CHAPTER SIX
1031 Words
CHAPTER SIX
Zariah
The silence in the room was suffocating.
Even the trees outside stood still, as if the world itself was holding its breath with me.
I sat by the fireplace, legs tucked beneath me, a wool blanket wrapped around my shoulders. It had been hours since Cassian left me alone, and I hadn’t moved. The file he gave me lay open on the bed, taunting me with fragmented truths and blurred nightmares.
I hadn’t slept. Couldn’t.
Somewhere in my chest, something had cracked.
And now… the memories were bleeding back.
Not fully. Not clearly. Just flickers.
A locked door.
A scream that wasn’t mine.
Viktor whispering something in a language I didn’t understand.
The flash of a silver ring with a crest I couldn’t place.
And blood. So much blood.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I hadn’t told Cassian everything.
There were pieces even I had hidden from myself.
I thought leaving Rome, changing my name, getting the law degree my mother never lived to see—Zariah Blake, Esq.—would be enough to bury the past. That if I helped victims instead of becoming one again, I’d rewrite my story.
But some obsessions weren’t meant to be silenced.
Some ghosts followed you even after you passed the bar.
---
I finally moved. Opened the wardrobe. Cassian wasn’t wrong—there were clothes inside. All black. All expensive. All my size.
He remembered everything.
I changed into a pair of soft leggings and an oversized hoodie, pulled my hair up, and made my way downstairs.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
I followed the hallway toward the kitchen, hoping for coffee or something stronger.
Instead, I found him.
Cassian.
Sitting in the dark at the dining table with a glass of bourbon, one hand splayed across a closed laptop, the other tapping rhythmically against the wood like he was orchestrating a storm inside his head.
He looked up as I entered.
“You should be asleep,” he said, voice low.
“I could say the same to you.”
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. “Touché.”
I walked to the counter and started making tea. His eyes never left me.
“You’re not the only one who changed,” I said after a long silence.
He raised a brow. “No?”
“I became a lawyer.”
That caught him off guard.
His brows pulled together. “You…?”
I nodded. “Graduated top of my class. I started working with a firm that helps asylum seekers and human trafficking victims. Pro bono cases mostly.”
He stared at me like he was seeing me again for the first time.
“I tried to use what happened to me for something good,” I added softly. “I tried to forget what it felt like to be powerless.”
Cassian’s face shifted—guilt, admiration, pain—all flickered across his features in the span of a second.
“You were never powerless, Zariah.”
“Weren’t I?” I looked at him then. Really looked. “Because five years ago, I watched you bury a part of me I didn’t know I’d given away. And I spent every day since trying to find her again.”
He stood, slowly, crossing the distance between us.
I didn’t move.
“I don’t want the old you,” he said, voice like gravel. “I want this version. The one who looks me in the eye and tells me the truth. The one who became stronger without me.”
I hated that my chest tightened at his words.
“I don’t trust you,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to.” He stepped closer. “Just don’t lie to me.”
We stood like that for a moment—two shadows in a kitchen full of ghosts.
Then I turned away.
“I need answers, Cassian. I need to know everything. All of it. Because if I don’t… I’ll never be able to breathe again.”
He nodded.
“I’ll show you what I know. But Zariah, when the truth comes, it won’t be gentle.”
“Neither am I.”
---
Cassian
She was a lawyer.
Of course she was.
It made sense now—her poise, her fire, her ability to hold her own even when the ground was caving beneath her. She wasn’t just surviving all these years. She was fighting.
For others. For herself.
And still… part of her belonged to me. The part she tried to hide under cold stares and new titles.
I watched her return to her room that night and knew what I had to do next.
---
The next morning, I brought her the file. The real one.
The one no one but Adrian and I had access to.
Inside were pictures from that night in Rome. Enhanced footage. Surveillance logs. A timeline.
And a single voice recording—distorted, choppy, but damning.
Zariah sat beside me on the couch, tense, her fingers pressed against her lips.
“Play it,” she said.
I did.
The voice crackled.
“She doesn’t know. But if she remembers…”
“Then we’ll end her before she speaks.”
Zariah flinched.
“That’s Viktor,” she whispered. “That’s his voice.”
I nodded.
“Recognize the second voice?”
She listened again.
And froze.
Her hand gripped my forearm.
“That’s—”
“Your father’s lawyer,” I finished.
She turned to me, horror dawning on her face. “You knew?”
“I suspected. But I didn’t have proof until six months ago.”
Her hands trembled.
“I knew he didn’t want me to testify… but to kill me?”
“He was protecting your father’s investments in Rome. The Morettis were a threat to his business deals with Viktor’s contacts. You were the only piece he couldn’t control.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, but she blinked them away.
“I should’ve remembered this.”
“No.” I touched her hand gently. “You survived it.”
She didn’t pull away.
For the first time in five years… she didn’t pull away.
- Writer
