The crying stops, and I go numb. The inferno of grief burns itself out, leaving freezing, razor-sharp clarity in my brain.
I pull my face away from his chest.
Cassian loosens his grip, letting me lean back, but he keeps his large hands firmly on my arms, steadying me.
All I can do is look up at him.
The world isn’t cut cleanly into black and white. Sometimes it’s a twisted, gray nightmare. The man I’ve been fighting to please my entire life, the saint who preaches about justice and the law—he’s the one who casually priced out my execution. He doesn’t even care if I’m alive.
And the man everyone thinks is a monster... the criminal with blood stained permanently into his hands... he’s the one who took a heavy-caliber bullet to keep my heart beating. He is the one who finally made me see the truth.
My father is the monster.
The roles have completely reversed. I stare into Cassian’s eyes. The forensic evidence on the tablet, the audio recording, the timeline—everything clicks at once, and it turns my stomach.
My father hired Cassian to kill Elias. He had Cassian’s direct line. He had his secure communication protocols. You don’t find a man like Cassian in the phonebook. You don’t summon the city’s most elusive, lethal Don with an anonymous text message unless you already own the leash.
The numbness recedes, replaced by a sharp, cold focus. The tears dry on my face.
“Cassian,” I whisper.
“I’m here,” he says softly.
I grip his forearms.
“How do you know him?” I ask, the words dropping like stones into the quiet room.
He looks away for a fraction of a second, the guilt he’s been hiding flashing across his face before he ruthlessly suppresses it.
“Iris...”
“Don’t lie to me,” I say, my grip tightening on his arms, my fingernails digging into his skin. The last remaining shred of my innocence is gone, leaving only the brutal demand for the truth. “You said you kill monsters. You said you don’t take political hits. So why were you at the museum doing his dirty work?”
I hold his gaze, refusing to let him look away from the wreckage he helped create.
“How does my father know the Ghost?” I demand.
He lets out a slow breath, finally surrendering the secret.
“Five years ago,” he says, his voice completely hollow, “your father saved my life. And in return, I gave him my soul.”
26
CASSIAN
Iris doesn’t pull away. Her hands remain clamped around my forearms, her grip bruising my skin. Her eyes lock onto mine with a fierce, uncompromising demand for the rest of the truth. The tears have stopped. What’s left behind is absolute stillness.
I lean back against the desk, my long legs stretched out on the thick Persian rug. I pull her gently toward me until she’s sitting between my knees.
“I wasn’t a street thug who climbed the ranks,” I tell her, letting the cold, untouchable mask of the Ghost fall away completely. “I was born into this. My father was the Don of the city’s largest syndicate. He was ruthless, but he had a strict code. He kept the fentanyl trade out of the schools. He kept the violence strictly away from the civilian population. I was his only heir. I was groomed from the time I could walk to inherit a throne made of blood and bribes.”
She watches my mouth, absorbing every word, her breathing shallow.
“When I was twenty-five, a rival faction decided my father had gone soft,” I continue, my jaw locking at the memory. “They staged a coup. But they didn’t breach the gates and kill him. Theybought out his personal guard detail. I was asleep in the east wing. I woke up with a needle in my neck, a synthetic paralyzer flooding my veins. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could only watch as they dragged me down the marble stairs into my father’s study.”
Her fingers tighten in the fabric of my T-shirt.
“I watched them put a hollow-point bullet in his chest,” I say. “I had to listen to him choke on his own blood. Then, the men who shot him pressed the warm steel of the murder weapon into my paralyzed hand, smeared my father’s blood on my clothes, and called the federal task force.”
