2026-01-28 03:27:42Cassian rose from his seat.
“A joke seems to be happening tonight,” he said lightly, already walking toward Abigail’s table. His eyes never left the man beside her. “Lombard August?”
Lombard lifted his head mid-drink and looked at him.
That look.
It irritated Cassian more than Lombard’s presence itself. The audacity of him being here was one thing — but the calm? The familiarity in his eyes, like they were somehow equals?
“You’re going to tell me what you’re doing here,” Cassian said, carefully arranging his face into something pleasant. Abigail was watching, after all.
“Your sister’s pregnant,” Lombard replied. “Three months.”
Cassian blinked. “Yeah. So?”
Lombard let out a short, humorless scoff. “So I was the only fucking idiot who didn’t know?”
Cassian’s lips curved. “So you agree — you’re a fucking idiot?”
Their eyes locked.
Abigail shifted in her seat. She had no idea what history sat between these two men, but the air had gone tight and volatile, like the room was one wrong word away from needing renovations.
“I found out two hours ago,” Lombard continued, voice flat. “I broke up with her. Which means I’m done with the baggage that comes with her.” A pause. “And by baggage, I mean her family.”
Disgust laced every syllable.
Cassian smiled slowly. Then he turned to Abigail.
“You came with a family friend?” he asked, voice smooth and curious.
“She’s here with me,” Lombard cut in before she could speak.
“Well,” Cassian said mildly, “I might have to borrow her for tonight. Time spent with me will be far more productive than helping a man clean up the emotional mess of losing the best thing that ever happened to him.”
His gaze never left Lombard.
“Guys,” Abigail cut in quickly, voice low but urgent. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know what’s going on between you two, but can we please stop? There are kids here.”
“Choose,” Cassian said calmly. “Spend the night expanding your network — or stay behind and wipe the tears of a man who just lost everything.”
“No — please don’t do this,” Abigail said, shaking her head.
“I’ll take my leave,” Cassian said, already stepping back, satisfaction curling in his smile. “I can practically see the tears forming.”
Then, with practiced confidence: “Abigail, we can talk later.”
“You can reach out to my PA,” Abigail said coolly, cutting straight through him, “if you think there’s anything we need to talk about.”
The shift was instant.
If she’d said it in private, Cassian could have brushed it off. But she said it here. In front of Lombard.
“I get the coded message,” Cassian said quickly, forcing a laugh, scrambling to reframe it as an inside joke between old friends. “I hear you.”
“No, Cassian,” Abigail said plainly. “There’s no message. And I don’t have anything to discuss with you.”
Cassian smiled — and turned to leave.
Then he stopped. Retraced his steps slowly, like a man who’d just remembered something pleasant.
“I wasn’t going to say this,” he said mildly, “because I thought we’d meet again under better circumstances. But don’t forget to pay back the one hundred thousand dollars you borrowed from me a month ago.”
Abigail’s head snapped toward Lombard.
“In your dreams?” Lombard said coolly. “Is that where I borrowed the money?”
Cassian laughed softly. “You came to me with a contract. Borrowed seventy thousand. I’ll forward it to you.” His eyes hardened. “Don’t be a thief.”
He walked away, rage simmering under the calm. The moment he reached his seat, he sent the file.
Lombard didn’t even get the chance to open it before Finn came rushing back, panic written all over his face.
“Someone important just arrived,” Finn said quickly. “I have to get the award he’s offering — it’ll be part of my essay. I need to introduce you as my parents. To everyone.”
Fear sat naked in his eyes. They’d missed the MC announcing the arrival entirely.
“Please,” Finn begged, turning to Abigail. “We have to do this. There won’t be any implications.”
Of course there would be.
Because at the other end of the hall, Cassian was watching.
Boiling.
He’d arrived tonight with the parents of one of his… connections. Not friends — just people worth keeping close. That was how his world worked.
The man’s son rushed over excitedly. “Dad! The man I told you about is here. If I get the award, I can add it to my essay.”
“You’ll get it,” his father said confidently. “That’s why we came.”
“I thought so too,” the boy admitted. “Until Finn showed up with his parents. His dad is like a walking Ivy League handbook. Everyone’s talking about it. He’ll get it.”
Cassian’s lips curved into a slow scoff.
“And who is Finn?” he asked.
“That’s him.” The boy pointed toward Lombard’s table.
Cassian followed the finger.
Oh.
That kid.
So Finn was Lombard’s shield tonight.
Cassian smiled.
“Hey,” he said softly, leaning down toward the boy. “Did your father ever tell you who I am?”
The boy shook his head.
“My name is Cassian Belmont,” Cassian continued smoothly, straightening his cuffs. “And the Belmont family?”
He smiled wider.
“This is what we live for.”
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Chapter 310
For the next several hours, Lombard and Barrett went over the plan and over it again, the whole Cataract team funneling in every scrap of intel they had until the shape of the thing was solid. The bones of it were simple, which was the only kind of plan Lombard trusted. The patriarch wanted a confession delivered to Lombard’s living face — that was the one appetite the old man could not talk himself out of, the vanity that had kept Lombard breathing when a smarter enemy would have had him shot in his sleep weeks ago. So the plan would feed that appetite. Lombard would let himself be taken. Quietly, without a struggle, exactly the way a broken man goes. Because the whole arrangement the trio had built their empire on ran on one belief — that grief makes men fold, that a Lombard with his Clara taken would crawl into his shell and stay there. He would give them precisely that man. He would walk into the room they prepared, wearing the defeat they’d ordered off a menu. And every step
Chapter 309
Vivienne genuinely believed she was orchestrating a beautiful reunion.Lombard’s instructions had been vague and urgent, so she’d improvised with her whole heart. She’d called Julian first — told her, half-whispering like it was a delicious secret, that Drake had come by earlier in a state, saying things about not being good enough for her, and that if Julian wanted to catch him while his guard was down and his heart was open, she should come now, this exact morning, before he talked himself back into hiding. It was the kind of story that questioned no logic: it explained why Drake was already there, it flattered Julian’s role as the one who could reach him, and it was urgent enough to override the strangeness of the hour. Julian had been in a car within fifteen minutes.Then Vivienne had called Drake — and, knowing exactly the condition the man was in, she had not led with anything dumb. She’d told him Julian had turned up at her door in tears, frightened after everything at her pa
Chapter 308
Toby had been forced to call her guardian — her uncle — because she could not bring herself to fully trust anyone from the Cataract team. They weren’t people you trusted on sight. And in a night like this one, the devil you knew felt safer than the angel you didn’t.Not that she knew, for certain, that her uncle wasn’t quietly aligned with her grandfather. She didn’t. But he was the one risk she was actually able to take right now, so she took it — and now the two of them were here, at what Barrett kept calling Lombard’s house.“Sir,” Barrett called as he stepped inside — and that, too, was something Toby found herself turning over: that this enormous man knew Lombard’s home well enough to walk into it freely, panel codes and all.“I’m in the bedroom,” Lombard called back, his voice still laced thick with sleep.“I’ve got company. Toby, of the C&R Consortium, and her uncle. You want me to bring them in?”“No, silly. I’ll come out.” A groan, the sound of a man leaving a bed he’d only j
Chapter 307
Back in the car, the rest of the Belmont family had just gotten a clear look at the other man climbing out of Barrett’s vehicle behind Toby — and their blood turned to water.They recognized him immediately. The heir of the C&R Consortium. The same man Riley had tried to lock up and, in a fit of her own temper, tried to kill some days ago — the man she’d assumed was still safely contained, without ever confirming it. And the moment he clocked that Riley was standing free in the open air, casually threatening a member of the Cataract team, it was going to become a disaster for all of them.Riley, of course, had absolutely no idea of any of this. She was still at the gate, still building her charge, still operating under the belief that this was a morning about Mireya and an apology and a doorbell.The C&R heir stepped fully out of the car, saw Riley, and stopped short — genuinely shocked. Wasn’t this the same person who was supposed to be locked away? Who had, in his own home, come at
Chapter 306
It was only five in the morning, but not a single member of the Belmont family had slept a wink.The first problem was that they’d spent half the night trying to pin down Lombard’s location. The other half had gone to drilling Mireya on exactly what she would say — because it was decided now that nearly the whole family would be going with her to deliver the apology.But the biggest problem was the tracking itself. All those hours spent trying to fix Lombard’s position on a screen, and they simply could not hold it. It was the first time any of them had encountered a person who could be somewhere one minute and, the next, be gone off the map entirely — as if he stepped out of the world between refreshes. And there was no point going after a man you couldn’t find. If they couldn’t figure out where he was, there was no operation to run.Then, thirty minutes ago, a new location surfaced. And it had held — no movement for the better part of an hour.Which told them everything they needed.
Chapter 305
“Get my phone. Find out who those bastards are,” Lombard snapped under his breath, threading the car through a corner that had not been designed for this speed.Drake grabbed the phone, took pictures out the back window between bursts, and fired them off to the number Lombard barked at him. In less than two seconds, a name came back in the chat.Drake’s eyes widened.“Who the fuck is it?” Lombard demanded, zigzagging through another sharp turn.“Hearse,” Drake read out. “It says — it’s Hearse.”Lombard slowly brought the car to a halt.“Why the fuck did you stop?!” Drake exploded. “Continue driving!”“He just announced his presence to us,” Lombard said, almost thoughtful. “It’s the dance you do before you take your prey. You have to make a show of it first.”“This is no time for poetic talks!” Drake snapped, trying to shake the man out of whatever trance he’d dropped into.And at the corner of his eye, he watched it happen: the car that had been raining bullets simply drove past them.
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