Rise of Cassian Vale: The Forbidden Healer

Chapter 4

"Cassian! Wait!" His mother rushed to him.

"Please, don't go, they will kill you this time around." She pleaded.

"Don't worry mom, they can't do anything to me again." He assured her.

"But..." His mother tried to object again but Maya cut in.

"Let him go mother, at least, he needs to prove himself worthy of the sacrifice that Nora made."

"But he just got out of prison, what if they do something worse to him!" She countered again.

"Then it means he learnt nothing while he was in prison and from what he did to this thugs, he should be able to handle himself but if he stays back here and allow Nora be humiliated the second time for his sake, then he is worse than a coward!" She spat the words out in anger.

Cassian looked at his sister and saw the raw anger and hatred back on her face. He could not bring himself to apologize now and seek for her forgiveness. The time will come, after he had dealt with the people that did this to them and help her walk again. Then he could properly ask for her forgiveness.

He turned to his mother and gave her a reassuring smile.

"I promise, I will be back in one piece." He assured her and with that, Cassian walked down the stairs, his mind sharp, his fury a living thing inside him. He stepped outside into the rain and flagged down a cab. The driver looked at him nervously.

"Where to?"

Cassian's voice was flat, cold. "The Rowan estate."

The Rowan estate glittered against the night sky like something built to remind the rest of the city exactly where it stood.

Valets in white gloves waved cars up a drive lined with topiary and soft gold light. The cars themselves told their own story. A procession of vehicles that cost more than most people's homes, nose to tail, waiting for their turn at the entrance. Even the least impressive car in line was still worth more than Cassian's entire life had been worth to a courtroom seven years ago.

He could have rallied his people and come in full force to destroy them but he decided the time was not yet ripe enough to show just how power he had become. Not just physically, but financially also. So tonight would be just him and them. The vendetta was just too personal for him to allow another person do it on his behalf.

Inside, the ballroom was already a wall of noise and light. Chandeliers threw gold across marble floors. A string quartet played somewhere near the back, barely audible over champagne toasts and the particular laughter of people who had never once had to worry about anything that mattered.

At the center of it all stood Henry Rowan, beaming like a man who'd just watched his family's fortunes double overnight, which, with Helix going public, he essentially had. Guests gathered around him in waves, offering congratulations and angling for a moment of his attention.

Near the head table, Lucia stood in a dress the color of old wine. She was the star. Everyone wanted her attention, wanted to be near her. She smiled graciously, sipping her wine, looking down on them all like a queen surveying her subjects.

Once Helix Biomed went public, the Harrow family will be one of the richest, most powerful family in the world. Her fiancé, Julian Harrow, was the heir to Helix Biomed and once they get married, she will become the most powerful woman in the city. These people fawning over her now? They were beneath her. Insects.

'Seven years ago this was supposed to be my life,' Cassian thought, watching her from just inside the doorway, unnoticed. 'Funny how little it means to me now.'

His eyes moved past her, searching, until they found what he'd actually come for.

She was tucked into a corner near the far wall, half-swallowed by shadow, dressed plainly compared to everyone around her. Long sleeves despite the warmth of the room. Head down. Trying, as hard as a person could try, to disappear inside a crowd that had specifically been told to notice her.

Nora Callahan.

Cassian's chest tightened at the sight of her. She was looking smaller somehow than he remembered, folded in on herself like she was still bracing for a blow that had already landed years ago.

He hadn't taken two steps toward her before Lucia's voice cut across the room, bright and cruel and pitched to carry.

"Oh, Nora! I almost didn't recognize you hiding over there in the dark."

The quartet kept playing, but conversation nearby died fast, heads turning the way they always did toward the promise of a scene.

Lucia crossed the floor in heels that clicked like a countdown, Julian trailing a step behind her with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and boredom.

"Miss Rowan," Nora said, barely above a whisper, not lifting her head.

"Oh, don't be shy." Lucia's smile was all teeth. "Everyone here already knows your little story. The devoted lab partner who spent years chasing a murder conviction, insisting her boss was innocent." She turned, playing to the crowd now, voice rising theatrically. "Isn't that just the most romantic thing you've ever heard? All that loyalty, and for what?"

A ripple of laughter moved through the nearest guests.

"Don't mind her, a slut crying over a murderer." Someone in the crowd said.

"Exactly, that's why they would have made a perfect couple." Another added and more laugher followed.

"Her useless family were so scared of Julian that they offered her to us as entertainment for the night." Lucia revealed and the laughter increased.

"Of course, who in their right senses won't be scared of Julian Harrow." One guest pointed out.

"Exactly! And even at that, she is disgrace to them, she has no use again but for entrainment." They laughed more at her as more guest continued to haurl insults at Nora.

The whole scenario made Lucia happy and more determined to humilate Nora more.

"Show them your hands, Nora," Lucia cooed, false sweetness dripping from her words. "Go on. Let everyone see exactly what devotion gets you in this city."

"Please," Nora said quietly. "Don't."

Lucia reached out and pulled one of Nora's sleeves back before she could pull away.

The scarring was visible even from across the room — pale, ropey lines where the nerves beneath had been methodically, deliberately destroyed. Nora's fingers curled inward at an angle that made it obvious she couldn't fully open her hand anymore, couldn't hold anything the way she used to.

Someone near the front actually gasped.

"Disgusting!" The crowd shouted.

"There it is," Lucia said, delighted. "The great romantic gesture. Years of her life, for nothing. Cassian's rotting in a cell right now, and here she is, still—"

"He's not rotting anywhere."

The voice that answered her wasn't loud because it didn't need to be.

Every head in the ballroom turned at once toward the entrance, toward the man standing there with an expression that made the temperature in the room feel like it had dropped by ten degrees.

Lucia's face went white before her mind had even fully caught up to what her eyes were telling her.

"Cassian?"