eastern division. I imagine the challenge is significant. Especially given the… transition period.”

He paused, letting the phrase transition period do the heavy lifting. It was a probe. He was asking about who Cassian was, about the “reputation” that preceded him. He was testing the room’s comfort level with the man at the head of the table.

It was a surgical strike. It was Nick saying: I know you’re the black sheep. I know you’re the one who had to be brought back to heel.

I felt a flash of protective heat. I saw Preston’s eyes sharpen. Charles Wolfe didn’t move a muscle, but the air around him seemed to thicken.

Cassian didn’t flinch. He gave Nick a look that was brief and utterly unreadable.

“Transitions are only challenging when the people inside them resist the direction,” Cassian said. His voice was pleasant, matching Nick’s register perfectly, but there was a layer of ice underneath. “And resistance is usually just fear. Fear of what someone stands to lose when the old ways of doing things are dismantled.”

He maintained complete eye contact with Nick. It was a compliment buried in a threat, wrapped in a dinner-table pleasantry. He was telling Nick: I see your fear. I know what you’re afraid of losing.

The Governor chuckled, missing the subtext entirely. “Well said, Cassian. Change is the only constant, after all.”

Charles looked pleased. George Bennett looked at Nick, waiting for the counter-move. But Nick just smiled, a thinner, sharper version of his previous one. He was recalibrating. Again.

After the exchange, Cassian’s eyes moved away from Nick. They swept across the table and landed back on me.

I was already looking. I couldn’t help it. Watching Cassian in a room like this was like watching a master class in quiet devastation. He was effortless. He was the most dangerous thing in the building, and he didn’t even have to raise his voice to prove it.

Our eyes met again. The charge was still there, a live wire running between us. The dinner and the table and the Governor continued somewhere in the background, a fuzzy blur of noise.

I held his gaze for exactly one second longer than I should have. Long enough for it to mean something. Long enough for the heat in my face to become a problem.

Then I looked down at my plate, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs as I remembered the taste of his lips.

The table went on. The wine was poured. The laughter continued. As if nothing had passed between us. As if the entire evening hadn’t been reduced to two people across a formal table, finding each other in the gaps between the lies.

I took a sip of my wine, the glass cold against my lips, and tried to remember how to breathe.

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