CASSIAN

"What did Emilio do?" he asked. His voice was different now. He was demanding an answer.

"It doesn’t matter now," I said.

"It does," he whispered. "Because you threw a file at the wall, and you never do that. Tell me."

I looked at him for a long time. "What did he do?" I asked back. I made it a demand of my own. I was going to be patient until I got the truth.

Julian went silent. He was deciding if he could tell me without the world ending.

"He tried to—" He stopped and started again, his voice even smaller.

"Outside. While you were with his father. He found me and kept bothering me. I tried to ignore him at first and even tried to leave but then he grabbed me... Without warning."

Julian paused again, exhaling deeply.

"He had men with him. They just watched. None of them moved. So I handled it myself."

A cold, hard rage started to bloom in my chest. It was slow and complete.

"I got away," Julian said quickly, seeing my face. "I’m fine, Cassian. Really."

I was already sitting up. I reached for the gun on the nightstand and my car keys.

"Don’t," Julian said, getting out of bed to stand between me and the door.

"Move, Julian," I said.

"No. You’ll only make it worse. You’re already in enough trouble because of me."

"Move," I repeated. My rage wasn’t cold anymore. It was a white-hot heat that had been waiting for a direction for a long time.

Julian pressed his hands against my chest. "Cassian," he said. He said my name the usual way he did when he needed to pull me back from the edge. "Listen to me."

I stood there, my jaw locked, my hands clutching the keys and the gun. Slowly, the heat started to fade back into a dull ache.

"We endure it," Julian whispered. "You finish the job. Marceli lets us go. And we leave. That’s still the plan. That’s the only plan."

I looked at him. The fury was still there, buzzing under my skin, but I set the keys down.

I put the gun back on the table. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to force my breath to stay steady. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

Julian sat beside me. He didn’t say anything at first, just stayed there in the dark, his presence a steady anchor against the storm in my head.

I could feel the silence change. It wasn’t the sharp, jagged silence of a fight anymore; it was the quiet of two people who had just realized they were the only ones left on the same side of a crumbling wall.

Slowly, I felt Julian’s shoulders drop. He let out a long, shaky breath, the kind of sound a person makes when they finally stop trying to hold up a ceiling that’s already falling.

"I’m sorry," he whispered. His voice was so thin it barely reached me. "For bringing you into this. For all of it."

"Don’t," I said, the word coming out rougher than I meant.

"I mean it, Cassian—"

I didn’t let him finish. I reached out and pulled him into me. It wasn’t a gentle hug.

It was the grip of a man who was still half-blind with fury and terrified of what might happen next, but who was choosing this person over everything else the world had to offer.

After a second, I felt his arms come around me. He pressed his face into my shoulder, and I felt the small, cold bite of the jade pendant trapped between our chests.

"It was my choice," I said into his hair. I meant every word. "I followed you. I would follow you again tomorrow. Don’t you ever apologize for that."

He didn’t answer. He just stayed there, breathing against me, while the rest of the world stayed outside the door where it belonged.

The weeks that followed were a long, slow slide into something I didn’t want to name.

Julian was there, but he wasn’t there. He started drifting. I’d look at him across the room and see him staring at nothing, his eyes wide and hollow.

I noticed the way he stopped sleeping. I’d wake up at three in the morning and find his side of the bed cold, Julian nowhere to be found for hours.

He started flinching at everything... a door closing too hard, a car backfiring on the street, even the sound of my own voice if I spoke too suddenly.

It was the look of a man who had stopped feeling like his own skin was a safe place to live.

Emilio didn’t stop. He was like a shadow, showing up whenever I wasn’t there to stand in the way.

He made sure Julian never forgot what had happened. And Julian, being Julian, said nothing.

He had decided that telling me would cost more than I could afford to pay, so he swallowed the fear until it started to poison him.

He got quiet. He got anxious.

He tried to hide it, and he was good at it... better than anyone I’d ever met. But I had spent years memorizing every line and shadow of his face.

I knew this version of him. I had seen it before, years ago, and I had prayed to every god I didn’t believe in that I’d never have to see it again.

One day, while Julian was out on a job for the family, I stood in the doorway of his room.

The apartment was empty and too quiet. I didn’t want to be right. I wanted to be a paranoid idiot who was seeing ghosts where there were only shadows.

I went in anyway.

I checked the drawers. I checked the shelves.

Finally, I picked up a jacket he hadn’t worn in weeks... a heavy thing he usually only grabbed when he was feeling the cold.

I reached into the inside pocket and my fingers hit something small.

I pulled out a little paper fold. I opened it and saw the white residue inside.

I sat on his bed and stared at it for a long time. It was a promise that had broken under a weight no one was meant to carry. I didn’t move until I heard the front door open.

Julian walked in and stopped. He saw me sitting there. He saw what was in my hand. The understanding hit his face like a physical blow, and all the air seemed to leave the room.