Page 37 of Vows of Deceit
He sat in the study of his penthouse, the place he once called sanctuary, surrounded by shadows and memories that refused to die. A glass of scotch sat untouched beside him. His tie was loose, shirt wrinkled. The man who once exuded power, who’d made boardrooms tremble, now looked like a shell.
The moment Cassie had walked out echoed on a cruel loop in his mind. Her voice. Her tears. Her strength. The way she hadn’t begged, hadn’t screamed. Just... left.
And it was in that silence he realized something terrifying. He had loved her.
Not in the convenient way he’d convinced himself he did, out of duty, image, or history.
But truly. Deeply.
And he’d destroyed it.
He remembered the day he first met Cassie. She’d been wearing red. A silk blouse, bold and unapologetic, standing beside Kelly at a gala. Damien had been with someone elseat the time, barely paying attention but Cassie laughed at something Kelly said, and Damien turned. That laugh... it had hooked him. Not her beauty, though she had plenty of it, but the joy that radiated from her.
And now, he’d taken that joy and stomped it into the dirt.
For what?
Kelly?
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Their affair had never been about love. It had been about comfort. Familiarity. A rebellion against expectations. He thought he had control. Instead, he’d become the villain in a story he was too cowardly to stop.
The media wasn’t kind. Editorials questioned his morality. Feminist columns hailed Cassie as a symbol of reclaiming power. Investors hesitated. Sterling Ventures took a 3% hit within forty-eight hours.
And still... Damien didn’t care about the money. He cared about the emptiness in his chest. He had expected rage. Maybe even a screaming match. But she’d handled him like a queen, collected, strategic, devastating.
A part of him admired it. The rest of him hated himself. He scrolled through her statement again, the one plastered across every screen:
"I choose to move forward not as a victim, but as a woman who finally chose herself."
He thought of her alone, rebuilding. He wondered if she cried when no one looked. If she slept at night. If she missed him. He missed her. Not just the intimacy or shared history. He missed how she steadied him. Challenged him. Believed in him when no one else did.
And now...
She had every reason to never look back. Damien stood and looked around the room, the same room where he and Kelly had once hidden. He saw the ghosts of his choices in every corner.
He picked up the wedding photo Cassie had once left behind. They looked so young. So foolish. He placed the photo in a drawer. Then, for the first time in days, he picked up the phone.
“Leo,” he said when his friend answered.
There was a long silence.
“What do you want, Damien?”
“I need to fix this.”
Leo sighed. “You can’t fix a house that’s already burned to the ground.”
“But I can be better. I can—”
“You can try,” Leo interrupted. “But don’t do it for her. She’s already saving herself. Do it because you need to finally stop being the man who breaks the people who love him.”
Damien hung up without replying. Then he opened his laptop and wrote an apology. Not for the press. Not for his board.
For Cassie whether she read it or not, he needed her to know. He owed her at least that.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Ashes & Empires
