The Bodyguard Who Broke Me

For three years, I slept with my father’s head of security behind everyone’s back.

Last night, with one hand at my throat and the other under my dress, he finally asked for a name, a future, something real.

“After graduation,” I whispered against his mouth. “Let me finish my defense first. Then we’ll tell them.”

“No.”

By then I was shaking beneath him on the leather seat. “Then sooner. On my birthday next Friday. I’ll stop hiding then... Cassian, please—gentler...”

That seemed to satisfy him. His mouth softened against my skin, and his voice dropped low against my ear.

“Good girl. I just want you too much.”

The next afternoon, I met my best friend for tea.

The moment she opened the passenger door, she spotted the torn foil packet caught beside the seat and lifted a brow.

“Bourbon cherry?” she said, already grinning. “That’s our company’s unreleased line. So this is what you’ve been hiding.”

I snatched it up and shoved it into my bag. “It’s not public yet.”

She frowned. “That’s the strange part. We only sent those samples to a handful of VIP clients.” Then she pulled out her phone. “I did a product follow-up with one of them yesterday, and his private account was basically a shrine to his girlfriend.”

She turned the screen toward me.

I only looked once, and my whole body went cold.

The man in the photo had a line of Latin script inked low across his abdomen.

I knew that tattoo.

I had kissed it the night before.

My fingers started shaking as I opened the private account Cassian had never shown me.

April 4. The conservatory. Me and him.

April 7. The upstairs studio. Me and him again.

April 11—last night. A six-second clip in the back of the car.

I left my best friend at the tea room and drove straight to the address she had given me.

Ravencrest House, No. 18.

All the way there, I told myself it could still be a mistake. A private account meant nothing. A tattoo meant nothing. A six-second clip could mean anything.

I stopped believing that the moment I reached the gates.

Music drifted across the lawn. Light spilled over the pool. Men in linen and women in silk moved through the garden with the lazy ease of people who had never been denied anything.

I found Cassian almost at once.

He was stretched back in a chair with a cigarette between his fingers, laughing with the men around him. He looked like he belonged there—like he had always belonged there.

One of them raised his glass.

“If you really want to destroy Evelyn Vale, there are easier ways. Lean on the board. Freeze the grant money. Women like her care about reputation more than anything.”

A few of them laughed.

Another man said, “Still—are you sure she was the one behind what happened to your sister? It doesn’t sound like her.”

Cassian’s expression changed, only slightly.

“She sat on the