Rise of Cassian Vale: The Forbidden Healer

Chapter 5

For a moment nobody in the ballroom moved at all.

Then the whispers started, spreading outward from the doorway like ripples on still water.

"Isn't that—"

"The one who went to prison. Lucia's ex-husband."

"He's out already? I thought he still had years left."

"Look at his clothes. Looking very cheap."

"What is he even doing, showing his face at this family's party?"

The murmurs carried a familiar note underneath the shock. Something Cassian was already used to. Contempt dressed up as pity, the particular cruelty of people who had never once had to fight for anything they owned.

To them, Cassian wasn't a threat. He was an entertainment. A ghost that had wandered into the wrong room and was about to be reminded of that fact.

Marcus Rowan, Lucia's brother pushed through the crowd toward the front, straightening his jacket, with a slow grin spreading across his face.

"Well, well." He looked Cassian up and down like he was appraising something worthless. "The convict comes home and decides his first stop should be crashing my family's celebration. Bold, for a man who used to beg my father for a job."

"Marcus." Cassian's voice was calm and almost bored. "I'm not here for you. Not yet."

"Not here for—" Marcus laughed, sounding sharp and ugly. "You walk into my house uninvited and you're telling me who you're *not* here for? That's rich."

Lucia had recovered enough of herself to step forward, her chin lifted, though her eyes still carried the shock of seeing him. "You shouldn't have come here, Cassian. Whatever you think you're proving—"

"I heard about Maya," Cassian said, cutting her off, and something in his tone made the nearby guests go quiet again. "The clinic. The rig that just happened to fail eighteen months after I went to prison." His eyes moved to her, flat and unreadable. "I heard about Nora, too. What your family let happen to her hands so she'd stop asking the wrong questions."

Lucia's composure flickered, just for a heartbeat. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do." Cassian's gaze moved past her, to Nora, still standing frozen with her sleeve pulled back, tears falling silently down her face. "But it doesn't matter whether you admit it tonight. It only matters that I know."

Marcus's grin thinned into something more dangerous. He glanced toward the edge of the room, where several men in dark suits had begun drifting closer, the kind of men whose job description had nothing to do with serving champagne.

"You know," Marcus said, raising his voice for the benefit of the room, "I think our uninvited guest needs an escort out. Gently, if he cooperates. Less gently, if he doesn't."

Six of them moved in at once, fanning out around Cassian in a loose circle, the way men move when they've done this before and expect it to go quickly.

The nearest one reached for Cassian's arm.

He never got the chance to close his hand around it.

Cassian's palm caught the man's wrist mid-reach and turned it, just slightly, just enough. The man's knees buckled and he went down without a sound, out cold before he hit the floor.

The second one swung. Cassian stepped inside the arc of the punch, drove two fingers into a pressure point just beneath the collarbone, and watched the man's whole arm go dead and useless at his side.

The third and fourth came together. Cassian moved between them like they were standing still, a hand on each man's throat just long enough to press exactly where he needed to press. Both dropped, gasping, clutching at their necks like men who'd forgotten how to breathe.

The fifth hesitated. That hesitation cost him because a strike to the side of the knee sent him crumpling sideways into a serving table, sending a tower of champagne glasses crashing to the marble in a bright, ringing explosion of glass.

The sixth turned to run.

Cassian let him go.

Five seconds. Maybe six. Five trained men lay scattered across the floor, and Cassian hadn't so much as loosened his jacket.

The ballroom had gone completely, utterly silent, the kind of silence that comes right before people start understanding they might be standing in the same room as something they don't have a name for yet.

Marcus's grin was gone entirely now, replaced by something closer to fear he was trying very hard not to show.

He stood there for a moment, staring at the five men on the floor. His jaw tightened. Something in his face changed. The smugness cracking just slightly, replaced by something angrier and more stupid.

"You think this makes you untouchable?" he said. His voice was too loud, like he was trying to convince the room, or maybe himself. "You got lucky. That's all that was."

He pulled off his jacket and threw it onto a nearby chair, rolling up his sleeves like a man getting ready to do actual work.

"I used to box," he said. "Three years. My father paid for the best coaches in the city." He took a step forward, raising his fists the way someone does when they've watched a lot of fights but never really needed to be in one. "Let's see how tough you are without your little tricks."

Cassian didn't move from where he stood. He watched Marcus come closer, his face calm, almost tired.

"You don't want to do this," Cassian said quietly.

"Shut up." Marcus barked.

Marcus threw the first punch. It was fast, for someone untrained, and it might have actually hurt a normal man. Cassian tilted his head, just enough, and the fist passed by his ear with nothing behind it but air.

Marcus threw another one, then another, getting angrier with each miss, his breathing already picking up.

Cassian let him swing four more times before he did anything at all.

Then, when Marcus overextended on a fifth punch, Cassian caught his wrist in one hand. He didn't twist it. Not yet. He just held it there, still, so Marcus could feel exactly how easily his whole arm had stopped belonging to him.

"You should have stayed back with your father," Cassian said.

Marcus tried to pull free. It didn't work. Panic flickered across his face for the first time.

Cassian pulled him forward, off balance, and hit him once in the stomach. Not hard enough to seriously hurt him but hard enough to take the air out of his lungs completely. Marcus doubled over, gasping, unable to draw breath for a few long seconds.

While he was still bent over, Cassian's knee came up and caught him under the chin. It wasn't a heavy blow. It didn't need to be. Marcus's head snapped back and he stumbled, his legs going soft underneath him, and he sat down hard on the marble floor.

He tried to get back up. His hands slipped on the smooth stone. He managed to get to one knee before Cassian's foot pressed down on his shoulder and pushed him back down, gently, the way someone might push down a chair that kept trying to stand up on its own.

"Stay there," Cassian said.

Marcus stayed there. Blood ran from his nose, down over his lips, dripping onto his shirt. He was breathing hard, staring up at Cassian with wide, frightened eyes, all his earlier confidence gone completely.

Around them, nobody in the ballroom said a word. A few guests had their phones raised again, filming in silence. Lucia had gone pale, one hand pressed against her own mouth.

Cassian looked down at Marcus for a moment longer, like he was deciding something. Then he stepped back and let him alone.

"Get up when you're ready," he said. "There's no hurry."

"This was a mistake," Marcus managed to say. "You have no idea who else is in this building tonight."

Cassian's eyes didn't leave him. "Then call them. I'm not in a hurry."