Chapter 2
877 Words
Valemont City – Vortiger Tower, 3:12 P.M.
Cassien Vortiger didn’t like being distracted. But for the second time that day, his mind drifted from numbers and forecasts to a woman whose voice he couldn’t stop hearing.
Selene Avenel.
There was something about her sharp, collected, confident. But not cold. No, not cold. There was a grief beneath her restraint, a tension in the corners of her mouth when she smiled too politely. He had seen it before. Somewhere. But no matter how hard he tried, the memory refused to surface.
He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, his phone pressed to his ear, ignoring Everett’s voice on the other end.
“Cassien? Are you even listening?”
“Everett,” he interrupted, “run a full background check on the new consultant. Selene Avenel. Quietly.”
There was a pause. “You don’t trust her?”
Cassien’s jaw clenched. “I don’t trust ghosts. And she feels like one.”
Meanwhile, two floors down, Selene sat cross-legged on the couch in her minimalist temporary office, files spread before her like a mosaic of someone else’s empire. Cassien’s merger with the South Asian tech giant, KharmaSys, was imploding. On paper, it was salvageable but only if emotion stayed out of the room.
Unfortunately, she brought her emotions in with her suitcase.
Selene had studied Cassien’s empire before arriving. Not just the financials, but the man himself. The press painted him as brutal and brilliant. A self-made heir. Ruthless with competitors, loyal only to results. But she remembered another Cassien.
A boy with ink on his hands and a tremble in his voice when he’d whispered, “I’ll come back for you. I swear it, Selene. No matter what happens.”
He never had.
And yet, when he looked at her across that glass table…
Her heart had raced like he’d never left.
Selene closed the file and walked to the window, watching the city lights flicker on as dusk crept in. Valemont looked nothing like where they grew up. There were no cracked sidewalks or rusted fences here. No scent of smoke or poverty. Just sterile wealth. Glamour without memory.
But she remembered everything.
The fire that took her home.
The blood on Lysa’s forehead.
Cassien holding her hand as the ambulance arrived.
His voice, hoarse, promising he'd fix it.
Then… nothing.
He’d disappeared from the hospital that night, never returned, never called.
The world said he had survived a car crash the next week, some head trauma, minor injuries. But Selene had wondered, always wondered: Was the crash an excuse to forget her?
Now she knew.
He really didn’t remember.
At 6:40 p.m., the knock came.
Selene turned as the door creaked open again, same shadow, same presence.
Cassien stepped in, this time without coffee.
“I have a dinner meeting,” he said simply. “You’ll come.”
She blinked. “Was that a request?”
“No,” he said. “It’s strategy.”
Selene’s voice stayed even. “Then I’ll dress accordingly.”
The restaurant was candlelit, private, and intimidating, one of those places where no prices were listed on the menu because money was never supposed to be a concern. Cassien walked like he owned it. Selene followed two steps behind, the air between them taut and wordless.
They sat across from a tech executive from KharmaSys Mr. Dhavan, a meticulous man with gold cufflinks and eyes like a hawk. Conversation flowed stiffly until Selene interjected with a solution he hadn’t anticipated.
She took control gracefully, sharply. She offered a compromise that balanced intellectual property concerns with cultural respect. By the time dessert arrived, Mr. Dhavan was smiling, impressed.
“Ms. Avenel,” he said, raising a glass, “I underestimated you.”
Selene smiled. “People usually do.”
Cassien watched her, silent.
On the drive back, the city blurred past in streaks of gold and violet. The tension between them had grown heavy in the confines of the black town car.
“You handled him well,” Cassien said finally.
“I knew his pressure points,” she replied. “He was never the real problem. You are.”
Cassien turned to her. “Excuse me?”
“You act like you don’t care if this merger dies. But you hired me. You don’t bring in fire unless you’re already burning.”
He didn’t answer. She pressed on.
“Why do you really want this merger, Cassien?”
He looked at her, long and unblinking.
“Because I made a mistake once,” he said quietly. “And it cost me everything. I don’t intend to repeat that.”
Her heart stuttered.
He didn’t know. He wasn’t talking about her.
But the words landed like shrapnel anyway.
That night, in her hotel suite, Selene opened her encrypted drive and pulled up the old photograph. It was blurry. Smoke-streaked. But there they were two teenagers in the hospital waiting room. Her eyes were red. His shirt was torn. His arm around her.
He swore to protect me, she thought. Then he forgot I existed.
Now he was falling into the same storm again.
And she was the only one who could save him.
But could she do it… without falling for him again?
- Writer
