Chapter 4
897 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
Luna's POV
The next morning, the sun rose like it had no idea it was lighting a battlefield.
Luna stood in front of the mirror in her penthouse bathroom, tracing the fading bruises on her collarbone. His fingerprints. Ghosts of last night. She touched them gently, then covered them with concealer like she'd done a hundred times before.
She was immaculate again by 8:00 a.m.
By 8:05, she hated herself for it.
Her assistant, Margot, was waiting by the elevator with a coffee in one hand and her schedule in the other. “Boardroom meeting with Saint Roman at 9:30. Legal at 10. Your father called twice.”
Luna didn’t flinch. “Tell him I’ll call after the meeting.”
Margot hesitated. “He sounded… tense.”
“He always sounds tense.”
Margot handed over the phone. “This time, he asked if you were distracted.”
That word.
Distracted.
As if falling in love — or whatever this sick, consuming thing with Cassian was — could be categorized like a task on her to-do list.
Luna was born into strategy. Bred for composure. Her mother taught her how to enter a room like a storm in heels. Her father taught her how to win with a smile and slit a throat with it.
And now both of them were circling her like vultures, waiting to see if she'd bleed loyalty or betrayal.
She was balancing on a knife’s edge — and it was only a matter of time before she fell.
By 9:30, the boardroom was already humming with tension.
Saint Roman Industries was the third-party merger they were supposed to be negotiating — the neutral ground in this tug-of-war between Knight and Laurel Tech. Luna sat at the head of the table, flawless as always, while legal advisors whispered and analysts pushed numbers across screens.
And then he walked in.
Cassian Laurel, in a charcoal suit and a smirk that meant trouble.
Their eyes met for exactly one second.
It felt like a bomb had gone off in her chest.
He took the seat opposite her, calm and coiled, like he hadn’t wrecked her soul twelve hours ago.
And yet — he was too still.
There was something new in the way he looked at her. Not like a lover. Not like an enemy.
Like a man who had just made a choice.
Luna’s stomach sank.
She kept her tone sharp. “Shall we begin?”
Cassian didn’t speak. He nodded to his general counsel, who started the presentation.
Luna tried to focus — on the projections, the clauses, the future of an empire.
But her eyes kept drifting to him.
He hadn’t touched the water. He hadn’t looked at her once. He was holding something back.
Something was wrong.
And then, right before the room broke for a brief recess, the LaurelTech COO slid a small, folded document across the table to her. A single sheet.
Unmarked.
Confidential.
Luna picked it up, her face unreadable as always. She opened it. Skimmed.
And felt the world tilt sideways.
A financial breach.
Internal embezzlement.
Tied to her name.
Fabricated. Carefully.
Her chest tightened.
Someone was planting evidence.
Someone was framing her.
She looked up — not at her team, not at her lawyer — at him.
Cassian didn’t blink.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t defend her.
The man who had whispered her name against her skin the night before was now silently watching her empire start to bleed.
A hundred things raced through her mind:
This could be a warning.
This could be a betrayal.
This could be his father’s doing.
This could be his.
Luna stood slowly. Her voice, calm and clinical, cut through the silence.
“I’ll need a moment. Alone.”
She left the room before they could see the fury bloom behind her eyes, specially him
She paced the hallway, heels echoing like gunshots.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t shake.
She strategized.
Cassian followed five minutes later, shutting the door behind him.
She didn’t face him. Not yet.
“You planted it, didn’t you?” she asked, voice deadly quiet.
He exhaled. “No. I didn’t. But I knew it was coming.”
Luna turned slowly, eyes burning. “And you let me walk in here blind?”
“I was protecting you.”
“By letting the world think I’m bleeding the company dry?!”
Cassian ran a hand through his hair, frustration crackling in the space between them. “My father had this planned for weeks. He knew about Tokyo. He knew about us. He’s using you to kill the merger—”
“And you just let him?”
“I’m trying to fix it!” he snapped. “But if I move too fast, he’ll bury us both.”
“You’re already burying me, Cassian.”
The silence between them fractured.
She took a step toward him, chest heaving. “Tell me the truth. Right now. Do you regret it?”
His voice cracked. “No.”
Another step.
“Do you love me?”
A pause.
Long. Dangerous. Breaking.
“Yes,” he said, and it sounded like a curse. “God help me, I do.”
But Luna wasn’t soft anymore.
Not in this moment.
She stepped back. Put up the walls again. Pulled the mask on tight.
“Then prove it,” she whispered.
- Writer
