Chapter 315: Betrayal
CASSIAN
The house was completely quiet when I pushed the front door open. It was that same deep stillness that usually meant he was still tucked under the blankets in the bedroom, but the moment the soles of my boots hit the tile, the air felt wrong.
It wasn’t the quiet of a sleeping house; it was the quiet of a room where someone was holding their breath.
I walked into the living room. Julian wasn’t in bed. He was sitting on the edge of the old linen couch, his back hunched over and slightly turned toward the door.
The wooden coffee table was right in front of him, and on the dark oak surface, there was a small square of glass he’d taken from a picture frame.
There was white powder on the glass.
My brain didn’t want to see it at first. It tried to tell me it was salt, or flour from the kitchen, or dust from the old shutters, but my eyes had already done the math before I could even stop walking.
I knew the look of that white line better than I knew my own name. I’d seen it on mirrors in the back rooms of clubs; I’d seen it on the desks of captains who were about to order a hit.
Julian heard the door latch click. His whole body went hard, his shoulders locking into two sharp points as he went completely rigid.
It was the look of a creature that had been cornered in the dark by the one person it couldn’t afford to let see its teeth.
Slowly, his head turned around to face me.
His eyes were wide, the pupils blown out until the brown of his iris was just a thin, ragged ring around the black.
He wasn’t fully gone yet; the high hadn’t taken the edges off his brain, which made it so much worse.
There was a tiny trace of the white dust still clinging to the side of his left nostril.
His right hand jerked forward, his fingers spreading out across the glass to cover the lines, but he was too slow, his movements clumsy and heavy.
There was no anger on his face. There was no fight in him. What I saw looking back at me was pure, raw shame, completely naked and bleeding right there in the morning light.
And underneath the shame, there was a terrible, shaking fear. It was the expression of a person who had just watched his last good thing look him in the eyes and see the rot inside his skin.
He scrambled off the couch, standing up so fast his knee banged against the table, sending the little screwdriver rolling across the floor. His hands went to his face, his sleeve rubbing hard against his nose to wipe the white away.
"It’s—" he stammered, his teeth clicking together as he tried to find the words.
"I just—I was going to—it was only today, Cassian, I swear to God it was only today—"
The sentences were coming out in pieces, breaking apart before he could finish them, his mouth working faster than his lungs.
His hands kept moving, rubbing his thighs, pulling at the hem of his shirt, twitching against his ribs.
"I can stop," he said, the words tumbling over each other too fast, too loud. "I was going to stop before you came back. I didn’t think you’d be—I didn’t think—Cassian, please, I can stop."
I stayed right there by the door frame. I didn’t take another step into the room. The leather wallet was heavy and cold in my right hand, right where I’d found it on the small shelf by the door.
My chest felt like someone had driven an iron wedge between my ribs, cracking the bone open.
The question came out before I could even think to check it. "How long?" I asked. My voice didn’t sound like mine; it was flat and dead, like a shovel hitting dirt.
Julian hesitated, his chest heaving as he stared at my boots, his fingers twisting the green string around his neck until the skin went white.
"How long have you been doing this again?" I asked.
"I—I—today was the first time I—" he stammered, his eyes darting toward the window.
"Don’t lie to me," I cut him off. The words weren’t loud, but they hit the room like a hammer.
The air went right out of him. His eyes filled up with dark, heavy guilt, and his head dropped down until his chin was resting against his collarbone, his voice turning small and thin. "Before we left," he whispered.
The words knocked the breath right out of my lungs. Every single mile we’d driven, every night I’d sat by the window watching the road while he slept, every time I’d looked at him laughing at the cat... it all turned into water and ran through my fingers.
He’d had it in his pockets the whole time. He’d had it in the car.
"I’m sorry, Cassian—" he tried again, stepping toward me with his hand out, his fingers trembling in the light.
"I thought I could stop. I thought if we got here, if I had the light, if I had the space... I thought it would just go away."
"Why didn’t you say anything?" I asked. My throat felt tight, like someone was pulling a wire around it. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"I was ashamed," he said, and for the first time, a tear broke over his lower lid and ran straight through the trace of white powder on his cheek. "I was ashamed that I couldn’t do it on my own."
What hit me then wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even disappointment. It was a cold, greasy terror that came up from my stomach and took hold of my throat.
I realized right then that the thing I had spent my life trying to fix... the thing I had attacked Emilio Vincenti for, the thing I had run three hundred miles to save was something I couldn’t fix with a gun or a knife or a bundle of cash.
I couldn’t fix it by being stronger, and I couldn’t fix it by staying awake all night. It was inside him, and I was completely helpless against it.
For a man like me, helplessness is a poison. I didn’t know what to do with the weight of it, so my face did what it always did when I was terrified; it turned hard and cold and flat.
For one terrible second, my mouth twisted into a look of pure disgust. It wasn’t disgust for him, it was just the horror of knowing I had failed but it wore that face because I didn’t have any other mask to put on.
Julian saw it. He’d spent his whole life reading the tiny shifts in my eyebrows and the tension in my lips, just like I’d done with him.
He stopped talking right in the middle of a word. His hands dropped down to his sides and went completely still.
I watched his face go through something terrible and fast, like a row of doors slamming shut one after the other in an empty hallway.
The shame went away; the fear went away; and something old and cold and dead settled into his eyes.
It was the look of a person who had finally received the news he’d been waiting for his entire life, the confirmation that he was exactly as bad as he’d alwayss suspected, and that he was finally too much for the only person who had ever loved him.
He just looked at me. His mouth closed, and the apologies stopped coming.
"I’m sorry," he said softly, his eyes fixed on the dirty tile between our feet. "I’m really sorry."
I didn’t think about turning around. My body just did it for me, my fingers reaching out and wrapping around the cold iron handle of the front door before my brain could even tell them to stop.
I pushed the wood open, the bright sun from the street hitting me like a slap in the face.
"Cassian—" Julian’s voice came from behind me. It sounded different now... the powder was starting to hit his blood, making his tone thin and floaty, but underneath the drug, the terror was still real. "Please—"
I stopped on the threshold, my boots half in the house and half out, my hand gripping the wooden frame until the splinters dug into my palm. I didn’t turn around.
I heard his footsteps on the tiles. They were uneven, dragging a little as he came across the room toward the hall.
"Don’t—" he said, and I heard the sound of his breath catching, the back of his voice breaking completely. "Don’t go. Cassian—please—I’m sorry. I know I promised. I know—"
He took a sharp, rattling breath that sounded like it was tearing his chest open. "Please don’t leave me."
He said It the way a child says things when he’s spent his whole life waiting in a dark room for someone to unlock the door, knowing all along that nobody is coming.
It was the one fear he’d carried through every beating and every contract we’d ever survived.
