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Cassie Returns

Author: Tyson Roy
last update Last Updated: 2025-09-12 20:10:12

The card in my pocket felt heavier than plastic. Every time I touched it, the red dot seemed to pulse against my palm, reminding me that I’d been given a chance—not back inside, not fully, but close enough to the threshold that my heartbeat tripped whenever I thought of crossing it.

I lasted two days keeping my distance, sending notes, doing the careful work Marco asked of me. But I couldn’t shake the pull of Elysium’s doors. Not just the velvet and marble, not the decadence. Him.

Victor.

It wasn’t enough that he had read my letter. I needed to see his face, hear his voice, even if all he gave me was silence sharpened into words. The city outside felt like it was holding its breath, and I couldn’t breathe with it until I knew where we stood.

So I went back.

The evening rain slicked the pavement, turning the streetlights into smeared halos. My reflection ghosted alongside me in every shopfront window—coat collar turned up, hair damp, expression caught between defiance and prayer. The c
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  • Shadows of Desire   Hidden Microphones

    The text from Marco arrived as I was still tasting the ghost of Adrian’s cologne.Sweep. Now. Don’t mention in hallways. Side door.I put my phone face down and breathed in for four, out for six, the way Elise taught me when the air gets too small. The city clattered outside like cutlery in a drawer—ordinary life, loud with its ordinariness. I told my hands to stop shaking, then told them again, then stuffed them into my pockets and let the walk to Elysium wring the nervous energy out of my calves.Andre opened the service door without asking; he had the look of a man counting to himself. “Upstairs,” he said. “He wants the team in the control room and no one else.”The stairwell smelled like bleach and old wood and, faintly, clove syrup—memory stitched into air molecules. At the landing, I paused long enough to steady the part of me that had been rattled by Adrian’s “Ms. Monroe,” then stepped into the blue glow.Marco had stripped the control room to its bones. Cables snaked like dark

  • Shadows of Desire   Cassie’s Encounter

    The city always felt different after a heavy night at the club. Like the neon had followed me outside, clinging to my skin, whispering secrets no daylight could ever understand. I wrapped my scarf tighter and let the street noise wash over me—horns, chatter, the hiss of steam from subway grates. For once, it was almost comforting. A reminder that there was still a world where no one cared about leather cuffs or betrayal. Just people late for trains, spilling coffee, waving down cabs.I’d just turned the corner near a newsstand when the air shifted. A presence. Not the heavy gravity of Victor, not Marco’s sly warmth—something colder, clinical, but just as deliberate.“Ms. Monroe.”The name froze me in place. My legal name. My reporter name. Nobody here used it.I turned slowly. And there he was. Adrian.He didn’t look like a man who should terrify me. Tailored coat, crisp tie, face that would blend in at any high-end cocktail hour. But his eyes—his eyes gave him away. The kind that mis

  • Shadows of Desire   Leo’s Gesture

    The idea started as a rumor at the edge of a shift change—three words passed like a candle from hand to hand: public apology scene. I was slicing limes in the bar prep nook when Nadia murmured it. She didn’t elaborate, only glanced toward the stage where the curtain hung like a held breath. I felt the room tilt in that way Elysium does when something important is about to happen; conversations softened, pulse music smoothed to a thrumming undercurrent, and people’s bodies turned even when their heads pretended not to.Public scenes are part ritual, part weather. When they’re announced, the air changes pressure. This one carried a charge I could taste.Marco appeared at my elbow without seeming to cross the floor. “Tonight needs precision,” he said, voice low enough to register as instruction, not announcement. “She’s been approved for a single, supervised return. My rules. Elise on standby. Andre to run perimeter. You stay behind the bar unless I move you.”“Jennifer?” I asked, though

  • Shadows of Desire   Unexpected Ally

    The control room smelled like old coffee and the faint tang of electrical heat from monitors that never slept. We’d been orbiting the same names all day, pinning them on corkboard, dragging them across screens, trying to build a body from bones. And then Dr. Elise walked in.Not in leather, not in velvet, not even in the precise pencil skirts she wore when she was off duty. Today it was scrubs under her coat, her hair tied back in a no-nonsense knot. She looked like she’d come straight from an OR, traded sutures for secrets.“I heard,” she said, setting her bag on the console like it was an altar. “And I can help.”The room went quiet in that way only Elise could make it—like someone pressed a palm to your chest and steadied your pulse. Marco leaned back in his chair, one eyebrow raised, the beginnings of a smile tugging at him. Victor stayed by the far wall, arms crossed, jaw locked, watching. He didn’t trust gifts when they came wrapped too neatly.Elise ignored the scrutiny. She pu

  • Shadows of Desire   Jennifer’s Redemption Efforts

    There’s a certain hush the city wears on weekday afternoons, a tired quiet between lunch and sundown where the light goes a little sallow and everyone waits for the second act. I was in that hush when my phone buzzed with a number I hadn’t saved and hadn’t needed to. Some numbers write themselves into your nerves.We need to talk. I have names. —JI stared at the screen long enough for the message to gray with my fingerprints. The last time I’d held anything of Jennifer’s, it had been the shape of her fall—Leo’s soft apology, the door closing, the realization that pride is just heartbreak with good posture. Now she had names.I forwarded the text to Marco without comment, because we had an agreement about everything, especially me. His reply came quick.Neutral ground. No Elysium. You don’t go alone.I thought of Victor’s voice in the stairwell after I’d seen the envelope exchange—how his trust, if that’s what it was, could only live at arm’s length—and nodded to no one. “Neutral,” I

  • Shadows of Desire   Behind the Bar

    The smell of citrus and alcohol clung to my hands even before my first shift officially started. Behind the bar, everything felt louder, closer—the laughter rising like steam, the clink of glassware a constant percussion, the scent of leather and perfume weaving through the hum of bodies. Elysium’s main floor was a theater I had watched from velvet seats; now I stood inside the wings, apron tied too tight, pretending I knew which bottle was which.Marco had slipped me into the role. “Observe,” he said. “Listen, pour, and keep your eyes open. No one notices bartenders except when their glass is empty. Use that.”So here I was, sleeves rolled, hair tied back, the weight of a rag in my hand like a disguise I hoped wouldn’t crumble. My pulse beat in my ears every time Lena drifted into view.She moved differently now. Less the shy voyeur who used to hover by railings, more the shadow that kept her body angled away from obvious sightlines. She ordered nothing extravagant—gin and tonic, nea

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