Chapter 262: Do not hide in the shadows from me

Cassian caught the shift in her expression immediately and shifted his grip, pulling her firmly against his chest, wrapping his arms around her body to provide a solid wall of warmth and safety.

Cixi buried her face in the crook of his neck, looping her arms around his shoulders and clinging to him as the steady scent of him grounded her senses. They remained quiet in that embrace until her ragged breathing smoothed out and she regained control of her emotions.

“Tell me about those three who came after you at the stadium,” Cassian spoke in his low and velvet voice against her ear.

Every muscle in Cixi’s body snapped to high alert.

“What are you hiding from me, Cig?” He ran a hand slowly up the line of her spine, feeling the sudden tension in her frame. “Why are you trying so hard to protect them? You know very well I can drag them into a cell and force every truth from their throats.”

Cixi went rigid as stone in his lap, her breath catching in her throat.

Cassian loosened his hold just enough to create distance between their faces, though he kept her seated securely over his thighs. His molten, brown-tinged eyes searched her pale face with lethal tenderness. “Yet I do not want to force the truth from their broken bones,” his voice dropping into a dangerous, intimate murmur. “I want to hear it from you… Do not hide in the shadows from me, Cixi. Tell me what troubles you. Tell me who hurt you, and what you have been running from all this time. Let me carry your sorrow and your fear. Let me tear them apart until it feels as though they never existed, not in your present, and not even in your past.”

Cixi remained quiet, searching the depths of his molten eyes while thoughts tumbled through her mind. She knew the terrifying truth of what he was.

Cassian wielded enough power and influence to uncover every secret in Demond City within an hour if he truly wanted to. He could have dug through her past, discovered the truth behind her college expulsion, and found that vile deepfake video without ever asking her a single question.

Yet he had not.

He had held himself back because of her.

Cassian Crown, a man who was accustomed to taking whatever information he wanted, had deliberately reined in that power simply because she had asked him to respect her privacy. Of course, that respect seemed to disappear entirely whenever her clothes were involved. Apparently, her emotional boundaries were sacred.

Human scriptures and ancient books painted demons as the embodiment of pure, mindless malice. If that were true, could a gesture like this, patient, protective, and respectful of her consent, still be labelled as evil?

A quiet realisation settled into Cixi’s heart—the world was not divided neatly into black and white. There were vast grey expanses in between, truths a person could only comprehend once life dragged them through the dirt to see it firsthand.

“We studied at the same college,” Cixi finally spoke. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. “And they bullied me. The woman, her name is Silviya, was apparently jealous of me for reasons I could never understand. Her envy drove her to poison everyone against me, turning the whole campus into hostile territory until they… they made me their punching bag.” Her voice trailed off on the final words, lost in cruel memories.

Cassian’s jaw ticked. His teeth pressed together so hard the muscles along his cheeks stood out in rigid cords. The phrase ‘punching bag’ echoed through his mind like a war drum, stoking a cold, merciless fury that turned the air around them heavy. “And what about those men who followed you when you came to my penthouse for the cleaning job?” His tone was dangerously calm.

Cixi’s heart hitched in her chest. She fought with every ounce of willpower to maintain a neutral expression, but keeping a poker face under his piercing focus was nearly impossible. What was she supposed to tell him? That she had been almost everyone’s punching bag?

As the bitter thought settled, it struck her that she had been everyone’s target for as long as she could remember. Whenever someone felt inadequate, angry, or bored, they took it out on her.

“They were addicts,” Cixi answered, forcing her voice to stay steady. “Most of the time, they loitered around the alley near my old apartment. Because I was an orphan with no family to protect me, they picked on me, assuming I was an easy target.” Her voice trembled.

A flicker of dark annoyance crossed Cassian’s features, and the molten gold in his irises bled outward into obsidian, turning his stare fathomless. “Are there more people you have been running away from?”

Nelson’s face flashed across Cixi’s mind the instant the words left Cassian’s lips.

Panic surged into her throat. She averted her eyes immediately, turning her head toward the dark windows and giving a small, hasty shake of her head in denial.

That single motion told Cassian everything about Cixi.

She was hiding someone from him.

He could sense the lingering hesitation coiling tight inside her chest, the fragile boundary where she still feared to bare herself completely. It told him she still did not grasp the full measure of what she had become to him.

She did not yet understand that she was the centre of his universe, and that anyone who had ever dared to make her bleed would answer to him with their life.

Yet he would not force it out of her tonight. He would wait until she placed her full trust into his hands.

“Those lowlife addicts are already dead,” Cassian said, his voice flat with finality. “Now I feel they received an easy death.” He clicked his tongue as if he was disappointed in himself.

His mind drifted back to the cold night outside his luxurious apartment building. He remembered Cixi falling onto the ground after colliding with him. He recalled the leering, repulsive grins plastered across those druggies’ faces and the filth in their eyes as they imagined what they would do to a helpless girl cornered in the shadows.

They had not needed to utter a single word; their intentions were written plainly in their every depraved glance.

The sight had ignited a primal wrath in Cassian’s blood, and he had decided their fate before their filthy hands could even graze her coat.

The moment Cixi scrambled inside the security door of the building, seeking safety from the storm, Cassian made his move.

He had broken each one of them in half, snapping their spines and ribcages with his bare hands until the alley went dead silent.

Afterwards, he had instructed his men to incinerate the remains, clean every drop of blood from the asphalt, and wipe the surveillance footage completely clean.

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