The Devil's Favourite Obsession-Chapter 75: She makes him human - 2

After minutes had passed, Cassian slowly stood from his expensive, comfortable chair.

First, he shrugged off his custom suit jacket.

Mark lifted his head, watching warily as his boss moved.

After draping the blazer perfectly over the back of the leather chair, Cassian unbuttoned his cuffs. He elegantly rolled the expensive cotton sleeves up to just below his elbows.

He leaned forward, reaching down to unclip the small combat knife strapped to his ankle. He brought the sharp blade to his own bare forearm and pressed down and dragged the metal across his skin, splitting it open. The scary part is that he didn’t even wince.

But before a single drop of crimson blood could spill over the edge of the wound, the torn muscle and skin instantly knitted back together, leaving behind no mark or scar on the skin.

Cassian casually tossed the knife onto the desk and sat back down, folding his hands as he watched Mark absorb the impossible display.

"Even if everything you said is somehow right, you still kept a critical piece of information hidden from me, Mark. You should never have done that." Cassian’s voice lacked heat, which only made it colder. "A contract submitted to the Underworld is not a joke. And you know that very well. If anything had happened to her while she wandered defenceless for those six months, what do you think would have happened to my reputation? It is already bleeding out after two public murder attempts, where I supposedly died. You made a huge mistake." Cassian declared.

Summoning the last shred of his courage, Mark spoke again. He was entirely loyal to Cassian. He would take a bullet for him without hesitation, so he was willing to take this punishment as well.

"Boss, do you not see exactly how she affects you?" Mark implored. "You do things you absolutely never do. It is exactly like the kitten you adopted from the street, all over again. Our enemies will not hesitate again to weaponise Cixi against you. Last time it was an animal. This time, it is a golden-haired female. They will do much worse to her. They might––"

Cassian’s pitch-black eyes darkened into absolute voids. "Complete the sentence, Mark, and see what happens next."

Mark kept his mouth shut at once. This was exactly what he was talking about. He could not even speak hypothetically about future threats to that woman without Cassian instinctively preparing to kill him.

But he could not stop himself and had to warn him. "Do you see it, Boss? She is making you completely vulnerable. Even emotional. What if, before you even realise what is happening, you fall in love with her!"

Cassian snatched the knife off the desk seamlessly and threw it overhand in a single, fluid blur.

The blade sank heavily into Mark’s left shoulder, burying itself perfectly to the hilt, hitting the exact millimetre Cassian intended.

Mark grunted, his body jerking back slightly from the impact, but he remained on his knees.

"Love?" Cassian growled, the vibration rattling the glass decanters across the room. "If my own people have completely lost confidence in me, I can only imagine what the rest of the underworld sees in me."

Cassian sat back, his chest rising and falling slowly. Mark is certainly not the type to casually discuss love in his presence. Yet, he did.

Does his loyal man really believe he could develop feelings for a simple human?

This has to be the greatest joke of all time.

Was his pretend fiancée genuinely harmful to his unassailable reputation? Does she really influence his emotions?

Almost subconsciously, Cassian lifted his hand. He touched his lower lip, right where her teeth had aggressively bitten him on the couch earlier that evening. And a thrill raced in his veins.

When his fingers brushed against the broken skin. It stung sharply.

His dark eyes narrowed in surprise with realisation. The small wound from Cixi’s teeth was still present. Whereas it should have been healed long ago.

Unlike the gaping knife wound that had sealed itself in a fraction of a second, her little bite mark remained present.

Cassian dragged his gaze back to Mark, who was sweating heavily. His jaw had clamped shut as he bit down on the pain radiating from his left shoulder, and thick, dark blood soaked the fabric of his suit jacket around the hilt of the embedded knife.

Cassian ignored the man’s suffering entirely. He deserved the pain for hiding critical information. If Cassian forgave Mark’s disobedience now, he would only be inviting a far greater betrayal in the future.

"Tell me about her current parents." Cassian’s voice remained flat.

Mark grunted and drew a short, sharp breath through his teeth. "Her parents are the Romanovs."

Cassian’s eyes widened a fraction, and he had to admit that Cixi McLore managed to intrigue and surprise him more consistently than anyone else in this brutal city.

"The fallen nobles," Mark finished, his breathing shallow. "She is the daughter of the current Romanovs."

Cassian leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. Then he intertwined his fingers. "They owe me their lives," he murmured under his breath. A dark realisation curled into satisfaction. "Cixi was always mine, with or without the coin."

Kneeling on the carpet, Mark swallowed the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. He definitely should have put a bullet through Cixi’s head when he first had the chance. Her entire bloodline clearly ran on concentrated bad luck.

"Arrange a meeting with the Romanovs," Mark heard Cassian order. "It is time to officially meet them through their daughter."

Mark did not like the sound of that. "Boss, are you genuinely going to keep her near you?"

Cassian’s gaze turned pitch-black. "You are actively asking to have your head severed from the rest of your body, Mark."

Mark shut his mouth at once.

Cassian leaned back in his leather chair while a cold, predatory shadow crossed his flawless features.

"I have a very different plan for her."