Chapter 3

By seven that evening, Seraphina was driving out of the city. She had spent the rest of the day working, which was probably the only reason she hadn’t spent it thinking about Cassian. There was always something to do at Voss Holdings, whether it was a company to acquire, a report to read, or someone to threaten with a spreadsheet. All of that was much easier than sitting around wondering why the man who had once known everything about her could look directly into her eyes and see absolutely nothing.

She turned off the main road and followed the narrow path she had memorized years ago. No sign told anyone where it led, which was exactly how she liked it. She parked beneath a tree, took the flowers from the passenger seat and got out. She hadn’t brought her driver, told her assistant where she was going, or even mentioned the visit to the Voss family. They knew she came here occasionally, but they didn’t know everything about the place. They didn’t need to.

Seraphina walked for several minutes before the trees opened into a small clearing. Four graves sat beneath the shade, and she slowed when she saw them.

The first three belonged to the family she had been born into: her mother, her father, and her younger brother. The fourth was smaller, and Seraphina hated that one the most.

She walked to her mother’s grave first and placed a flower against the stone. “Hi, Mom.”

She moved to her father’s grave and placed another flower down. “Hi, Dad.”

Then she went to her brother’s grave. “I know I’m late.” She sat beside it and looked at the stone. “You would have complained.”

She could almost hear him telling her that if she was going to visit, she could at least arrive on time. A smile tugged at her mouth before she looked away.

Her gaze moved to the fourth grave.

“I saw him today.”

No need to say his name, but she did anyway.

“Cassian.”

The name felt strange here.

She picked at a piece of grass beside her. “Cassian didn’t recognize me.”

She waited for a moment, as if someone might answer.

Of course no one did.

Seraphina sighed and looked toward her mother’s grave. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Her mother wasn’t actually looking at her, but Seraphina knew exactly what that expression would have meant.

She had spent five years changing herself, and it hadn’t been limited to her hair, clothes, or makeup. She had changed her face too. Some of the procedures had been subtle enough that nobody looking at her now would know exactly what had been done, while others had altered features Cassian would have remembered too well. Her jaw was different. Her nose was different. Even the shape of her eyes had been slightly altered.

She had known the procedures would make her formerly plain features more striking, so she had never worried about whether she would look beautiful afterward. That wasn’t what mattered to her. She wanted to become someone Cassian could never recognize.

The darker hair helped. So did the different makeup, the hours she had spent working with dialect coaches, and the changes she had made to her body and the way she carried herself. By the time she was finished, the woman Cassian remembered barely existed anymore.

Apparently, it had worked.

She had looked into the eyes of the man who once knew every inch of her and watched him search her face for a memory that wasn’t there. He had found nothing.

It was exactly what she wanted.

So why did it bother her?

She looked back at the grave. “He asked if we’d met before.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “I told him no.”

The lie had been easy, and that was probably what bothered her most.

Five years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to lie to Cassian if her life depended on it. She had been terrible at hiding things from him. He could tell when she was angry, when she was upset, and even when she was pretending not to be. Now she could look directly into his eyes and deny ever knowing him.

Apparently, five years could do a lot to a person.

Seraphina stood and moved toward the fourth grave before crouching in front of it. No name was carved into the stone. There couldn’t be. Cassian had never known. He had never known she was pregnant.

She had found out shortly before everything fell apart. She had spent days wondering how to tell him, imagining his reaction and arguing with herself over whether to wait until he came home or tell him the moment she saw him.

She never got the chance.

The divorce had been hell, and everything that followed had been worse. There had been accusations, fighting, and the deaths of her family, followed by the destruction of the life she had known. By the time Seraphina understood that there had been far more happening behind the scenes than she knew, she had already lost the people she had grown up with and the child she had been carrying.

She touched the top of the small stone.

“Your father still doesn’t know about you.” Her voice grew quieter as she looked down. “He doesn’t even know you existed.”

She swallowed and looked away.

Maybe that was for the best.

If Cassian had known, would he have stayed?

She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. His family had never wanted her anyway. They had made that clear from the beginning. She had been the woman their son insisted on marrying despite every warning, every insult and every attempt to make her feel like she didn’t belong beside him.

She had believed Cassian would protect her from them.

That had been her first mistake.

Believing him had been the second.

By the time the marriage ended, there was barely anything left of the life she had known. Then she became an orphan.

The Voss family came later. They took in a woman with nowhere to go and somehow made her feel like she belonged. They gave her a home, a family, and eventually a name the world now knew better than the one she had been born with.

Seraphina Voss.

Cassian had never met them, so he had no reason to connect that name to the woman he had divorced five years ago.

She stood and brushed the dirt from her trousers.

“I know what you’re thinking, Mom.”

She glanced toward her mother’s grave.

“Don’t.”

She could almost imagine the lecture. Her mother would have told her to forgive, move on, and leave the past where it belonged.

Seraphina rolled her eyes.

“Very inspirational. Unfortunately, I’m busy.”

She picked up her bag. Tomorrow morning, Bellamy’s chairman would be waiting for her. Three hundred and twenty million dollars was a ridiculous amount to pay for a company that was barely worth a hundred million on paper. Still, Bellamy wasn’t really what she was after.

What she wanted was to get under Cassian’s skin.

She wasn’t going to let him have Bellamy.

She wasn’t going to let him have anything else either.

Seraphina looked at the fourth grave one last time.

“I’ll come back.”

She had spent five years surviving everything the Devereaux family had put her through. She wasn’t going to spend the next five feeling sorry for herself.

Tomorrow, she had a company to steal from Cassian Devereaux.