Chapter 7

The deadline expired at nine the next morning, and Cassian Devereaux was already standing in the lobby of Voss Holdings by eight forty-five.

He hadn’t slept. He told himself it was Bellamy keeping him awake, along with the board breathing down his neck and the messages his COO had sent throughout the night about everything that needed his attention. He didn’t tell himself it was Seraphina.

The receptionist looked up as he approached the front desk. “Mr. Devereaux. Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Ms. Voss’s calendar is fully booked this morning.”

“I’m aware.” He didn’t move. “Tell her I’m here.”

The receptionist hesitated, clearly unused to being told rather than asked, then picked up the phone. Cassian watched her speak quietly into it before she nodded and hung up.

“She’ll see you. Fourteenth floor.”

He rode the elevator alone, running through what he planned to say and discarding most of it before the doors opened.

Seraphina’s office sat at the end of a long corridor lined with glass. He could see her through the wall before he reached the door. She stood at the window with a phone pressed to her ear, one hand resting against the frame as she listened.

There was something familiar about the way she stood. He couldn’t place it. He had been trying to place it since the first time he’d seen her, and the more he thought about it, the more irritating it became.

Her assistant stepped in front of him. “She’s finishing a call. Two minutes.”

“I’ll wait.”

He stood outside the office and watched Seraphina through the glass. She tilted her head slightly as she listened, and something about the movement pulled at a memory he couldn’t quite reach.

She ended the call and turned. For half a second, her expression changed when she saw him. She looked almost startled. Then it disappeared.

“Mr. Devereaux.” Her voice was calm. “You’re early.”

“Your deadline was nine.”

“It’s eight fifty-two.”

“I like to be punctual.”

A faint smile touched her mouth. “Come in, then.”

He stepped inside.

The office was exactly what he expected from her. Expensive, clean, and completely impersonal. No family photographs, no framed degrees, nothing that gave away who she was outside the company.

“I assume you’ve made your decision,” Seraphina said as she returned to her desk.

“I have.”

“And?”

Cassian didn’t sit.

“I want to know what you’re actually after.”

Something flickered across her face before she looked down at the contract.

“I already told you. A partnership.”

“You paid three hundred and fifty million for Bellamy just to make sure I couldn’t have it.”

“I made a better offer.”

“You paid far more than it was worth.”

“I wanted it.”

“That’s not the whole story.”

She looked up.

Cassian took a step closer to the desk. “You knew I wanted Bellamy. You knew how much it mattered to Devereaux Holdings, and you still went after it.”

“You’re very observant.”

“I’m trying to understand you.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Because he couldn’t explain why this woman had been on his mind since the first time he saw her. Because every time he looked at her, something inside him insisted they had crossed paths before.

Because he had spent years believing he remembered every important person he’d ever known, and yet there was something about Seraphina Voss that refused to fit into the stranger category.

“I keep feeling like I know you.”

Her expression didn’t change.

“You’ve said that already.”

“I know.”

“And I’ve told you we haven’t met.”

“You have.”

He held her gaze.

“I still don’t believe you.”

Seraphina stood.

She came around the desk slowly until she was standing a few feet away from him. Up close, he could see the tension she was trying to hide.

“Careful, Mr. Devereaux. Accusing a business partner of lying isn’t the best way to close a deal.”

“I’m asking a question.”

“You already asked it. I already answered it.”

“Then answer it again.”

For a moment, she said nothing. Something changed in her face. It was barely there, but Cassian saw it. Her eyes lost their coldness, and for one brief second she looked at him with something that felt painfully familiar. Then it was gone.

“We haven’t met,” she said quietly. “You have three hundred million reasons to stop asking questions and one signature left to give me. I suggest you focus on those.”

Cassian stared at her.

Then he reached into his jacket, took out his pen, and signed the contract on the edge of her desk. Seraphina’s expression remained composed, but her shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Congratulations,” he said as he capped the pen. “You have your partnership.”

“I have my partnership.”

He turned toward the door, then he stopped to look back at her.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t like feelings I can’t explain.”

Seraphina’s fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.

“Then don’t have them.”

“I’m trying.”

He left, and Seraphina stood completely still until the elevator doors closed behind him, and only then did she sit. Her legs suddenly felt too weak to keep her standing. She had won.

Bellamy was hers. Devereaux Holdings was now tied to Voss Holdings through a three-hundred-million-dollar partnership, giving her exactly the access she had spent years working toward. Everything had gone according to plan.

So why was her heart still racing?

She pressed a hand against her chest and closed her eyes. This was exactly what she had wanted. Cassian had signed the contract. He had walked into her office and handed her the first piece of what she had come back to take from him.

She should have been celebrating. Instead, she could still hear his voice.

“I don’t like feelings I can’t explain.”

A knock sounded at the door.

Her assistant stepped inside. “He signed.”

“I know.”

“You don’t look happy.”

Seraphina looked up. “I’m thrilled.”

Her assistant studied her face. “You look like you just watched a ghost walk out of your office.”

Close enough. Seraphina said nothing.

Her assistant placed a folder on the desk. “The Bellamy transfer completes at noon. Devereaux’s legal team also wants a call at two to discuss integration.”

“Fine.”

“Anything else?”

Seraphina looked toward the window.

Somewhere in that building, Cassian was probably already thinking about her again. He would go over their conversation, wondering why she felt familiar and why he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something he had missed. She knew that feeling too well.

“No,” she said. “That’s all.”

Her assistant left. Seraphina picked up the signed contract, and her eyes settled on Cassian’s signature.

She had seen that handwriting countless times before. On grocery lists. Birthday cards—notes left beside her coffee. The marriage certificate she had once believed would bind them together for life.

Now his signature sat beneath a three hundred million dollar agreement that brought him one step closer to the woman he had no idea was standing right in front of him.

She set the contract down.

“I don’t like feelings I can’t explain.”

Neither had she, once.

She had believed in love then. She had believed in Cassian. She had paid for both.

Seraphina reached for her phone.

“It’s done,” she typed. “He signed.”

The reply came almost immediately.

“And the rest of it?”

She looked toward the window again.

Cassian still had no idea what he was standing this close to.

“Give it time,” she replied. “He’s already looking. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for yet.”

She locked her phone and set it face down.

Then she picked up the next file on her desk and went back to work. There was still a lot left to take from Cassian Devereaux.