Chapter 218: Bait

NOAH

“With Cassian.”

The two words sat in my brain like lead weights, refusing to move, refusing to arrange themselves into a shape that made any kind of sense.

My face did something… a twitch, a falter, a sudden widening of the eyes.. that I couldn’t reel back in fast enough. It was a tell, a loud, glaring neon sign of my internal collapse, and Nick was reading it in high definition.

His smile widened. It was the specific, oily pleasure of a man who had just hit the jackpot. He didn’t just see my shock; he was savoring it, rolling the taste of my discomfort around his mouth like an expensive wine.

“You look like you’ve just been told the sky is falling, Noah,” he said, his voice dripping with that familiar, mocking amusement. He wasn’t even pretending to be a concerned brother anymore. The mask was off because he’d already won the round.

I felt the blood rushing to my ears, a hot, thrumming pressure. I forced my hands to stay still at my sides, my fingers curling into the fabric of my trousers. I had to recover. I had to be the person Cassian expected me to be, not the boy Nick used to push into the dirt behind the garage.

“What do you want with Cassian,” I said. It wasn’t a question. It was a flat, jagged demand for information I wasn’t even sure I wanted to hear.

Nick gave a small, condescending huff of a laugh, the kind of sound a teacher makes at a particularly slow student. He adjusted his cufflink, the gold glinting in the harsh Monday sun.

“It’s a professional matter, obviously,” he said, shifting into a tone of exaggerated patience. “The children’s medical rehabilitation center? The one the city’s been touting for months? XUM is handling the entire infrastructure and facility development. My hospital is spearheading the clinical medical program. I’m one of the lead surgeons on the executive board for the project.”

He paused, letting that sink in, making sure I felt the weight of his importance compared to my own.

“Charles Wolfe personally put us in contact,” he added, the name dropping like a guillotine blade. “He thought it would be… prudent for me and Cassian to coordinate directly. We’ve been in talks since Saturday.”

Saturday.

The word felt like a physical blow to my solar plexus. While I was sitting in my apartment, staring at a silent phone and wondering why the man who had held me on a sofa wasn’t calling, he was talking to Nick. He was talking to the brother who had made my life a living hell. And he hadn’t said a word to me about it.

Nick explained it all as if I should have already known, as if my confusion was a embarrassing character flaw.

Every sentence carried that faint, poisonous implication: I am central to the things that matter, Noah. You are just the help. You are peripheral. You are an accident.

It was real. Nick wasn’t here to ambush me specifically… not this time. He had legitimate business. He had a reason to be in the elevator, a reason to sit in that dark, glass office.

And that was somehow so much worse than if he’d just come to be mean. I couldn’t object to it. I couldn’t tell Cassian not to see him without looking like a jealous, insecure child. It simply was.

“He’s not in,” I said plainly, my voice sounding hollow even to me. “He hasn’t been here all day.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed, a familiar, squinting look that I’d seen a thousand times across a hundred dinner tables. It was the look that said: you’re lying, and we both know it.

“Are you trying to stop me from seeing him, Noah?” he asked, his voice dropping into a warning register. “Because if you think a secretary’s spite is going to block a multi-million dollar medical contract, you’re even more delusional than I thought.”

“No,” I said, the word coming out as a weary exhale. I was so tired. I was tired of the weekend, tired of the waiting, and tired of the way my chest felt like it was being squeezed by a pair of iron hands. “I’m telling you he’s not here. That’s all. Check with the front desk if you don’t believe me. He hasn’t badged in.”

Nick considered this. He scanned my face, looking for the flicker of a lie, and finally decided… reluctantly… that I might actually be telling the truth. It clearly cost him something to admit it, even to himself. His mouth thinned into a line of irritation.

“Disappointing,” he muttered. He checked his watch. “I have a surgical consult at two. I suppose I’ll have to come back.”

I let out a small, involuntary sigh of relief. It was a mistake. I saw the relief register on his face, saw the way his eyes sharpened like a hawk’s.

The smile returned. But it wasn’t the professional smile from before. This one was sharp. This one was the knife.

“But before I go,” he said, his voice turning light. Too light. It was the specific lightness of a man who had just decided he wasn’t quite done with his prey. “I just want to ask you something. One thing.”

Here it is, my mind whispered. I knew it. I knew he wouldn’t just leave. I felt the familiar resignation of someone who had seen the trap being set three sentences ago and had to walk into it anyway.

“How did you manage it?” Nick asked.

Nick smirked. “Don’t play dumb, Noah. It doesn’t suit you, even if it is your default setting. I know you didn’t charm your way into a CEO’s inner circle with your talents.” He paused, his eyes raking over me with a calculated cruelty. “Considering you don’t have any.”

He stepped a little closer, encroaching on my personal space, his scent… expensive cologne and clinical soap… filling my head.

“Manage what.”

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